Cryptopunks have been a revolution in the world of Blockchain and NFTs. I’ll explain why.
Have you ever been interested in collecting some kind of digital art?
Now that is possible, you should know that this concept is changing and the Cryptopunks, some NFTs, are to blame.
Non-fungible tokens or NFTs for their acronym in English are an idea that has been gaining strength in recent years.
If you want to know more about this new type of crypto art and how to make a lot of money with it, you are in the right place.
What is Cryptopunk?
They are essentially images, but they contain a unique code that is stored on the blockchain to make them a unique and rare digital piece.
To understand a little more about the history and growth of Cryptopunks, we must know that it is a cryptographic art and an NFT.
Crypto art
The arrival of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain has brought new security methods for digital sellers. Normally a piece of art must be viewed and detailed by a professional to ensure that it is completely authentic.
This method is not viable, since more and more copies of an original art exist, which ends up devaluing it completely. Currently, many artists work digitally, which exponentially increases the plagiarism of their works.
Thanks to the blockchain, a digital signature has gradually been incorporated into this type of work, both physical and digital. The signature is stored in the blockchain allowing the work to be easily verified and kept 100% original.
Because of this, no matter how many copies and plagiarisms are attempted of a work, they will be completely ignored due to checking. This is something that has already been applied for some years and due to the global pandemic it has been reinforced.
Remarkably, a level of security of this caliber existing on the web is something that has been expected since its inception.
The Internet has been considered a very insecure place, but with the application of cryptography, this will no longer be the case, in theory.
Therefore, it can not only be applied to digital arts but it can also be done with physical works and all kinds of collectible or non-collectible items.
If it continues to be applied the way it is, plagiarism and illegal copying will completely cease to exist (I wish it were).
Non-fungible tokens
Items with liquidity are specified as non-expendable, as they are rare and rare items that cannot be exchanged for another of their kind. To know how to differentiate between a fungible item and one that is not, we will take a couple of examples:
Gold is fungible because if you have a pound, it doesn’t matter if it is in coins, bars, or nuggets, it will always be a pound in gold.
Ten dollars, for example, are also fungible, since you can exchange them for another bill of the same denomination. In turn, you can have two out of five and they will be ten dollars, applicable in the other combinations and with bills of other denominations.
A diamond for its part is not fungible, since each diamond is different, both in weight and in cuts. You will never find a diamond with the same cut and the same weight simultaneously, which makes it a liquid asset.
With this information, we can already deduce that a non-fungible token is a unique piece and there will be no other like it.
How do Cryptopunks work?
These combine both crypto art and NFT in one place, giving rise to Cryptopunks. They are scarce, there are 10,000 in total, with unique characteristics that divide them into some normal and others rare.
They are all fully verifiable in the same way since they are stored in the blockchain with a unique code. Cryptopunks are recognizable as they are pixel art that only spans about 24×24, and are algorithmically generated.
For Cryptopunks to work you must own both the crypto art and its unique code on the blockchain. For the creation of these images, a programmed generator with several specific characteristics was used.
This is how the 10,000 Cryptopunks appeared, which are mostly male and female images, the others are somewhat rarer. There are about 88 zombie-shaped, 24 with monkey factions, 9 aliens, and a punk alien, unique for smoking a pipe.
Larvalabs is in charge of showing which Cryptopunks are available to be claimed, and which are currently on sale.
To make sure that these pieces are legitimate, you just have to check the profile of the piece with the hash embedded in the Ethereum contract.
Also, you can use MyEtherWallet, a program that has added Cryptopunks to its contract list. This makes any type of transaction with this cryptographic art much easier, as it simplifies the code and makes it more automated.
In case you want to do it “the old fashioned way”, with an Ethereum wallet directly on your computer, the first thing to do is to download the complete blockchain. Then, look for the Cryptopunks contract with the following address: 0xb47e3cd837dDF8e4c57F05d70Ab865de6e193BBB, and the ABI file provided by Larvalabs to view it.
And be careful, you have to take into account that there may be scam attempts with this type of token. For example, there is a case of copies of Cryptopunks being traded even on exchanges like Binance, but this was not authorized by Larvalabs.
So be careful.
Functions to make transactions with Cryptopunks
Each function performs a specific action, you just have to write the following in the smart contract:
- getPunk(uint index): Used to claim ownership of any of the punks in existence, although this is no longer useful since they have all been claimed.
- transferPunk(address to, uint index): Used to transfer ownership of punk without requesting payment in return.
- offerPunkForSale(uint punkIndex, uint minSalePriceInWei): To offer one of your punks to anyone willing to pay the price you specify.
- offerPunkForSaleToAddress(uint punkIndex, uint minSalePriceInWei, address toAddress): To offer a punk to a specific address or person.
- enterBidForPunk(uint punkIndex): With this, you can bid for a specific punkIndex. You can send your offer and wait for the answer.
- acceptBidForPunk(uint punkIndex, uint minPrice) : Use to accept a pending bid for a punk.
- withdrawBidForPunk(uint punkIndex): This function will withdraw a bid for the specified punk and send you the ether of the bid.
- buyPunk(uint punkIndex): You can buy the punk that has been offered for sale, for this you must have sent the specific amount of Ethereum that they request in the sale.
- withdraw(): Reclaims all the Ethereum people you have previously sent to buy your punks.
Making money with Cryptopunks
Something impressive about this cryptographic art is that it was initially released as an experiment to test its viability.
To everyone’s surprise, the Cryptopunks ended up becoming valuable collector’s items due to their historical value.
Because, thanks to them, an incredibly important step was taken for the world of cryptocurrencies, crypto art, and NFTs. For this reason, its sale ended up rising in this same year 2021 with sales of thousands of dollars for each Cryptopunks.
That is why many people have been interested in seeing how they could earn money from home with something like this.
Notably, all of the punks were quickly claimed back in 2017, right after they were released. Immediately, the bid for the purchase and sale of the same began, going from a few dollars to hundreds of these.
But, it was only at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 that they began to gain impressive fame, and the acceptance increased exponentially.
What happens is that to make money today with these tokens it seems that we are talking about a kind of speculation or speculative exchange.
That is to say, new CryptoPunks cannot be created, and what happens is that the first owners of them have seen how they have increased in fame and people are willing to buy for more value, until reaching the stratospheric figures that we have.
For example, someone buys a Punk X for $200 worth of Ethereum. That person might do it because he hopes that he can sell the item for 1,000 or 5,000 in the future. But this is not guaranteed by anyone. In the case of the Punks, things turned out great for the first buyers and holders, but it remains to be seen how it ends for those who have bought at the highest prices.
Who knows? Perhaps we see how these tokens become cult works over the years and rise more in price, or we could also see how fame passes and those who bought Punks for 5,000 dollars cannot sell them even for 100.
This is what the world of speculation has got, and NFTs after all are a form of it. Of course, making money with NFTs is not easy, and don’t think so if they tell you.
If you want to see more about speculation you can see my article on how to make money with trading.
If you want to keep up to date on how sales, offers, bids, etc. are going, open an account on their Discord channel.
We can verify that the highest current sales have been the following:
Punk 1651
A male Cryptopunks with features that are arguably somewhat lacking compared to the 10,000 out there. It was claimed on June 23, 2017, by the user 0x0ed6fe, the following month they offered him 0.05 ETH, about $14 that day.
Thus the offers were increasing until on February 16, 2021, it was decided to sell it for an impressive 78 ETH. Which at the time was equivalent to about $136,850, which means that he made a huge profit without investing anything at all.
Currently, this punk has two offers for its owner, one for 240ETH on February 27 and another for 160ETH on March 6.
Punk 4156
One of the Cryptopunks with monkey factions, they are few, there are only about 24 similar ones, and currently, they have a lot of value. It was claimed on June 23, 2017, and has since been transferred and sold a couple of times until its price rose.
Pranksy NFT offered an impressive 300ETH for this piece but it was quickly withdrawn as there was an offer of 650ETH at the time. On February 18, 2021, it was sold for this amount, which at the time was exactly $1 million.
Punk 2890
This was acquired and then sold for 8ETH on July 6, 2017, and I bet that person still regrets it. Since this January 23, 2021, it was sold for about 605ETH, which was about $761,889, an incredible profit.
Although it is obvious in retrospect since it is one of the 9 punks with alien characteristics which are very rare. There is even a single alien who smokes from a pipe, which has an offer made on February 17, 2021, for 12 thousand ETH.
To that date, there are about 22 million dollars that have been offered by this peculiar punk that is currently owned by 0x03911f.
Conclusion
This Cryptopunks issue has been brutal.
For many, it has been a first contact with the world of NFTs and digital art of all kinds that are moving around there.
The truth is that the prices that have been paid seem incredible, and I find it hard to think that someone could pay figures of more than $700,000 for something like that, but it is true.
I think that this NFT, the most popular at the beginning of 2021, is not the most appropriate to enter this world and try to earn money speculating with its avatars, but it can serve as a lesson to see what can happen in such a new world. like this.
Of course, most projects won’t reach the notoriety this one has, but the ones that do will make their pioneers a fortune.
So yes, making money can be earned, but a lot can also be lost.
No way this will happen in the future with this particular project.
But it is that mystery and uncertainty, and above all the lack of regulation, that brings all these possibilities in this world of NFTs.
