The first BTC Ordinals NFT to be listed at Sotheby's, what is the origin of BitcoinShrooms?

By Nancy, PANews

After a hiccup of the block-size route battle, Ordinals’ BTC NFT narrative is gaining mainstream acceptance. Recently, international auction giant Sotheby’s announced the auction of the Ordinals project BitcoinShrooms, which is its first auction of BTC NFTs. Why did BitcoinShrooms become the first Ordinals artwork to be auctioned by a top auction house?

According to Sotheby’s official information, the Ordinals project BitcoinShrooms will be auctioned online from December 6 to 13 (EST), and there are currently three pieces available for bidding, including two mushroom individuals and a pixelated avocado seed, which are expected to sell for about $20,000 to $30,000, and accept cryptocurrency bids.

Among them, the “S” is the Inion 38, which represents self-sovereignty, which has received 45 bids and has reached $38,000, and the Sovereign Individual, which is the Inion 715, which is inspired by Rees-Mogg’s classic 1998 book “The Sovereign Individual” BIP39 Seed, named after the common standard of mnemonic codes needed to create seed phrases, i.e., self-sovereignty means controlling one’s own BTC private key, has received 31 bids.

Designed by anonymous artist Shroomtoshi, BitcoinShrooms aims to capture the zeitgeist of cryptocurrencies through nostalgia and hyper-referential mode, and to educate and inspire appreciation for BTC’s cultural and technological revolution. BitcoinShrooms claims to be the first Ordinals NFT collection, which was originally minted on-chain on October 22, using pixel art as a whole, and more than 200 of the first 1,000 inscriptions belong to BitcoinShrooms. According to the Ordinals design rules, the protocol assigns a unique number to each “Satoshi”, and the higher the ranking, the rarer it becomes, and currently exceeds 40 million inscriptions.

It is worth mentioning that in February of this year, after BitcoinShrooms held an auction on the BTC auction platform Scarce.City for users of the active discord community, and its auction price was pushed all the way to 2.5 BTC (worth about $60,000 at the time), BitcoinShroom urgently canceled the auction a day early and made a donation to the BTC development kit, Bitcoin Dev Kit.

The auction house seems to have given a reason for BitcoinShrooms’ inclusion at Sotheby’s, “The BitcoinShrooms collection contains a wealth of references, from iconic BTC memes to advanced technical concepts, each piece showcasing the history, culture, and core program of the BTC, like a visual symphony that captures the essence of BTC from the perspective of early people.” ”