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

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

The “Genesis Cat” Ordinals inscription by digital artist FAR received over 50 bids, according to Sotheby’s, with the winning bid hitting 6.31 BTC, or about $254,000.

Earlier this month, Taproot Wizards announced the Quantum Cats collection of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions. The project of 3,333 images cost over $66,000 to create on the Bitcoin blockchain. The sale for the wider collection is set to take place on January 29.

The Quantum Cats collection, Taproot Wizards co-founder Udi Wertheimer previously told Decrypt, is meant to pay homage to early code in the Bitcoin network called concatenate or OP_CAT.

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

“Congrats to all artists and collectors involved!” the head of digital and contemporary art at Sotheby’s, Michael Bouhanna, said on Twitter. “Special thanks to [FAR] who helped with the curation and putting this sale together.”

According to Bouhanna, over 26 BTC—around $1,097,000 worth—was made through the Natively Digital curated Ordinals sale, with 641 bids and 100% of the auction lots sold.

“Half of the sale sold for over their high estimates,” he added.

While this is the first Bitcoin Ordinals-centric sale from Sotheby’s, the storied 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.