50 CryptoPunks NFTs Go Fractional in New Collection

A collection of 50 CryptoPunks has been fractionalized into millions of tokens, each representing part of the collection.

CryptoPunks are one of the earliest forms of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are unique tokens that represent digital content such as images, audio or video. Created by Larva Labs, there are 10,000 CryptoPunks, each showing a pixelated face; either men, women, apes, zombies, or aliens.

CryptoPunks have relatively few sales, especially compared to NFT basketball trading cards NBA Top Shot, but they are typically some of the most expensive NFT sales. According to NFT tracker CryptoSlam, the most expensive NFT collectible sale ever (excluding artwork) was for CryptoPunk 7804—an alien with small shades, a pipe and a cap—for $7.7 million.

What does it mean to tokenize a collection?
In the blockchain world, it’s very easy to create tokens that can be used to represent pretty much anything. In this case, the original CryptoPunks are effectively frozen on the blockchain and these newly created tokens (called Wrapped CryptoPunks) become temporary versions of them.


CryptoPunk #7804 (Image: Larva Labs)
The difference is that thousands of tokens can represent one CryptoPunk (or a collection of them), meaning that each token represents a specific, tiny percentage of the original artwork, or collection of artworks. And when CryptoPunks are being sold for millions of dollars, being able to buy a small percentage of one allows smaller investors to get involved.

If CryptoPunks become more valuable, in theory the tokenized shares do too. In practice, this may not be the case because they’re traded on the open market, meaning they're subject to supply and demand.