As someone who is an old-school collector of Black Lotuses, watches, cars, and other collectible assets, CryptoPunks and other PFP NFT Projects poised a fascinating question for many collectors and observers: can a profile picture NFT truly be worth $100,000 or more? The short answer: Yes, with a caveat.
The best comparable I know of for NFT Profile Pictures are the top end luxury watches: think Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Richard Mille. While Patek and Audemars have much more history than CryptoPunks, Richard Mille is proof a relatively new watch brand, founded in 2001, can command watch prices that easily exceed $200,000 in the grey market, with many celebrity endorsements. This is also taking into considering a production of 4,000 watches a year, while CryptoPunks have a flat supply of 10,000.
Here is where the caveat comes in - CryptoPunks, like Richard Mille, need a baseline of continuous culture permeation given how much newer the brand is. Celebrities and social media need to reference CryptoPunks - if attention fades, demand likely drops.
Buying a CryptoPunk is buying into a culture collectible. The better question is, are they priced in ETH, or USD - what happens to the price of punks if ETH dips to $1000, or ETH reaches $100,000?
Disclosure: Tread carefully with asset bubbles - this domain, miy.com, was purchased for over a million US dollars in the 90s by the previous owner - intended to be a startup for "milwaukee internet" during the dot-com. Today the value of this domain is down over 98%.
Update: The Hacker News post was not met with fanfare, one of the 19 comments: "I truly don't understand this whole thing, who are these people? How can hype alone move such massive amounts of money?"