Quick Take

• CryptoPunk #9998 has sold for 124k ETH via a flash loan purchase.

• Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion spending package extends the constructive sale rule to cryptocurrency.

• Ethereum’s Altair upgrade deployed smoothly with over 95% validator participation.

• ImmutableX partners with ESL Gaming to launch CS:GO NFTs on Ethereum. 

Listen to Podcast

$532 Million Flash Loan CryptoPunk Sale

CryptoPunk #9998 has sold for 124k ETH, worth $532 million at the time of sale. The sale turned out to be a flash loan purchase in which the seller purchased his own punk with borrowed money and repaid the loan in the same transaction. Flash loans are fully uncollateralized loans that must be paid back within the same transaction. The buyer then transferred the CryptoPunk back to his original wallet.

Although the purchase was a confirmed transaction, Larva Labs has chosen not to display flash loan purchases in its total sale or bid volume calculations. NFT analytics platform CryptoSlam also said that it will delete the sale from its data set. OpenSea still shows the purchase as a top sale and includes it in total trading volume.

If the sale had been legitimate, it would mark the largest art sale of all time. The biggest art sale to date is a piece by Leonardo da Vinci for $450 million. The previous all-time CryptoPunk sale was $11.8 million. The current single NFT sale record is just over $69 million for digital artwork from Beeple.

Digital Assets In Biden's $1.85T Spending Bill

President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion spending package contains a section on digital assets that would affect how certain trading activities are taxed. The amendment would extend the constructive sale rule to cryptocurrency. The rule applies capital gains tax on hedges against already held positions that attempt to lock in gains without triggering a taxable event.

Crypto investors are currently able to avoid short term capital gains by holding an asset that has appreciated and then deliberately taking an offsetting short position in the same asset. In September, Democrats discussed the possibility of extending IRS code on wash sales to cryptocurrencies. Wash sales refer to taking a capital loss on assets by dumping only to immediately buy replacements at the lower price. The IRS code requires wash sales on stocks and bonds to wait two months in between selling and buying, otherwise the loss would be ineligible.

Altair Upgrade Quietly Goes Live

Ethereum’s Altair upgrade was smoothly deployed earlier this week with over 95% participation from validators at the time of the upgrade. The Altair upgrade is the first upgrade to the Beacon chain and is expected to be the final upgrade before Ethereum’s merge to proof-of-stake.

The Beacon chain is a proof-of-stake chain composed of shards that currently runs parallel to Etheruem. Altair marks one of the smoother upgrades with no issues so far, resulting in a price surge for Ethereum to more than $4,400. 

The chain will continue to be observed over the next few days to make sure that there is no consensus split caused by discrepancies between clients. Any validator who has not updated their node will slowly see their balances slashed and will eventually be ejected from the network. 

Patreon Explores Social Tokens For Creators

Patreon is exploring the idea of letting its more than 200k creators offer social tokens to its paying patrons. Patron’s Chief Product Officer Julian Gutman believes that NFTs are not sustainable across the entire creator economy, but they are open to the idea of social tokens for their creators.

Patreon suggested that its users could potentially create tokens on a separate platform as they may not be looking to build their own internal minting platform. Roll, a minting platform specialized for creators, allows individuals, DAOs, and groups to launch and manage their own social tokens. Creator tokens tend to be for tight-knit communities, as the largest token on Roll only has a market cap of a half million dollars with about 1k holders.

CS:GO Esports NFTs on Ethereum

Layer2 scaling platform ImmutableX has partnered with esports company ESL Gaming to launch ESLProTour CS:GO NFTs on Ethereum. ImmutableX was behind the launch of TikTok NFTs last month. The scaling solution uses ZK-Rollup technology powered by StarkWare. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO for short, is the fourth largest esports game with more than 32 million online players. The ESLProTour is a series of gaming tournaments that features a prize pool of more than $5 million.