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Punks, Punks, Punks

Jameson Nunney

• 3 min read
Punks, Punks, Punks

One of the most historic, well-known & highly traded NFTs on ETH (CryptoPunks) has made it's way to Bitcoin... more than a couple times already.  What does this mean?

Anything can be inscribed on-chain now, via ordinal theory. And, it comes as no surprise that the 'punks' have landed, in many different forms.  There are really three different 'collections' that have taken form at this point with varying characteristics; Ordinal Punks, Punks on Bitcoin & Bitcoin Punks.  The main differences are:

  • How early the collection was inscribed, or 'Inscription Range'
  • How large the collection is, or 'Collection Size
  • Is the collection original or a derivative

Let's break them down a bit.  There is varying data available for each, so the comparisons won't be perfectly uniform...

Ordinal Punks
  • The earliest collection of punks (100 inscriptions total) - Note: the original CryptoPunks collection size is 10,000
  • Ordinal Punks used an open source algorithm to generate the pfp which is 192x192 pixels. Not Associated with Larva Labs.
  • This collection currently holds the crown from the market as having the highest value per inscription, with a highest sale of 11.5btc, or ~$225k.  The main reasons for this are that they have the earliest fully inscribed collection, there are only 100 and a good community.

Punks on Bitcoin
  • Collection Size: 100
  • An original collection of 100 Ordinals. Not affiliated with Larvalabs.

Bitcoin Punks
  • The first 10,000 inscription collection ever on Bitcoin, all of which were minted under the 35,000 mark.  This puts every Bitcoin Punk in this collection in the top 10% in terms of inscriptions (at the time of writing this article there were 450k inscriptions on bitcoin).
  • Have been verified to be the first 'pixel perfect' inscriptions of the original CryptoPunks art to make it onto bitcoin.
  • Because of the above, there is a lack of clarity on IP as Larva (acq by Yuga) was the creator, but rights of CryptoPunks are transferred via sales on ETH chain.  The market seems to be ignoring this given over $10MM of sales activity in the first month.  We will see how this piece plays out.
  • While the inscription itself has a transparent background on-chain, the group that manages bitcoinpunks.com has created a bitcoin orange background on the site to give a nod to the bitcoin orange
  • Most of the trading is taking place on ordinals.market, which trades on ETH via Emblem vaulting.
  • CryptoPunks on ETH currently have a floor price (lowest seller list price) of ~65ETH, or roughly $90-100kUSD.  BitcoinPunks are currently trading near 1ETH, or roughly $1,400USD.  CryptoPunks are trading at a 65x that of BitcoinPunks today.
  • It is worth noting that because many people raced to inscribe their punk early on that there are many exact duplicates.  Bitcoin Punks are categorized as the first of each 10k CryptoPunk.  There is another collection call Punks i2 (second inscription) who did not get provenance (first to inscribe).

Illustrative break-down:

Collection Sizes:

Inscription Ranges:

(note: the majority of the Bitcoin Punks inscriptions occured between 14k-34k range, but did have some very early ones as well)

It is worth mentioning a newer service called 'Portal Punks' was recently created to allow CryptoPunks to verify their ETH based ownership and have the same art inscribed on bitcoin.

  • Some concerns have been voiced over this method on twitter.  First, via this service, there can only be a singular copy over to bitcoin once verified and the original CryptoPunk also remains intact (no teleburning).  Once this happens the ownership can change independently and is not perminantly linked to the ETH based CryptoPunk.  This means that buyers of ETH punks now need to rely on a web2 based solution to verify if the portalpunk process has already occured or not to asses value.
  • PortalPunks creators have mentioned that they did run this feature by Yuga, and communicated that they don't have an issue with copying these over to bitcoin inscriptions, but are not going to be involved.
  • At last check, about 17 CryptoPunk holders had used this inscription service so far.

In the end, bitcoin is open to any inscription and the market will decide whether the official copy or the first copy or the earliest derivative collection carries the most value.  

Everything written is meant for illustrative purposes only, and not meant to be used as investment advice.

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