Taproot Wizards to auction 2,121 Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs starting March 25
NFTs will be sold at 0.2 BTC
Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards has officially set the sale date for its long-awaited collection of "Magic Internet JPEGs," inspired by the 2013 Bitcoin meme, "Magic Internet Money."
According to Taproot Wizards, the sale will begin on March 25, featuring 2,121 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of its Magic Wizards, inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain two years ago.
Initially, the Ordinals will be offered to whitelist buyers at a fixed price of 0.2 BTC ($16,000 per NFT).
Any unsold NFTs will then be auctioned through a Dutch auction, where the starting price is set high and gradually decreases until a buyer is found.
The maximum starting prices will be announced closer to the sale date, but organizers have confirmed they will exceed 0.2 BTC.
Last year, the project sold 3,000 Quantum Cats NFTs to fund Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) OP_CAT, raising 300 BTC despite technical difficulties.
What is OP_CAT?
OP_CAT is a script originally included in Bitcoin’s source code by Satoshi Nakamoto but later removed due to concerns over potential denial-of-service (DoS) attack risks.
Developers are now working to restore OP_CAT through initiatives like NFT sales to enable Ethereum-style smart contract functionality on Bitcoin, enhancing its utility on the base blockchain.
Last month, Taproot Wizards raised $30 million to develop an application ecosystem utilizing OP_CAT.
After the announcement of the upcoming NFT sale, some reports speculated that the project aimed to raise $34 million, but this figure was later retracted at Taproot Wizards' request.
As we wrote, Bitcoin ordinals - not separate tokens, but rather, individual satoshis (the smallest units of Bitcoin) imbued with unique data, like images, videos, or text. This grants ordinals the same advantages as Bitcoin itself: namely, censorship resistance, decentralization, and an unmutable historical record.
