In April I wrote Are NFTs back?an article about the surprise rally of major Ethereum collections that happened at that time. I closed the post by suggesting that volume, rather than simple floor price movements, would ultimately make the difference.
Fast forward to today and CryptoPunks are see the beginnings of a new volume wave. Sales have exploded in recent weeks, as two of the rarest Punks have just been sold for at least ~$3.9 million combined yesterday.
Additionally, new layers of infrastructure are now part of the action, with tools that didn’t exist in previous cycles to lend, trade, buy and redistribute Punks. However, this rally has some curious quirks, so let’s break down what’s going on.
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Last week, September 19-26, Punks was the top NFT collection in terms of sales, clearing approximately $8.2 million in unwrapped volume per person. CryptoSlam. This is approximately 11.7 times more than the previous week.
The spark here? A sweep around September 23, when buyers would have scooped up ~63 Punks for ~$6 million and pushed the floor from ~29 ETH to ~34 ETH in about two days.
To put this spike in perspective, over the past four weeks, the official Punks marketwhich only tracks sales of unwrapped Punks, saw approximately 4,490 ETH (~$12 million) in sales. In other words, about half of this action took place in the few days surrounding the September 23 sweep.
As for the floor price, it’s calmer. At ~33 ETH (~$89,000) right now, it’s up ~31% since January 1, but still ~39% below the ~54 ETH hit. end of July 2025. In other words, NFTs are moving faster than price, at least currently.
Yesterday, October 1st, two of the rarest Punks sold for USDC approximately 12 hours apart, both via GUNDRYthe popular NFT lending platform whose “Sell and Repay” feature allows borrowers to sell the NFTs they have secured with loans and repay their debt in one go.
The first, Punk #8348THE only Punk with seven attributes, sold for 3 million USDC plus an undisclosed amount, the the biggest sale in GONDI history. Its seller, starting sentencehad held it since 2020 and called the offer “couldn’t refuse.”
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The second, Punk #3609one of 88 highly coveted Zombie Punks, sold for 875,000 USDC, or ~326 ETH at the time, in a deal negotiated by Eli Scheinmanthe founder of Canon Punks.
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Notably, these two Punks moved as envelope CryptoPunks 721 tokens, and both buyers paid in USDC instead of ETH.
Additionally, neither sale threatened the collection’s record of 8,000 ETH sale of Alien #5822 in 2022, and #3609 actually sold. below the 440 ETH he collected in May 2025, reminding us that the Grail does not just increase.
Punks was launched in 2017, before the ERC-721 NFT standard existed. For years, therefore, they mainly traded on their own integrated market priced in ETH. Today, a whole stack of tools and services surrounds this initial contract:
With these projects in mind, consider their combined effect. Every Punk sitting in a loan, Or In PunkStrategy, Or In FWA that makes one less Punk listed near the ground. To what extent these new dynamics reduce the supply floor and amplify market movements is an open question, but it’s a thread to watch.
In past cycles, hot Punk markets have often coincided with ETH strength. When the bottom broke above ~54 ETH (over $200,000) in late July 2025, ETH was trading near $3,745 and subsequently reached its all-time high of around $4,954 on August 24, 2025.
This time it’s a little different. ETH currently sits around $2,690, about 46% below its high, and while ETH hasn’t been entirely anemic as of late, the punks are heating up despite ETH’s lack of strength.
Either punks act as a precursor to on-chain risk appetite, or they start trading on their own terms.
Of course, the USDC sales of the Grails mentioned above allude to the latter. Paying in stablecoins suggests buyers who want Punk exposure without The volatility of ETH, or arriving via TradFi rails.
Either way, OG Ethereum NFTs are mobile again, and they do it with new legos around them. Now let’s see if this volume spike can be sustained and if it fuels a broader NFT uptrend!
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