Alexandre Arnault, owner of a Cryptopunk and senior vice president for product and communication at Tiffany, was the driving force behind this endeavor. He was taken aback by the amount of interest when he posted a picture of a custom Tiffany pendant designed to resemble his Cryptopunk #3167 in April. Now, up to 250 other Cryptopunk owners will be able to order pendants designed to resemble their avatars.
According to Arnault, he’s bullish towards NFTs as they are “a cultural phenomenon and viewed as a medium of art that has characteristics that are important to a younger generation. They are digital-only, unique, very well-stored on blockchain and obviously shareable. I’m excited about the community around collecting NFTs — these people don’t necessarily have a lot in common, but share the same interest around one kind of art.”
According to Arnault, cryptopunks are “The OG” of the NFT community. A total of 10,000 unique avatars are available for purchase and sale in the collection on the open crypto market. A select, extremely wealthy subset of people view owning one as a badge of honor.
The fact that CryptoPunks and its parent business Larva Labs are not directly involved with the release and that it is instead made possible by individual Punk owners utilizing their intellectual property (IP) rights is one feature of the release that has attracted the community’s attention.
It appears that 50 of the 250 NFTiffs will be reserved for an allowlist, while the remaining 200 will be made available to Punk holders in some other way, such as a public mint, in accordance with information that has reportedly been uncovered in the minting contract. All interested parties must submit identity verification information through KYC and are only permitted to purchase up to three NFTs.
According to reports, each of the 250 pendants are to be created using at least 30 diamonds or gemstones, including but not limited to sapphires, amethyst, and spinel. Every pendant will have an 18k rose or yellow gold base that is inscribed on the back with the exclusive Punk serial number and Tiffany logo. Collectors will receive an NFT render of their jewelry to go with it.
While the overall consensus seemed to be that 30 ETH was way too expensive, the product will only be made available to a very limited subset of the already exclusive 10,000 CryptoPunk holders – an NFT with a floor price of over $100,000 USD right now.