15/12/2023 'Bitcoin NFT' Hysteria Comes to Sotheby's as Super-Mario-Style Mushroom Character Tops $200K

In the historic auction house's first-ever sale of the Ordinals inscriptions known as "NFTs on Bitcoin," a batch of three pixelated images from a mushroom-themed collection drew about $450,000, or roughly five times the highest estimates.

The first-ever sale by Sotheby's of "inscriptions" created using the Bitcoin blockchain's Ordinals protocol – from a pixelated collection known as "BitcoinShrooms" – drew about $450,000, or five times the highest estimates, potentially revealing a mainstream fervor for the tradable digital images colloquially referred to as "NFTs on Bitcoin."

The auction, which concluded on Wednesday, consisted of three of the images, including a pixelated avocado that fetched more than $100,000 and a design that appears to be derived from amushroom in the Super Mario franchisethat sold for north of $240,000, according to Derek Parsons, a spokesman for the auction house. There were 148 total bids across the three lots, and more than two-thirds of all bidders were new to Sotheby's.

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There are "plans for more soon," Parsons wrote in an email.

The results recall the mania that swept digital-asset markets a couple years ago when digital artwork and non-fungible tokens or "NFTs" first started drawing eye-popping sums, andcaptured mainstream attention; one NFT by the artist Beeple drew $69 million at the auction house Christie's. Many of those collections, however, were built atop the Ethereum blockchain.

The Ordinals inscriptions, which debuted late last year featuring a new technology pioneered byCasey Rodarmoratop Bitcoin have witnessed bouts of popularity this year sufficient to cause congestion and elevated fees on the distributed network, launched in 2009 to be a peer-to-peer payments network.

There's adebate ragingamong Bitcoin users and developers over whether to filter out transactions in NFT-like "inscriptions" minted using the Ordinals project, since they're not a core financial use in keeping with many advocates' vision for the original blockchain.

So the idea that some of the images might be considered high art could tip the scales of the debate toward profit interests.

The digital avocado, known as "BIP39 SEED," was initially tipped to draw $20,000 to $30,000, but it ended up selling for $101,600.

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/12/14/bitcoin-nft-hysteria-comes-to-sothebys-as-super-mario-style-mushroom-character-tops-200k/amp/

Interesting NFTs
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time... a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.
#55876
By OthersideDeployer
Pink Panther
Shalom! I'm Pink Panther. I've never told anyone this, but I once loved a dog. When my owner isn't watching, I steal their oversized sweaters and use them for litter paper. I'm not sorry. We can be friends, but keep the ultra purrsonal stuff to yourself, please.
CryptoPunk #7804
The CryptoPunks are 10,000 uniquely generated characters. No two are exactly alike, and each one of them can be officially owned by a single person on the Ethereum blockchain. Originally, they could be claimed for free by anybody with an Ethereum wallet, but all 10,000 were quickly claimed. Now they must be purchased from someone via the marketplace that's also embedded in the blockchain.
Fuku-Shiva
The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.