Yuga Labs’ First Bitcoin NFT Collection Auctioned for $16.5M

Yuga Labs, the parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club, has raised $16.5 million through the auction of its first Bitcoin-based non-fungible token (NFT) collection, the company said via Twitter on 7 March.

According to the announcement a total of 3,246 bidders participated in the auction for the 300 limited edition “TwelveFold” NFTs, which are inscribed onto satoshis — the smallest identifiable unit of BTC — on the Bitcoin blockchain. The top 288 bidders — 12 NFTs were reserved for “contributors, future donations, and philanthropic efforts” — forked over 735.7 BTC to acquire their NFTs, which will be delivered within one week.

The highest bid in the “TwelveFold” NFT auction was 7.1159 BTC (close to $160,000), while the lowest accepted bid was at 2.2501 BTC (about $50,000). Yuga Labs’ auction format saw the company take custody of all bidders’ BTC, but shortly after the auction was concluded the company tweeted that “all valid bids that did not rank in the top 288 have been returned in full to their receiving address”.

The artist behind the 3D NFT project was Michael Figge — the co-founder of NFT studio WENEW and its popular NFT project 10KTF — who described the TwelveFold collection as a “base 12 art system localized around 12×12 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain”. Yuga Labs noted that the collection will not have any future utility, or interact with any of its other Ethereum-based NFT projects.