Bitcoin Enthusiasts Celebrate as Valuable CryptoPunk NFT is Transferred from Ethereum
A valuable Ethereum NFT from a prominent PFP collection in the Web3 community has been permanently removed from circulation, garnering appreciation from a group of Bitcoin enthusiasts.
CryptoPunk #8611 was sold for approximately 55 Ethereum or $95,000 on Saturdy, as reported by Etherescan. Soon after, the NFT was deliberately burned, symbolically linking it to inscription 12,456,749—an NFT-like asset on Bitcoin that shares the same image.
The decision to destroy CryptoPunk #8611 was a community-driven initiative led by Nathan Stein, a developer from Wolf Capital, and supported by holders of Bitcoin Bandits, a Western-themed collection of Ordinals inscriptions. Around 150 individuals contributed to this endeavor, according to a spokesperson for the project.
When a digital asset is burned, it is securely stored in a digital wallet that no one controls. In this case, CryptoPunk #8611 has been retired in a well-known burn address that also holds $21 million worth of Ethereum.
The event captured attention and excitement, with Minh, an account on Twitter, expressing their amazement and describing the act as both chaotic and beautiful. Minh documented the purchase and burning of CryptoPunk #8611 in a video.
Ordinals, an innovative Bitcoin protocol launched earlier this year, enables the creation of NFT-like assets on Bitcoin by embedding data onto individual satoshi—the smallest unit of Bitcoin. This data can include images, videos, or plain text, effectively producing BRC-20 tokens.
While NFTs are still considered an emerging sector for digital art, Ordinals inscriptions are relatively new, leading to a wave of enthusiasm, challenges, and scams within the crypto community.
As the Ordinals community continues to grow, the practice of redirecting valuable NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin is becoming increasingly common and is referred to as teleburning.
The recent burn of CryptoPunk #8611 may seem familiar, as it is not the first instance of a costly NFT being burned as a symbolic move to shift its underlying chain from Ethereum to Bitcoin. In February, an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection worth approximately $169,000 was burned by Jason Williams, who found enjoyment in the act, likening it to crushing a Lamborghini in a trash compactor.
It is worth noting that Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, declared that the Ordinals inscription associated with Williams’ NFT represented an unauthorized ape. They clarified that only tokens originating from the project’s original smart contract are considered valid, granting holders commercial rights and access to events.
Unlike Williams’ action, the burning of CryptoPunk #8611 by Stein was not purely for entertainment purposes. Stein aims to create a series of Ordinals inscriptions that represent fractional ownership in CryptoPunk #8611, even though the original asset can no longer be owned on its original chain.
The forthcoming collection of inscriptions will be generated after the current one associated with CryptoPunk #8611 is ceremonially transferred to a digital wallet belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. This transfer is essentially a one-way journey, as explained in Stein’s tweet.
The members of the Bitcoin Bandits community, who pooled their funds to purchase CryptoPunk #8611, have also been entered into a contest related to a separate inscriptions project. However, the spokesperson emphasizes that the primary motive behind their actions was to lead by example.
Clever Robot News Desk 19th June 2023
