CryptoPunks Owner Aborts Sotheby’s Auction In The Last Minute

A CryptoPunks owner aborts Sotheby’s auction at the last minute while the platform was poised to host one of the biggest NFT auctions ever so let’s read more in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

The anonymous CryptoPunks owner decided to abort the mission at the last minute and trolled the auction house. At Sotheby’s auction of 104 CryptoPunks ETH NFTs which was scheduled today, it got canceled after the seller decided to hold on to the assets insted. He tweeted “NVM decided to HODL” and the tweet came only two weeks after the auction house announced the sale which is estimated that could bring $20 million and more.

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— 0x650d (@0x650d) February 24, 2022

The collector posted a meme that implied that they were “taking punks mainstream by rugging Sotheby’s.” The rugging refers to a rug pull which is a scam where the developer leaves the project with the investors’ funds but no funds were lost despite the owner pulling the rug from the bidder’s feet. The sale which Sotheby’s had been marketing was dubbed as the first dedicated live evening auction for the NFTs. While this could have been the first auction decided to NFTs, Sotheby’s did sell digital artworks in the past alongside other items and sold about $100 million in NFTs in 2021 with the September sale of 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that represents a quarter of the total estimate of $15 to $18 million. Today’s auction could have, however, been the largest NFT sale ever.

The withdrawal of the collection outlined the aspirations of the Web3 space as it collided with the traditional institutions and as Robert Leshner who created Compound noted, it was quite a sad day for art collectors. Later, a tweet by the collector suggested that they have pulled out because of the high commission fees at Sotheby’s.  Still, the RugRadio founder Farokh called out the seller:

“Bro you suck stop acting like you rugged Sotheby’s lmao you made everyone look stupid. Even the press here is laughing at us because of you stop hiding the guilt behind dumb ass memes.”

As recently reported, The previous CryptoPunks record of $11.8 million was sent a year ago. CryptoPunks NFT sells for $24 million now, while it predates the modern NFT craze by years and has the OG status which made the 2017 Ethereum profile picture collection legendary in the crypto space.

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• Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/blockchain-news/cryptopunks-owner-aborts-sothebys-auction-in-the-last-minute/