Christie’s to Auction First Bitcoin Ordinal

Less than two years after their creation, a Bitcoin Ordinals art piece has made its way into one of the largest auction houses in the world.

Christie’s, which sold $2.1 billion in the first half of 2024, is auctioning a piece by Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell dubbed 'Ascend.' It is the first Bitcoin Ordinal ever to be sold at a major auction house. The auction, set to close on Oct. 10, is estimated to bring in up to $65,000.

Ascend is a 1-of-1 artwork from the project The Wild Within, a series that brings new life to abandoned buildings from a bygone era,which was first minted on Ethereum. The piece, which represents a sanatorium in ruins built between 1952 and 1962 in Tskaltubo, Georgia, was inscribed on a satoshi mined on March 24, 2021.

According to an interview earlier this year, Koopmans chose to inscribe the artwork on a satoshi mined on that specific day as a tribute to the day the first artwork from The Wild Within was minted on Ethereum.

“Many of the buildings depicted in The Wild Within have been demolished in recent years,” reads Christie’s description of the piece. “This building continues to deteriorate and is being slowly disassembled, further emphasizing the primary theme of the work: the passing of time in a cycle of growth and decay.”

The Ordinals protocol allows for users to inscribe non-financial data onto the Bitcoin blockchain. This includes images, texts, or videos that are ascribed to individual satoshis, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. Invented by Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor, Ordinals have driven a flurry of new projects, including artwork, to flourish on the once-stagnant Bitcoin blockchain. 

After a few months of subdued market activity, the Ordinals ecosystem finally turned the tide last week as major collections posted double-digit percentage gains.