Taproot Wizards, Bitcoin Ordinals Project That Raised $7.5M, to Sell 'Quantum Cats' Collection
The "NFTs on Bitcoin" project has capitalized on the popularity of the controversial Ordinals protocol, which has generated a flurry of interest in the original blockchain but added to congestion and higher fees.
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Taproot Wizards, which capitalized on last year's frenzy in Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions to raise $7.5 million, is now moving forward with its first sale of a collection, Quantum Cats.
The series includes 3,333 of the cats, designed to honor a Bitcoin improvement proposal known as OP_CAT, according to a press release.
Ordinals inscriptions, sometimes known as "NFTs on Bitcoin," became so popular after their invention by Casey Rodarmor that transactional activity related to their minting created congestion on the Bitcoin blockchain, driving up fees.
Some longtime Bitcoin contributors have proposed various measures to block them, arguing that the network should be preserved for payments, though other voices have likened these efforts to censorship. Bitcoin miners have reaped a windfall from the fee bonanza. Three images of a "BitcoinShrooms" collection recently sold at the venerable auction house Sotheby's for about $450,000.
Taproot Wizards was started by Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, who each have at least 100,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter).
Dan Held, fractional CMO for Taproot Wizards, told CoinDesk in an email that this is the first sale of a collection by the company. The first collection minted was Taproot Wizards, but those have not been put up for sale.
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Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk's Tech & Protocols team. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.