Investors who purchased the freshly created “Quantum Cats” NFT-like artworks from the Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards wasted no time flipping them for more than double the original sales price on Tuesday, underscoring the sustained demand for digital art engraved onto the original blockchain.
On Tuesday, the lowest available price for the Quantum Cats listed on the NFT marketplace Magic Eden was 0.243 BTC ($10,481), compared to the fixed price of 0.1 BTC each during the initial minting phase that ended on Monday.
Magic Eden reported a trading volume of 115 BTC within hours of delivering the Quantum Cats to their original owners. Despite this rapid trading activity, there were still 507 images available for sale.
The initial minting of 3,000 Quantum Cats closed on Monday, with the series selling out, potentially generating around $13 million in revenue for the Taproot Wizards project from its inaugural collection.
Despite technical glitches plaguing the Taproot Wizards minting website over the past week, causing frustration and sparking complaints on the project’s Discord channel, buyers remained undeterred. The project’s co-founders, Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, raised $7.5 million from investors last year, but this week’s results surpassed that figure.
Taproot Wizards has capitalized on the enthusiasm for Ordinals inscriptions, also known as “NFTs on Bitcoin.” The Ordinals protocol, launched in early 2023 by creator Casey Rodarmor, enables NFTs to be minted and stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
While previous waves of NFT excitement focused on blockchains like Ethereum, considered more programmable than Bitcoin, the success of Taproot Wizards highlights Bitcoin’s growing role in the NFT space.
