Sotheby’s, the prestigious auction house, has made history by selling three digital artworks from the BitcoinShrooms collection for a total of $450,000 in its first ever Ordinals auction. The Ordinals are a series of unique and rare non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that represent the ordinal numbers from 1 to 10,000. Each Ordinal is associated with a different digital artwork, created by various artists using blockchain technology.
The BitcoinShrooms collection, created by the anonymous artist Satoshi Nakashroom, features psychedelic mushrooms that are composed of Bitcoin logos. The artist claims that the BitcoinShrooms are a metaphor for the decentralized and organic nature of the cryptocurrency. The three artworks that were sold at Sotheby’s are the Ordinals 42, 69 and 420, which have special significance in the Bitcoin and internet culture.
The auction attracted a lot of attention from both traditional and crypto art collectors, who competed fiercely to own a piece of digital history. The bidding started at $50,000 for each artwork, and quickly escalated to six figures. The final hammer price was $150,000 for each Ordinal, totaling $450,000 for the three artworks. The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, paid in Ethereum, another cryptocurrency.
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This is the first time that Sotheby’s has hosted an auction dedicated to NFTs, following the success of its previous collaboration with the digital artist Beeple, who sold his NFT artwork “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for a record-breaking $69 million in March. Sotheby’s said that it was excited to explore the new frontier of digital art and to offer its clients a diverse and innovative range of artworks.
The Ordinals auction is part of a larger project called “The Ordinal Saga”, which aims to create a narrative and a community around the Ordinals. The project is led by the Ordinal Institute, a mysterious organization that claims to be the custodian of the Ordinals and their stories. The Ordinal Institute plans to release more artworks and events related to the Ordinals in the future and invites anyone who is interested to join their saga.
Portal Coin receives over $12 million in presale
Portal Coin, a new cryptocurrency project that aims to create a decentralized portal network, has announced that it has raised over $12 million in its presale round. The presale, which lasted for two weeks, attracted more than 10,000 investors who purchased the native token of the platform, PORT.
The Portal Coin team said that the funds will be used to develop and launch the portal network, which will allow users to access any blockchain application or service through a single interface. The network will also enable cross-chain interoperability and scalability, as well as provide incentives for portal operators and developers.
According to the project’s whitepaper, Portal Coin is based on a novel consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Portal (PoP), which leverages the portal network to secure the blockchain and reward participants. PoP also allows for low transaction fees and fast confirmation times, making Portal Coin suitable for various use cases such as DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and more.
The Portal Coin team consists of experienced developers, researchers, and advisors from the blockchain industry, including former members of Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Chainlink. The team said that they are committed to building a transparent and community-driven project that will bring innovation and value to the crypto space.
The Portal Coin presale was conducted through a smart contract on the Ethereum network, with a hard cap of 20,000 ETH. The presale price was set at 0.0005 ETH per PORT, with a minimum purchase of 0.1 ETH and a maximum of 50 ETH per investor. The presale sold out in less than 24 hours, demonstrating the high demand and interest for the project.
The Portal Coin team said that they are planning to launch the portal network in Q1 2024, after completing the audit and testing phases. The team also said that they will announce the details of the public sale and listing soon, as well as reveal more partnerships and collaborations with other projects and platforms.
Portal Coin is one of the most anticipated and promising projects in the crypto space, as it aims to solve some of the major challenges and limitations of the current blockchain ecosystem. By creating a decentralized portal network that connects users to any blockchain service or application, Portal Coin hopes to usher in a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability for the crypto industry.