Sotheby's, the renowned auction house, announced on Monday the successful sale of a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription from the Quantum Cat project for over $250,000.
Sotheby's, the renowned auction house, announced on Monday the successful sale of a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription from the Quantum Cat project for over $250,000. The "Genesis Cat" Ordinals inscription, created by digital artist FAR, received over 50 bids, with the winning bid reaching 6.31 BTC, equivalent to approximately $254,000.
Earlier this month, Taproot Wizards, the project behind the Quantum Cats collection, revealed the creation of 3,333 images inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. The entire collection reportedly cost over $66,000 to create. The sale for the wider collection is scheduled to take place on January 29.
According to Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, the Quantum Cats collection pays homage to an early code in the Bitcoin network called concatenate or OP_CAT. This "ancient 'op code'" was introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in the first release of Bitcoin but was later disabled.
Michael Bouhanna, head of digital and contemporary art at Sotheby's, expressed his congratulations to the artists and collectors involved in the sale. Bouhanna revealed that the Natively Digital curated Ordinals sale generated over 26 BTC, approximately $1,097,000, with 641 bids and all auction lots sold. Notably, half of the sale exceeded their high estimates.
While this is Sotheby's first Bitcoin Ordinals-centric sale, the auction house has previously handled numerous NFT sales on Ethereum. For instance, Sotheby's has auctioned several NFTs once owned by the now-bankrupt Three Arrows Capital, including an Art Blocks NFT nicknamed "The Goose," which sold for $6.2 million in June 2023.
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