The chief executive of infrastructure company Chain, Dipak Thapliyal, purchased the CryptoPunk NFT #5822 for 8,000 ETH (~$23.7 million). The purchase was the largest in the Larva Labs collection’s history.
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— Deepak.eth ⛓ (@dt_chain) February 12, 2022
Thapliyal wrote on Twitter that he used a loan on the lending platform Compound to finance the purchase. He said this allowed him to acquire the NFT without selling cryptocurrency.
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Thanks to @CompoundFinance I am able to still HODL #ETH while buying this. Basically Long’d ETH to punk-in 👽. #DeFi FTW
— Deepak.eth ⛓ (@dt_chain) February 12, 2022
A researcher using the handle interlunations suggested that the purchase may have been financed by Chain. He noted that the cryptocurrency allegedly used to back the loan arrived at Thapliyal’s wallet from an address labeled on Etherscan as «Chain: Team Wallet 2».
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The CryptoPanks collection was launched by Larva Labs in 2017. It comprises 10,000 NFT images at 24×24 pixels. Initially, many tokens of the project were distributed for free.
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Earlier, a rare token from the collection was sold for 2,501 ETH (more than $7.8 million at the time).
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In February 2022, Sotheby’s announced the auctions at which a set of 104 CryptoPunks NFTs would be exhibited. The event is scheduled for February 23.
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