The Bitcoin Ordinals project aims to raise more than $34 million from the Microsoft Paint Style Cartoon Wizard art collection after a similar sale last year raised $13 million.
Taproot Wizards plans to auction 2,121 mysterious tokens (NFTs) from its signature “Magic Internet JPegs.” The Wizard was engraved on the Bitcoin blockchain two years ago and is now available for sale.
The project sold a collection of 3,000 “quantit kittens” last year and raised support for the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) OP_CAT. Despite being undermined by technical issues, the collection quickly sold out, bringing 300 BTC in the process.
Starting March 25th, the wizard was originally offered to whitelisted buyers of 0.2 BTC ($16,000) and is not sold at Dutch auctions. The starting price is higher than 0.2 BTC, and it will be apparently closer to auctions, a spokesperson told Coindesk in a telegram message.
If all 2,121 NFTs are sold for 0.2 btc, the project raises around $34 million based on the current price of Bitcoin.
OP_CAT has removed it due to concerns that Nakamoto’s pseudo founder Satoshi is included in Bitcoin’s original code and could then put the network at risk, such as a denial of service (DOS) attack.
The developers have been trying to get it back to allow Ethereum-style smart contract functionality. Therefore, it adds a significant amount of utilities possible in the original blockchain.
The goal of Taproot Wizards is to “have Meme Op_cat exist” through initiatives such as NFT sales. Last month, the project used OP_CAT to raise $30 million in funding to build an ecosystem of applications.