Sotheby’s, the renowned British auction house, has disclosed an upcoming auction centered around Bitcoin Ordinals, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) linked to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The auction will showcase “BitcoinShrooms,” a creation by Shroomtoshi, a digital artist and pivotal figure in the burgeoning Ordinal ecosystem.
The project comprises 8-bit style, pixelated artworks incorporating references from iconic Bitcoin memes to advanced technical concepts, offering a tribute to Bitcoin’s 13-year history.
Included in the collection is “Sovereign Individual,” portraying a pixelated figure with a crown, referencing Rees Mogg’s foresighted book “The Sovereign Individual,” a 1998 essay predicting the rise of cryptography-based digital currencies. This piece is estimated to be valued between $20,000 and $30,000.
Another noteworthy piece is “BIP39 seed,” depicting a pixelated avocado halved with a faced seed, symbolizing private keys associated with crypto transactions. The art’s description articulates, “All your Bitcoin addresses and their corresponding private keys are ultimately derived from this seed.”
The auction is scheduled to conclude on Wednesday, December 13, 2023.
While this marks Sotheby’s first foray into Bitcoin NFT auctions, the auction house has previously hosted NFT-related auctions. In June, Sotheby’s auctioned a collection of notable NFTs amassed by the now-insolvent Three Arrows Capital (3AC) for nearly $11 million. In May, Sotheby’s expanded its Web3 arm, Sotheby’s Metaverse, with the addition of a secondary NFT marketplace.
Since their inception in January 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals have seen widespread adoption, with analytics reporting over 46 million inscriptions to date.
Various companies have entered the Bitcoin NFT space, such as Magic Eden introducing a Bitcoin NFT marketplace in March, Asprey and Bugatti launching generative Egg NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain in April, and Yuga Labs introducing the TwelveFold NFT Bitcoin auction in March, raising over $16 million.
