CryptoPunks Trading Volume Surges Nearly 12X in a Week: Rare Variants Sell for Millions Again, Market Rally Decoupled from ETH

TechFlow Summary: CryptoPunks have recently seen a surge in trading volume, with two rare editions selling for at least approximately $3.9 million combined; unlike previous cycles, this uptick is occurring while ETH remains far below its highs, and stablecoin trading along with new lending and OTC infrastructure are also reshaping the transaction landscape.

CryptoPunks trading volume is surging, with rare “holy grail” editions from the collection once again changing hands for millions of dollars. Here’s everything you need to know.

In April this year, I wrote “Are NFTs Back,” discussing the unexpected rebound of top Ethereum NFT collections at the time. At the end of the piece, I suggested that ultimately, the true deciding factor would be trading volume, not just floor price fluctuations.

Fast forward to today, CryptoPunks are kicking off a new wave of rising volume. Sales have exploded over the past few weeks, and yesterday, two of the rarest Punks collectively sold for at least around $3.9 million.

Additionally, a new layer of infrastructure has joined this rally: tools that didn’t exist in past cycles are now using Punks as collateral for lending, facilitating brokerage, executing buy-and-distribute strategies, and reallocating assets. However, this rebound has some intriguing quirks worth dissecting.

Volume Surges

Last week, from September 19 to September 26, Punks topped NFT collection rankings with approximately $8.2 million in unwrapped trading volume, according to CryptoSlam. This represents roughly an 11.7-fold increase compared to the previous week.

What was the catalyst? A buying spree occurred around September 23: buyers reportedly purchased roughly 63 Punks for about $6 million, pushing the floor price up from approximately 29 ETH to about 34 ETH within just two days.

Putting this pulse into a broader context: over the past four weeks, the official Punks marketplace, which only counts unwrapped Punk transactions, recorded cumulative sales of roughly 4,490 ETH (approximately $12 million). In other words, about half of that volume occurred during the days surrounding the September 23 buying spree.

The floor price, meanwhile, has been much calmer. Currently sitting at around 33 ETH (approx. $89,000), it is up roughly 31% since January 1 but still trades about 39% lower than the ~54 ETH peak reached in late July 2025. In short, if anything, NFTs are moving faster on volume than on price—at least for now.

Heavyweight Rare Editions Trade Hands

Yesterday, October 1, two of the rarest Punks changed hands in USDC within roughly a 12-hour window, both executed through GONDI—a popular NFT lending platform whose “Sell & Repay” feature allows borrowers to liquidate NFTs used as loan collateral and pay off their debt in a single transaction.

The first trade involved Punk #8348, the only Punk with seven traits, which sold for 3 million USDC plus undisclosed additional funds, marking the largest single transaction in GONDI’s history. The seller, who held the wallet from its seed phrase inception back in 2020, called it an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The second trade featured Punk #3609, one of 88 highly sought-after Zombie Punks, selling for 875,000 USDC, which equated to roughly 326 ETH at prevailing prices; the deal was brokered by Canon Punks founder Eli Scheinman.

Notably, both Punks circulated as wrapped CryptoPunks 721 tokens, and buyers paid in USDC rather than ETH.

Furthermore, neither transaction threatened the collection’s record—the 8,000 ETH sale of Alien #5822 in 2022—and the price for #3609 actually fell short of the 440 ETH it commanded in May 2025, serving as a reminder that rare editions don’t always appreciate.

New Market “Tubes”

Punks were born in 2017, long before the ERC-721 NFT standard existed, meaning they traded primarily on their own built-in, ETH-denominated marketplace for years. Today, a full suite of tools and services has stacked up around this original contract:

Looking at these projects together reveals their collective impact. Every Punk locked in a loan, staked in PunkStrategy, or held in FWA means one less listing hovering near the floor price. To what extent these new mechanisms have thinned out floor supply and amplified market volatility remains an open question, but it’s a thread definitely worth watching.

A Different Kind of Rally

In past cycles, Punk market enthusiasm typically moved in lockstep with ETH strength. When the floor price surged to around 54 ETH (over $200,000) in late July 2025, ETH was trading near $3,745 and hit an all-time high of roughly $4,954 on August 24, 2025.

This cycle is slightly different. ETH currently trades around $2,690, roughly 46% below its peak; although ETH hasn’t been completely stagnant lately, Punks are heating up without the backing of a breakthrough ETH rally.

Either Punks are serving as an early indicator of on-chain risk appetite, or they’ve started trading on their own logic.

Of course, the fact that the aforementioned rare editions traded in USDC points more strongly toward the latter. Paying in stablecoins suggests buyers want Punk exposure without taking on ETH volatility, or are entering via traditional finance channels.

Regardless of which interpretation holds weight, this batch of Ethereum-native NFTs is moving again, now accompanied by a fresh set of building blocks. What remains to be seen is whether this volume pulse will sustain itself and whether it will catalyze broader bullish sentiment across the NFT space.

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