"Punk It!": Sotheby’s NFT sale suddenly canceled

• 104 CryptoPunks with an estimated auction value of around US$30 million were withdrawn shortly before the start of the Sotheby’s auction
• The reasons for the withdrawal are unclear
• Little support from the crypto community: The anonymous seller is harshly condemned in social media

A few days ago, a large NFT auction at Sotheby’s auction house burst: The anonymous seller, who appears on Twitter and other portals as 0x650d, pulled his CryptoPunks collection for sale around 25 minutes after the auction actually started, according to the Business Times suddenly back on February 23rd. According to media reports, the estimated value of the collection was around 30 million US dollars.

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104 CryptoPunks should be in the “Punk It!” collection at the end of February. be auctioned

“Punk It!” was announced by Sotheby’s and 0x650d via Twitter in early February. The collection should contain 104 NFTs, and the sale will take place as a live auction.

CryptoPunks are a project by Larva Labs. According to the company website, the cheapest token in this series is priced at 68.5 ETH as of early March 2022. That’s the equivalent of around 204,340 US dollars, so the collection should currently be worth around 21.25 million US dollars. This is also in line with data from DappRadar, which indicated that the anonymous seller’s portfolio of 136 NFTs had a similar total value at the time the auction was announced. So a sudden drop in value is probably not the reason for the sudden retreat from 0x650d.

The reasons for the anonymous seller’s withdrawal are unknown

Shortly after the auction, Sotheby’s reported via Twitter that the seller had suddenly withdrawn his collection.

As Fortune reports, Sotheby’s spokesman Derek Parsons later explained that the withdrawal had taken place before the auction began. It is therefore unlikely that 0x650d actually withdrew the CryptoPunks – as he himself put it on Twitter – after receiving the first funds. Accordingly, a scam is unlikely.

Crypto fans condemn the seller for his decision

While the press can only speculate as to the possible reasons behind the seller’s sudden decision not to sell his collection, 0x650d has also left his social media followers in the dark. On Twitter he only remarked: “nvm, decided to keep it after all”.

His community is rather unenthusiastic about this: The accusation has already been made that 0x650d missed the opportunity to make CryptoPunks more popular through the auction at Sotheby’s. Rather, according to the user Robert Leshner, the withdrawal had the opposite effect.

Olga Rogler / Editor finanzen.net

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