Key facts:
An NFT was sold for 124 thousand ETH, making it the most expensive sale in history.
The buyer of the NFT was found to be the same owner and there are different beliefs as to why.
On Thursday, October 28, the most expensive non-fungible token (NFT) in history was sold. This may sound exciting, but the reality is very different from what it seems, since experts in the field discovered that the buyer is the same owner of the work. That is, there was no actual sale.
The transaction was carried out in Larva Labs for 124,457 ether (ETH), which is equivalent to more than USD 130 million at this time, according to the . calculator. Just one hour after the purchase, a platform tracker reported on Twitter that the buyer moved the NFT back to the seller’s wallet.
In this way, it was found that it was not a genuine sale. Another striking factor is that, in addition, the buyer applied for a loan in order to pay the millionaire price that he himself, as a seller, put on his NFT. Although that money was returned immediately after making the purchase, as can be seen on Etherscan.
These types of loans are known as “lightning” or “flash loans”, Since they are returned in the same movement, they do not require a guarantee. It is a complex decentralized financial tool that allows to lend large sums of cryptocurrencies without the need for custody, only if it is returned in the same block operation.
Different opinions on why the sale of the most expensive NFT in history was simulated
The community that follows the non-fungible token industry expressed on social media Twitter and Discord that this move was nothing more than market manipulation. Several cryptocurrency ecosystem enthusiasts agree that probably the owner of the NFT wanted to increase his reputation and the valuation of his non-fungible tokens.
However, there are those who doubt this speculation. The Decrypt agency, for example, believes that perhaps the owner only did it for the pleasure of exchanging a large number of cryptocurrencies. It also notes that maybe you wanted to test the effectiveness of flash loans and found in this transaction the opportunity to do so.
Whatever the reason, the non-fungible token in question, cataloged with the code 9998 in CryptoPunk, it does not meet the necessary parameters to be quoted at the price that was sold. CryptoPunks are collections of NTF avatars with over $ 1.5 billion in sales volume.
CryptoPunk comprised a collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens. Source: larvalabs.com
While CryptoPunks can be expensive, this particular sale raised suspicions as never before had one been realized for such value. The most expensive until then had been for USD 11 million, a figure very far from yesterday’s, which closed for more than USD 530 million.
In the market in general there are NFTs of different prices and that are not necessarily artistic works such as CryptoPunks, which can even be rented, as reported by . recently. Far from art, for example, a financial chart was sold in Argentina for USD 5,000 that reveals its economic decline in the last 55 years.
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