NFT trader sells Alien CryptoPunks at $10M loss as sales drop 41% in 30 days

An NFT investor has sold a rare Alien CryptoPunks at a $10 million loss as overall NFT market activity continues to decline.

According to blockchain analytics firm Arkham, the trader recently sold CryptoPunks #3100 for 4,000 ETH (approximately $6.04 million). The sale was made after purchasing it one year ago for 4,500 ETH (valued at $16 million at that time).

CryptoPunks sale comes amidst drop in NFT activity

The sale of the Alien CryptoPunks, one of the most valuable NFT collectibles, comes amid an overall downturn in NFT trading activity. Market data shows NFT sales volume has fallen 41.13% over the past 30 days to $416.8 million, with transaction count dropping 51.03% to 5.68 million.

NFT TRADER DOWN $10M ON CRYPTOPUNK

This NFT Trader bought an Alien Cryptopunk 1 year ago for 4.5K ETH ($16M). He just sold it for 4K ETH ($6M).

He just locked in a $10M loss.

Address: 0x70587661c804c72BBa25EcddD8d17B332C984017 pic.twitter.com/765PHvUzob

— Arkham (@arkham) April 10, 2025

While the overall NFT market has seen a significant pullback in trading activity, individual collections and blockchains show mixed performance. The 41.13% decline in 30-day sales volume to $416.8 million shows the broad-based selling pressure. However, buyer activity tells a different story with the number of NFT buyers actually increasing by 12.84% to 307,159 during the same period.

Transaction data shows that while there are more buyers participating in the market, they’re making fewer purchases at lower price points. NFT transactions have fallen by 51.03% to 5.68 million, and the number of sellers has decreased by 5.14% to 205,835.

Looking at collection rankings, Courtyard on Polygon leads with $60.95 million in 30-day sales volume, showing a 36.75% increase despite the broader market decline. DMarket on Mythos ranks second with $39.66 million in sales, though its volume has decreased by 5.39%. CryptoPunks, where the $10 million loss occurred, ranks third with $23.51 million in sales and has been one of the strongest performers with a 74.26% increase in volume.

Ethereum blockchain dominates the NFT activity

Ethereum dominates the NFT ecosystem despite the market downturn. The blockchain has generated $127.6 million in sales over the past 30 days. However, this is a 52.14% drop from the previous period.

When including wash trading, Ethereum’s total volume reaches $139.22 million, with $11.62 million identified as wash trades.

Polygon ranks second with $69.26 million in legitimate sales volume with a 40.38% decrease. The blockchain has seen minimal wash trading at just $555,266 and resulted in a total volume of $69.82 million. While Polygon’s overall numbers are down, its flagship collection Courtyard has bucked the trend with strong performance.

Bitcoin’s NFT ecosystem has generated $66.22 million in sales, down 31.27% but showing more resilience than Ethereum and Polygon. The Bitcoin blockchain has attracted 27,305 buyers, with buyer numbers up 48.46% despite the volume decline.

Mythos Chain and Solana complete the top five blockchains with $40.51 million and $38.41 million in sales volume respectively. Mythos Chain, home to the DMarket collection, saw a 29.77% decrease, while Solana’s volume fell by 37.06%. Notably, Solana has maintained the highest number of buyers among the top five chains with 71,485 participants, though its average transaction value is lower.

Wash trading metrics vary significantly across blockchains, with Ethereum showing the highest volume of artificial activity both in absolute terms ($11.62 million) and as a percentage of total activity (8.3%). Solana follows with $4.6 million in wash trades, which is 10.7% of its total volume. However, Bitcoin’s wash trading remains relatively low at $1.59 million or 2.3% of total activity.

CryptoPunks collection shows strength

Despite the headline-grabbing $10 million loss on the Alien CryptoPunks sale, the CryptoPunks collection has shown surprising strength in the current market situation. With a 74.26% increase in sales volume to $23.51 million, CryptoPunks is performing well above the market average. The collection has recorded just 177 transactions in the 30-day period, but with an average sale price of approximately $132,800. This makes it the highest-value collection per transaction.

Despite the limited number of sales, the buyer count is up 26.32% while the seller count has increased by 79.45%. The Alien CryptoPunks rank as the highest NFT sale in the 30-day period by a considerable margin. Its $6.04 million price tag dwarfs the second-highest sale (CryptoPunks #2967 at $843,070) by over 600%.

CryptoPunks’ strong performance is particularly notable given that it’s one of the oldest NFT collections, launched in 2017. The collection contains 10,000 different pixel art characters, with the rarest types—Aliens (9 exist) and Apes (24 exist).

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