CryptoPunks Volume Explodes 11.7x in a Single Week
TREE NEWS reports: CryptoPunks are back in the spotlight — but this time the script looks different. Between September 19 and September 26, the collection logged roughly $8.2 million in unwrapped sales, making it the top-selling NFT series of the week. That is about 11.7 times the prior week’s volume.
The trigger: a sweeping buying spree around September 23, when a buyer reportedly acquired about 63 Punks for roughly $6 million, lifting the floor from around 29 ETH to about 34 ETH within two days. Over the past four weeks, the official Punks marketplace has recorded approximately 4,490 ETH (~$12 million) in sales — with roughly half of that concentrated in the days around the sweep.
Rare ‘Holy Grails’ Fetch Millions in USDC
On October 1, two of the rarest Punks changed hands within about 12 hours, both settled in USDC through GONDI, a popular NFT lending platform whose “Sell & Repay” feature lets borrowers sell an NFT pledged as collateral and clear the debt in a single transaction.
- Punk #8348 — the only Punk with seven attributes — sold for 3 million USDC plus an undisclosed amount, marking GONDI’s largest-ever transaction. Seller seedphrase, who held it since 2020, called it an offer he “couldn’t refuse.”
- Punk #3609 — one of 88 coveted Zombie Punks — fetched 875,000 USDC, roughly 326 ETH at the time, brokered by Canon Punks founder Eli Scheinman.
Notably, both Punks moved as wrapped CryptoPunks 721 tokens, and both buyers paid in USDC rather than ETH. Neither sale threatened the collection record — Alien #5822’s 8,000 ETH sale in 2022 — and #3609 actually traded below its May 2025 price of 440 ETH, a reminder that even rare pieces don’t only go up.
A New Market ‘Pipeline’ Around a 2017 Contract
Born in 2017, before the ERC-721 standard existed, Punks have long traded mainly on their native, ETH-denominated marketplace. Today, a layered stack of tools has grown around the original contract: wrapped Punks, GONDI’s collateralized lending, brokerages like Canon Punks, and strategies such as PunkStrategy and FWA. Each Punk sitting in a loan or a strategy means one less listing near the floor. How much these mechanisms thin floor supply and amplify volatility remains an open question — but it’s a thread worth watching.
A Rally Without an ETH Tailwind
In past cycles, Punks heated up in tandem with ETH strength. When the floor hit about 54 ETH (over $200,000) in late July 2025, ETH traded near $3,745 and later peaked around $4,954 on August 24, 2025. This time is different. ETH now sits near $2,690, about 46% below its peak, yet Punks are warming up without a breakout in ETH.
Either Punks are serving as an early on-chain read on risk appetite, or they are starting to trade on their own logic. The USDC settlements point to the latter: paying in stablecoins suggests buyers want Punk exposure without ETH volatility — or are entering through TradFi channels.
What to Watch Next
The floor itself remains calm at around 33 ETH (~$89,000), up about 31% year-to-date but still roughly 39% below its late-July 2025 high. Volume is moving faster than price. The key questions now: can this volume pulse persist, and will it transmit into broader NFT bullishness — especially with lending, OTC, and stablecoin rails rewriting how these assets trade?
