Why a $30 million CryptoPunks auction fell apart at the last minute
by Katie Rothstein from The Verge - All Posts on (#602V6)
Illustration by Mengxin Li / The Verge 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...