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He sold 14 Cryptopunk too early and missed out on $45 million

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Ten thousand Bitcoins to buy pizza, and $1,600 to sell Alien Cryptopunk

Comment: 0x13, beat BlockBeats

Rd: Loopify

Not long ago, No. 7523 Cryptopunk landed at Sotheby's, where the masked Alien Cryptopunk finally sold for a whopping $11.8 million, setting a new record for the highest sale amount in all Cryptopunk history.

Cryptopunk was born in 2017, and at first they were distributed free to members of the crypto community at the time. Imagine if you had the opportunity to get a Cryptopunk for free would you have sold it? How much would you sell it for? What if the CryptoPunk you get has the rare Alien property? Can you imagine that this pixelated head is worth millions of dollars?

10,000 Bitcoins for pizza, $1,600 for Alien Cryptopunk&NBSP;

Let's meet the main character of the story, Straybits. His Discord user, Moxsly, collected seven Alien Cryptopunk and eight Ape Cryptopunk after CryptoPunks came out in 2017, Each of these cryptopunks is worth a fortune today, but Straybits sold the 14 cryptopunks back then, leaving only one Ape CryptoPunk for a total sale of 99.5eth, which was worth about $38,000 at the time.

Alien Cryptopunk, which sold for $10 million at Sotheby's, fetched just $1,646 at the time.

Today, Cryptopunk's floor price is 17.49ETH, or about $37,800. On the fiat standard, the $38,000 earned by Straybits can now only buy Cryptopunk with no rare properties; On the ETH standard, Straybits only makes enough money to buy five of the cheapest Cryptopunk.

The most amazing thing is that a single Alien Cryptopunk sold for $11.8 million, but Straybits completely missed that opportunity. I believe that many people do not have a concept of the value of millions of dollars, only know that "it is valuable", so might as well through the following several examples to intuitively feel some.

This privately owned Fijian island in the Pacific Ocean is worth $12 million

The 2013 Dassault Falcon 7X is worth $25 million.

The 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO, which won the Tour de France and has been called the most expensive car of all time, is worth $70 million.

Besides No. 7523 Cryptopunk, what about the other Alien and Ape Cryptopunk markets sold by Straybits?

The 14 Cryptopunk pieces are worth a total of $44.63 million based on the highest secondary sale and the highest bid, a 1,174 times increase from Straybits' initial sale of $38,000.

The story of Straybits is so wonderful -- and so sad -- that NFT deep player and collector Loopify caught up with Straybits to talk about how it missed out on millions of dollars.

Rhythm Blockbeats compiles the interview below.

Loopify: After you read about CryptoPunks, why are you only focused on claiming CryptoPunk for Alien and Ape properties?

Straybits:The introduction to CryptoPunks, which I read on GitHub, clearly lists the number of CryptoPunks with Zombie, Alien, and APE attributes, and specifically mentions one Alien CryptoPunk wearing a hat and smoking a pipe. That's when I wanted to grab this special CryptoPunk. But the first one I received was No. 2077 Cryptopunk, and I wanted to understand how the smart contract works to make sure I could get the other Cryptopunk correctly.

So I got the Cryptopunk to figure out how the smart contract works, and then I started searching for Alien and Ape. It was early June 2017, and all the CryptoPunks were published on Larvalabs' website, and all the CryptoPunks were gathered into one big PNG image, All you need to do is find the desired CryptoPunk and its corresponding number in the image.

That day, I spent the afternoon browsing through this picture to find all the Alien CryptoPunk. The first Alien I picked up was No. 7804, the one with the pipe and the hat. I thought to myself, there must be other Alien Cryptopunk left, so I kept searching and picked up six more Alien Cryptopunk, but I still missed two. Then I sifted through it again and picked up another eight Ape Cryptopunk.

Then I picked up a few more interesting looking cryptopunks, which added up to about 20 in all.

Loopify: After collecting these Cryptopunks, have you ever looked at the prices?

Straybits:I didn't see it as an investment at the beginning, because I was only paying a few cents in Gas, but I saw it as a chance to get exposed to cool, new technology.

However, as more people learned about it and my Alien Cryptopunk got higher and higher bids, I began to realize that people were recognizing their value more and more.

But at first, I just saw it as a way to learn more about smart contracts and fees, and get involved in some cool activities.

Loopify: What made you sell these cryptopunks?

Straybits:I had an important album coming up, so I wanted to travel around the world. So I quit my job, invested half of my savings in ETH, and a week later I was in Sri Lanka.

I began to experience life there, driving around the city during the day and returning to my house at night to chat with people in the neighborhood of Cryptopunk.

I once went to a chat with a Dutch monk who lives in recluse in Sri Lanka and knows a lot about Linux, and we chatted about blockchains, smart contracts and CryptoPunks. I had a good relationship with him, and he was an early entrant to crypto, and his offer seemed good to me, and I thought he should get an Alien Cryptopunk, so we made a deal.

Later, there were some problems with the contract of Larvalabs. After everyone agreed, Larvalabs updated the contract and everyone got the original Cryptopunk. I gradually got more offers from more people. I think it's pointless for one person to hoard these CryptoPunks, people should let them circulate and enjoy them, which is why I decided to sell more Apes and Aliens.

Loopify: What do you think when you read that one of the Alien Cryptopunks you sold went for a lot of money in secondary resellings?

Straybits:It was around February that my mom told me these things, and she knew that I loved the crypto field and had owned these Alien CryptoPunk. I was shocked and took some time to digest the news, which made its mark on history.