A CryptoPunk NFT went viral on Twitter after it was said that it was sold for $530 million, which would make it the most valuable piece ever sold in art history. But, it turns out, all of this may have been just a publicity stunt.
A Twitter bot that is in charge of tracking the sales of CryptoPunks flagged the transaction around 8 pm ET.
CryptoPunks have a floor price of 100 ETH but said NFT, #9998, seems to lack features that would be desirable for a collection, which made many see the acquisition as being a “fat finger” aka an immutable, irreversible error endemic in blockchain.
Analyzing the chain shows that the acquisition was simply a smart contract magic thing.
The acquisition was made by a flash loan contract that was deployed by an address flagged by wallet profiler Nansen who is known for being a collector of NFTs and deployer of smart contracts.
A contributor to on-chain analysis publication OurNetwork, Banterlytics, said that the transaction was most likely conducted just “for the bantz.” The transaction seems to have cost just 0.19 ETH, and the address also features a message in the metadata of the transaction that reads “looks rare.”