The prestigious auction house Sotheby’s has just experienced a mishap that will undoubtedly leave traces in the crypto space.
Sotheby’s auction of 104 tokens of the early NFT originators CryptoPunks was scrubbed Wednesday after the cosigner bailed before the sale was slated to begin.
The anonymous donor mocked the iconic auction house on Twitter.
You’ve Got to Know When to Hodl…
The single lot was expected to sell for as much as $30 million.
However, after a delay of 25 minutes past the auction’s expected start time, the sale was off, the New York Times reported.
“Following discussions with the consignor, tonight’s Punk sale has been withdrawn,” Sotheby’s said in a tweet. “Thank you to our panelists, guests and viewers for joining us.”
Sotheby’s said that CryptoPunks were bought in a single blockchain transaction by an anonymous collector who goes by 0x650d online.
Earlier this month, 0x650d had tweeted “today, I’m excited to announce my partnership with @Sotheby’s to create the highest profile NFT sale of all time.”
However, on Wednesday the anonymous collector tweeted “nvm, decided to hodl,” a term for holding onto digital assets.
0x650d tweeted a meme featuring the musician Drake, claiming that they were “taking punks mainstream by rugging Sotheby’s.”
‘Not Cool Man’
Rug pulls are a type of scam when developers intentionally siphon an investor’s funds and run away from the project.
Several posters on Twitter criticized 0x650d for pulling out of the sale.
“Not cool man,” one person said. “If there is something we don’t understand let us know. Atm this is not a good look.”
“You just made whole NFT scene look like bunch of amateur lads who don’t have balls to man up,,, screwed the whole scene,” another tweeted.
Created by the company Larva Labs, CryptoPunks began in 2017, with 10,000 unique collectible characters and the concurrent proof of ownership stored on the Ethereum blockchain that makes them all unique and non-fungible and all that.
Originally the CryptoPunks were free to be claimed by anyone with an Ethereum wallet, but now they’re for sale on the Ethereum marketplace.
Before all the hodl and rugging, Sotheby’s had said on its website that the auction and exhibition “will bring together the physical and digital in an unprecedented showcase for NFTs and digital art with a presentation on par with the most significant and high-profile sales for Contemporary and Modern art.”
