On Monday, the prestigious auction house Sotheby’s celebrated the successful auction of a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription from the Quantum Cat project, fetching an impressive sum of over $250,000. The specific piece, known as the “Genesis Cat” Ordinals inscription and crafted by digital artist FAR, attracted more than 50 bids. The winning bid ultimately amounted to 6.31 BTC, translating to around $254,000.
Earlier in the month, Taproot Wizards, the entity behind the Quantum Cats collection, unveiled 3,333 images inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. The entire collection reportedly incurred a cost of over $66,000 during its creation. The broader auction for this collection is slated for January 29.
Taproot Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer shared that the Quantum Cats collection serves as a tribute to an early Bitcoin network code known as concatenate or OP_CAT. This “ancient ‘op code'” was initially introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin’s inaugural release but was later disabled.
Michael Bouhanna, Sotheby’s Head of Digital and Contemporary Art, extended congratulations to the artists and collectors involved in the sale. He disclosed that the Natively Digital curated Ordinals sale generated over 26 BTC, approximately $1,097,000, with 641 bids and all auction lots finding buyers. Notably, half of the items sold surpassed their high estimates.
While this marks Sotheby’s first Bitcoin Ordinals-centric sale, the auction house has a history of handling numerous NFT sales on Ethereum. In a notable instance, Sotheby’s auctioned several NFTs formerly owned by the now-bankrupt Three Arrows Capital, including an Art Blocks NFT dubbed “The Goose,” which fetched $6.2 million in June 2023.
