Taproot Wizards, which capitalized on last year's frenzy in Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions to raise $7.5 million, is now moving forward with its first sale of a collection, Quantum Cats.

The series includes 3,333 of the cats, designed to honor a Bitcoin improvement proposal known as OP_CAT, according to a press release.

Ordinals inscriptions, sometimes known as "NFTs on Bitcoin," became so popular after their invention by Casey Rodarmor that transactional activity related to their minting created congestion on the Bitcoin blockchain, driving up fees.

Some longtime Bitcoin contributors have proposed various measures to block them, arguing that the network should be preserved for payments, though other voices have likened these efforts to censorship. Bitcoin miners have reaped a windfall from the fee bonanza. Three images of a "BitcoinShrooms" collection recently sold at the venerable auction house Sotheby's for about $450,000.

Taproot Wizards was started by Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, who each have at least 100,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter).

Dan Held, fractional CMO for Taproot Wizards, told CoinDesk in an email that this is the first sale of a collection by the company. The first collection minted was Taproot Wizards, but those have not been put up for sale.

NFTs Ordinals Bitcoin

Bradley Keoun

Bradley Keoun is CoinDesk's managing editor of tech & protocols, where he oversees a team of reporters covering blockchain technology, and previously ran the global crypto markets team. A two-time Loeb Awards finalist, he previously was chief global finance and economic correspondent for TheStreet and before that worked as an editor and reporter for Bloomberg News in New York and Mexico City, reporting on Wall Street, emerging markets and the energy industry. He started out as a police-beat reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida and later worked as a general-assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he double-majored in electrical engineering and classical studies as an undergraduate at Duke University and later obtained a master's in journalism from the University of Florida. He is currently based in Austin, Texas, and in his spare time plays guitar, sings in a choir and hikes in the Texas Hill Country. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.