CryptoPunks volume is climbing again, and rare pieces in the collection are back changing hands for millions of dollars. In the MarsBit-translated report by William M. Peaster, the key signal is not just the floor price. It is the return of trading volume.
$8.2 million in weekly unwrapped sales
According to CryptoSlam data cited in the report, CryptoPunks ranked as the top-selling NFT collection from Sept. 19 to Sept. 26, recording about $8.2 million in unwrapped sales. That was roughly 11.7 times the total from the previous week.
The trigger appeared to be a buying spree around Sept. 23. Buyers were said to have acquired about 63 Punks for roughly $6 million, lifting the floor price from about 29 ETH to about 34 ETH in around two days.
Placed in a wider frame, the report says the official Punks marketplace, counting only unwrapped Punk sales, logged about 4,490 ETH in volume over the past four weeks, or about $12 million. Roughly half of that came in the days around the Sept. 23 sweep.
Floor prices have been much calmer than the volume figures. The floor now sits near 33 ETH, or about $89,000. That is about 31% above Jan. 1 levels, but still about 39% below the roughly 54 ETH seen in late July 2025. For now, the report argues, NFT activity is moving faster than price.
Two rare Punks sold within about 12 hours
On Oct. 1, two of the rarest Punks sold within about 12 hours of each other. Both deals were settled in USDC, and both went through GONDI, the NFT lending platform. The report notes that GONDI’s “Sell & Repay” feature lets borrowers sell an NFT that has been posted as loan collateral and repay the debt in the same transaction.
The first sale was Punk #8348, the only Punk with seven attributes. It sold for 3 million USDC plus an undisclosed amount, setting the largest single sale in GONDI’s history. Seller seedphrase had held the Punk since 2020 and said it was an offer he “couldn’t refuse.”
The second sale was Punk #3609, one of the 88 zombie Punks. It sold for 875,000 USDC, equal to about 326 ETH at the time. The deal was brokered by Canon Punks founder Eli Scheinman.
Both assets moved as wrapped CryptoPunks ERC-721 tokens, and in both cases the buyers paid in USDC rather than ETH.
Neither trade challenged the collection’s all-time record, which remains the 8,000 ETH sale of Alien #5822 in 2022. The report also points out that #3609 sold below its own 440 ETH mark from May 2025, a reminder that even trophy assets do not move in a straight line.
New market plumbing around CryptoPunks
CryptoPunks launched in 2017, before the ERC-721 standard existed. For years, trading was centered on its native marketplace and was mostly priced in ETH. That setup has changed. A broader stack of tools and services now sits around the original contract.
The report groups these newer systems together as a structural shift in how Punks trade. Any Punk parked in a loan, in PunkStrategy, or in FWA means one less token potentially listed near the floor. How much these mechanisms are thinning floor-side supply and amplifying volatility remains an open question, but the report flags it as something worth watching.
This rally is not being driven by ETH strength
The report says this upswing differs from earlier cycles in one important way: Punk activity is heating up without a breakout in ETH.
In prior cycles, a strong Punk market often moved in step with a stronger ETH price. When the floor climbed to about 54 ETH in late July 2025, worth more than $200,000, ETH was trading around $3,745 and later reached an all-time high near $4,954 on Aug. 24, 2025.
This time, ETH is around $2,690, about 46% below that peak. The report says ETH has not been entirely flat lately, but Punk demand is returning without the kind of major ETH move that defined earlier runs.
It offers two readings. One is that Punks may be acting as an early gauge of on-chain risk appetite. The other is that they are beginning to trade on their own terms. The use of USDC in the recent rare Punk sales leans toward the second view, the report says, suggesting buyers want Punk exposure without taking on ETH volatility, or that money is entering through TradFi channels.
What is clear is that one of Ethereum’s native NFT collections is active again, and it is now surrounded by a toolkit that did not exist in earlier cycles. The next question is whether this burst in volume can hold, and whether it spreads into broader NFT bullishness.