Taproot Wizards’ Bitcoin Ordinals Sell for $13M Amid Technical Hurdles

On Monday, the Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards sold its Quantum Cats collection for $13 million. The NFT collection, comprised of 3,000 pieces, sold out quickly despite earlier technical glitches, even as more marketplaces come on board.

Taproot Wizards sold their 3,000-piece Quantum Cats collection at 0.1 BTC (about $4,301) apiece.

Taproot’s Bitcoin Ordinals Mint Beats Sniping

Most pieces were sold to investors during a five-hour window reserved for whitelisted buyers. Around 313 ordinals sold out during the first two seconds of the public mint. Taproot Wizards delayed the mint last Monday to avoid a phenomenon called mempool sniping.

Quantum Cats Sellout | Source: QuantumCatsXYZ

In mempool sniping, bad actors hijack Bitcoin Ordinals transactions by replacing a buyer’s signature with their own while a transaction waits for confirmation. Their transaction then gets more priority because it pays a high transaction fee to the miner. This interception means the hacker, not the original owner, receives the NFT when the miner confirms the transaction.

By delaying their mint, Taproot’s founders ensured that the rightful owners of Bitcoin NFTs got what they paid for. They also created a better user experience where buyers could pay lower transaction fees.

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Early NFT supporter Beanie said it is important to appreciate the company’s NFT art success. Beanie wrote on X (formerly Twitter),

“Taproot Wizards made over $12m profit today selling cat jpegs. They did this without a famous artist. Without having to physically produce or ship any product. And without any marketing spend. Let that sink in.”

Exchanges Open NFT Inscription Marketplaces

The importance of inscriptions is seen in their recent launches of NFT marketplaces focusing on inscriptions. Exchanges like Bybit, Binance, and OKX have launched Ordinals marketplaces.Bybit’s marketplace allows people to trade inscriptions and tokens that follow the BRC-20 token standard.

Read more: How To Create and Sell NFTs for Free

Recently, Binance launched an NFT marketplace for Bitcoin and Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible inscriptions. The marketplace allows people to mint and trade inscriptions from a self-custody wallet within the Binance app.

Unlike traditional NFTs, which point to data stored elsewhere, inscriptions live on the blockchain. The Ordinals protocol stores digital files in a logical sequence of satoshis. Satoshis are the smallest spendable unit on the Bitcoin network.

Miners forever record the file on the Bitcoin blockchain when they finalize the transaction block containing the inscribed Satoshis. An inscription can be up to four megabytes in size.

BeInCrypto has reached out to Wertheimer but has not heard back at the time of publication.