Crypto Twitter was briefly set ablaze Thursday night time as a CryptoPunk non-fungible token (NFT) was bought for a staggering half-billion {dollars} – a determine that may have made the sale one of many largest ever not simply in NFT-land, however in all of artwork historical past.
However, on-chain analysts had been fast to level out that the sale could have simply been an elaborate publicity stunt.
A Twitter bot that tracks the gross sales of CryptoPunks first flagged the transaction shortly earlier than 8 p.m. ET. If actual, the 124,457.07 ETH sale price over $530 million would have simply eclipsed the 4,200 ETH sale of an ultra-rare alien punk in March.
Punk 9998 purchased for 124,457.07 ETH ($532,414,877.01 USD) by 0x9b5a5c from 0x8e3983. https://t.co/dmT6jDRC1W #cryptopunks #ethereum pic.twitter.com/UQlmm1oqkj
— CryptoPunks Bot (@cryptopunksbot) October 28, 2021
CryptoPunks have a flooring worth – a time period referring to the bottom worth at which a piece from a explicit NFT assortment will be purchased – of 100 ETH, and the punk in query, #9998, lacks fascinating options from a collector’s perspective, main some to consider the acquisition was a “fat finger,” a time period referring to the immutable, irreversible errors endemic in blockchain.
A have a look at the chain, nonetheless, reveals that the acquisition was simply a intelligent little bit of good contract magic.
The buy was made by a flash mortgage contract deployed by an deal with flagged by pockets profiler Nansen as a prolific DeFi person, NFT collector and good contract deployer who additionally owns the blurr.eth Ethereum Name Service NFT.
you possibly can see it right here:
0x9b5a flash loans 124,457 ETH from many sources
0x9b5a pays 124,457 ETH to the punk contract
punk contract sends it to 0x8e39
0x8e39 sends again to 0x9b5a
0x9b5a repays mortgagegenius 😄https://t.co/nlo24twyEx pic.twitter.com/suPOMHRV7O
— mariano.eth ✨ᕙ༼💦༽ᕗ✨ | 🦇🔊 (@nanexcool) October 29, 2021
Banterlytics, a contributor to on-chain evaluation publication OurNetwork, advised CoinDesk that the transaction was possible performed solely “for the bantz.”
The transaction price 0.19 ETH, or roughly $800, and the deal with included a message within the metadata of the transaction, saying “looks rare.”
An identical flash mortgage transaction was conducted in February to buy a HashMask NFT for 139,000 ETH, at present the most important NFT sale on report – even when on a technicality.
Read extra: What Is a Flash Loan?
