Leading financial services company Visa revealed buying CryptoPunk #7610 paying around $150.000 in Ether.
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Along with the announcement, Visa released a blog post. Through the post, the head of Crypto at Visa, Cuy Sheffield, explained what NFTs are and why the company chose to buy one.Over the last 60 years, Visa has built a collection of historic commerce artifacts - from early paper credit cards to the zip-zap machine. Today, as we enter a new era of NFT-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our collection. https://t.co/XoPFfwxUiu
— VisaNews (@VisaNews) August 23, 2021
The executive noted that CryptoPunks has played as a historic NFT project, uniting culture and retail.
Computer software company Larva Labs launched the first Crypto Punk collection on Ethereum back in 2017. The collection, representing 1000 characters, is inspired by the London punk scene.
CryptoPunks are among the most famous NFTs, with some of them having been sold for over $7.5 million. Visa's motives to acquire the NFT were several as Cuy Sheffield mentioned. First, the Visa team has an interest to learn about the space. Visa finds NFTs will take an important part in the advancement of social media, entertainment and markets.
To help the customers and business associates of Visa to be engaged in NFT operations, they first needed to understand the framework essentials of the tokens, and therefore their purchase, store, and holding for an international brand.
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With the move, the company also wanted to support creativity and artists driving the future of NFT-trading.Cuy Sheffield said it's the start of Visa's work in the NFT sector. And the purchase also indicates the company's excitement of the cultural moment.