Bitcoin Ordinals ‘Quantum Cat’ Sells for Over $250,000 at Sotheby’s

A Bitcoin Ordinals entry from the Quantum Cat project has sold for more than $250,000 at Sotheby’s, the famed auction house announced on Monday.

The inscribed “Genesis Cat” Ordinals by digital artist FAR received more than 50 bids, with the winning bid reaching 6.31 BTC, or approximately $254,000, according to Sotheby’s.

Earlier this month, Taproot Wizards announced the Quantum Cats collection of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions. The 3,333-image project cost more than $66,000 to create on the Bitcoin blockchain. The sale for the wider collection will take place on January 29th.

The Quantum Cats collection, Taproot Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer previously said Declutteris intended as a tribute to the early code in the Bitcoin network called concatenate or OP_CAT.

“’OP_CAT’ is an old ‘op code’ in Bitcoin that was introduced by Satoshi in the initial release, but was later disabled,” Wertheimer said.

“Congratulations to all artists and collectors involved!” Sotheby’s head of digital and contemporary art Michael Bouhanna said on Twitter. “Special thanks to [FAR] who helped curate and put together this sale.

According to Bouhanna, more than 26 BTC – worth approximately $1,097,000 – was earned through the Natively Digital-curated Ordinals sale, with 641 bids and 100% of auction lots sold.

“Half of the sales were sold above their high estimates,” he added.

While this is Sotheby’s first Bitcoin Ordinals-focused sale, the legendary auction house has previously handled many NFT sales on Ethereum. For example, the institution has auctioned numerous NFTs once owned by the now-bankrupt Three Arrows Capital, including an Art Blocks NFT nicknamed “The Goose,” which sold for $6.2 million last June.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.