Christie's is planning to auction a set of 9 CryptoPunk NFTs for up to $9 million next month

• Christie's expects to auction a set of nine CryptoPunk NFTs $7 million to $9 million in May.
• The auction house recently sold a Beeple NFT for a record-breaking $69 million.
• CryptoPunks are unique virtual characters created as some of the first NFTs.

Christie's is planning to auction a rare set of nine CryptoPunk NFTs for an estimated $7 million to $9 million next month.

The set is part of a crypto art project launched by software company Larva Labs in 2017 in the early stages of the crypto art scene.

The nine CryptoPunks being auctioned by Christie's are part of a series of 10,000 unique collectibles, inspired by London's punk scene.

The 8-bit 24x24 pixel images can be viewed freely on Larva Labs' website, but only one person can own each figure.

This is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain on which the CryptoPunks are built.

NFTs - "non-fungible tokens" - are digital assets such as image, audio or video files that are not interchangeable and cannot be duplicated.

They are rooted in blockchain technology, like Ethereum, and function as collectors' items as they are unique.

Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the creators of the CryptoPunk series, said in a statement: "Taken together, the set represents both the rarest possible CryptoPunks and highlights from the variety of attributes that are the signature of the project."

The nine items in the set that will be auctioned on May 13 at Christie's marquee in New York are part of the creators' own collection.

After creating the entire series without knowing what would happen with them after their launch, and offering them to the public for free, they kept 1,000 of the data units for themselves - "just in case it becomes a thing," said Hall.

In the past year, over 8,000 sales of CryptoPunks have been recorded, with a total value of more than $251 million.

The average sale was for $30,412, but some individual values far exceed this.

Rare or unique CryptoPunks have brought in more than $7.5 million.

Christie's will accept bids and payments in Ether, the cryptocurrency attached to the Ethereum blockchain network on which CryptoPunks are based.

"The CryptoPunks are the alpha and omega of the CyptoArt movement," Noah Davis, Christie's specialist in Post-War & Contemporary Art, said in the auction announcement.

Earlier this year, Christie's led the record-breaking sale of an NFT by artist Beeple, which was auctioned off for more than $69 million.

Just this week however the buyer called for caution when buying NFTs, calling them a high-risk investment.