Sales of CryptoPunk non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are soaring to new record levels, in another sign of just how frenzied the market has become as credit-card giant Visa jumps into the fray.

On Monday, sales volumes of CryptoPunks topped $86 million, a daily record, according to data from the industry tracking website CryptoSlam. 

And sales so far in August have already reached $332 million. Prior to August, the largest single monthly sales total was $135.2 million during July. This month’s average price for a CryptoPunk is $199,069, more than double last month’s average.  

The market is so hot that Visa apparently had to pay up for its CryptoPunk purchase, announced Monday. According to CryptoPunks creator Larva Labs, the NFT that Visa bought – CryptoPunk #7610 – was acquired for a price of 49.50 ether (ETH), which works out to about $150,000. That’s more than double the price of 21.75 ETH paid less than a month ago by a user named “gmoney.” 

“We think NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment and commerce,” said Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, in a blog post on Monday. 

It’s unclear if the surge in CryptoPunk sales was directly the result of Visa’s vote of confidence, but more than 300 transactions took place Monday alone, versus a range of 16 to 184 over the past month according to data from CryptoSlam. 

Visa’s move, “largely a PR exercise more than anything else, not only demonstrates how the underlying infrastructure of digital assets has improved over the years but also how quickly these assets can go mainstream,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Synergia Capital. 

The ability to facilitate transactions and custody assets using Anchorage (a crypto exchange platform used by institutional investors), shows the willingness of traditional finance giants to adopt, he said. 

“It will also likely further serve to boost the value of NFT marketplaces going forward as a whole,” said Vinokourov. 

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。