NFT Trader Unintentionally Burns $130k CryptoPunk

An NFT trader was distressed on Sunday after discovering that the CryptoPunk he bought for 78 ETH had disappeared after he mistakenly sent the expensive digital collectible to a burn address.

Burn addresses are digital wallets that do not have any private keys. They only receive digital assets, and the transactions cannot be reversed. That said, the CryptoPunk in question was permanently removed from the market, so it can never be owned or traded again.

The trader who purchased the NFT is known as Brandon Riley on Twitter. Riley bought CryptoPunk #685 about ten days ago. In a Twitter thread, he said he was trying to wrap up the pricey NFT to borrow a loan against it before the unfortunate incident happened. Riley also had planned to list the digital art on NFTfi.com to earn a 7% yearly yield.

According to data on Ethereum block explorer Etherscan, the NFT trader acquired CryptoPunk #685 when it was priced at $130,000.

Launched in 2017, the CryptoPunks collection is largely considered a blue chip, together with the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Data on CryptoSlam shows CryptoPunks has a market cap of over $1 billion, and the floor price of the collection is $109,000.

CryptoPunks Incompatibility Issues

CryptoPunks were developed before ERC-721, a token standard for NFTs, was established. As a result, this collection is not compatible with some NFT marketplaces and platforms intended for decentralized finance (DeFi), like NFTfi.com.

Riley used a guide he found on the internet to wrap his NFT as an ERC-721 token in an attempt to make sure it’s compatible with NFTfi.com. However, that seems not to have worked out as expected, and now one CryptoPunk is gone forever.

Riley’s current situation is one of the many issues crypto users face due to transactions’ complex and irreversible nature. And since no intermediaries exist, Riley can do nothing to recover his lost NFT.

Riley’s New Request

The NFT trader is now asking the collection owner Yuga Labs, to allow him to buy the original CryptoPunk #685 version. The current CryptoPunks collection was released after the creator found a bug in the smart contract of the initial collection.