Investors who bought the freshly minted "Quantum Cats" NFT-like images from the Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards were already flipping them on Tuesday for more than twice the initial sales price – in a sign of enduring demand for digital art inscribed onto the original blockchain.

The lowest available price for the Quantum Cats listed on the NFT marketplace Magic Eden was 0.243 BTC ($10,481) on Tuesday, versus the fixed price of 0.1 BTC each in the primary mint that concluded Monday.

According to Magic Eden, 115 BTC worth of trading volume had transpired within hours after the Quantum Cats were delivered to their original owners. Some 507 of the images were still listed for sale.

The original minting of 3,000 Quantum Cats closed on Monday, with the series selling out – theoretically bringing in about $13 million of revenue for the Taproot Wizards project from its debut collection.

That was despite much angst over the past week as the Taproot Wizards minting website was plagued by technical issues, causing frustration and leading to widespread complaints on the project's Discord channel. A suspension of the process on the first day was followed by multiple postponements.

This week's results showed buyers undeterred, with the proceeds well exceeding the $7.5 million that the Taproot Wizards, led by co-founders Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, raised from investors last year.

The project has ridden a wave of enthusiasm for the Ordinals inscriptions, sometimes referred to as "NFTs on Bitcoin."

The Ordinals protocol and its "inscriptions" – launched in early 2023 by creator Casey Rodarmor – effectively allows NFTs to be minted and stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Previous waves of NFT hype were focused on other blockchains, such as Ethereum, that have historically been seen as more programmable than Bitcoin, which is the oldest blockchain and still the largest by market capitalization.

Read More: Casey Rodarmor: The Bitcoin Artist

Ordinals Ordinals protocol Bitcoin NFTs Taproot wizards

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.