Why a $30 million CryptoPunks auction fell apart at the last minute - The Verge

In February 2022, Sotheby’s was set to make history by selling a bundle of 104 CryptoPunks NFTs that experts thought would reach as much as $30 million. What went wrong?

In the Sotheby’s salesroom one evening in late February, fluorescent lights beamed down on the assembled crowd. A sea of spectators is not unusual for Sotheby’s — the 278-year-old auction house typically hosts more than 600 sales per year — but this sale was different. It was the auction house’s first-ever evening sale dedicated solely to NFTs.

Sotheby’s described the event, titled “Punk it!,” as “a truly historic sale for an undeniably historic NFT project.” It consisted of a single lot — 104 CryptoPunks sold as an all-or-nothing bundle. Sotheby’s estimated the bundle would go for $20–30 million, on par with sales of paintings by David Hockney or Jean-Michel Basquiat.

To drum up interest, the auction house had thrown a series of events aimed at attracting prospective punk-buyers. There was a pre-auction dinner for VIP Punk holders and an afterparty with DJ Seedphrase, known for the enormous CryptoPunk headpiece he wears while playing sets. The campaign worked: the crowd on the day of the auction included Nicole Muniz, the CEO of Yuga Labs, as well as NFT influencer Andrew Wang and Nifty Gateway co-founders Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster.

Eli Tan, a writer at crypto news outlet CoinDesk, remembers a party atmosphere. “The actual sale seemed like kind of a secondary thing,” he explains.

Then, things got weird. The indicated start time of the sale, 7PM, came and went. Five minutes passed, then 20. Finally, a voice on the intercom announced that the lot had been withdrawn. Gasps could be heard in the salesroom. After weeks of preparation, the sale was canceled — and no one was sure why.

https://www.theverge.com/23153725/cryptopunks-sothebys-auction-punk-it-nft-hodl

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