A hallmark of the last cryptocurrency bull market was the remarkably high sale prices for various non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

The world has largely moved on from NFTs, with enthusiasm for crypto products embellished with quirky images now directed toward memecoins – so, so many memecoins.

Yet, on Thursday, a sign of bull markets past returned: A CryptoPunk NFT just exchanged hands for a record price of $56.3 million. The prior all-time high of $23.7 million was set in February 2022, months before the crypto winter got truly dark.

Punk 1563, depicting a pixelated woman with dark hair and blue eyes, fetched 24,000 ether {{ETH}} in the transaction. As recently as September, it was offered for sale for less than 30 ETH – meaning the latest deal represented a huge markup versus recent pricing.

There was a time in 2021 when another CryptoPunk technically sold for $532 million, though blockchain data clearly show the same person was on both sides of the trade.

A flash loan was apparently used to make the Punk 1563 transaction possible, blockchain data shows. The seller listed their punk for 24,000 ETH, while another "buyer" contract took out a flash loan for the same amount from decentralized finance protocol Balancer, paid for the NFT, and received it in their account. The borrowed ether was transferred to the seller's wallet, who promptly returned the amount to Balancer.

That means no funds were paid out-of-pocket and cannot be considered a straight sale. It's not clear what the motivations for using such a process were.

Flash loans are unsecured, non-collateralized loans in which users borrow funds and return them in the same transaction. If the user can't repay the loan before the transaction is completed the transaction is cancelled and money is returned to the protocol.