Sotheby's, an auction house with more than 250 years, launched for the first time the online sale of a digital art collection registered in the Bitcoin network, through the Ordinals protocol.  

This is the BitcoinShrooms collection, created by digital artist Shroomtoshi, who relied on Ordinals to create 200 unique pieces that will be auctioned until December 13, 2023 at Sotheby's.  

As indicated by the auction house founded in 1744, the collection “forms part of a masterful but playful guide to the revolutionary kingdom of Bitcoin.” With it, it is intended to tell the entire history of the protocol created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.

“Within the BitcoinShrooms collection lies a treasure trove of references, from iconic Bitcoin memes to advanced technical concepts, a visual symphony that captures the essence of Bitcoin from the perspective of someone there from the early days,” says Sotheby's.

As of the writing of this article, there are only three Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs up for auction at Sotheby's. It is estimated that the rest of the pieces will be offered until the deadline, which is next week.

The three tradable NFTs are key representations of Bitcoin. The first advocates self-sovereignty. The second, to Rees Mogg's essay, “The Sovereign Individual.” And the third, to the BIP39 system, which is responsible for generating the seed phrases for the bitcoin self-custody wallets.

Sotheby's estimates that these NFTs will be auctioned between $20,000 and $30,000 each. Although the first two are already auctioned for around $42,000 and  $50,000 , respectively.

Sotheby's highlights the Ordinals

At the presentation of the collection, Sotheby's highlighted the Bitcoin Ordinals. He asserted that these NFTs have “important qualities that are not typically observed in Ethereum NFTs.”

Among those qualities, the auction house highlights, is the immutability of Ordinals NFTs, since the art “is stored 100% on the chain.” There is also sovereignty, considering that these assets “are controlled exclusively by whoever owns the Bitcoin address that has them.”

“Bitcoin Ordinals are not subject to any 'smart contract' logic that might create certain restrictions or limitations on transferability, or that might grant privileged administrators permissions to modify or censor NFT metadata at will,” Sotheby's says.

The Bitcoin Ordinals auction at Sotheby's is another step by this legendary auction house into the crypto asset ecosystem. For years now, the institution has approached the market , allowing, among other things, the use of BTC and other assets as payment.

The offer of a collection of Ordinals NFTs at Sotheby's is part of the boom that these assets have had since their arrival at the beginning of this year. In addition to the auction house, other large companies launched NFT projects on Ordinals. This is the case of the renowned Bugatti automobile brand .

Although, like everything, Ordinals have a not very accepted side , and that is the fact that they generate congestion in the Bitcoin network. For several weeks now, the Bitcoin mempool has shown more than 200,000 transactions awaiting confirmation.

Congestion translates into an increase in transaction fees. This year, the fees exceeded $30. It was in May, when the first wave of Ordinals registrations arrived on the Bitcoin network.