In a highly symbolic move, a costly Ethereum NFT from one of Web3’s leading PFP collections, CryptoPunk #8611, was permanently removed from circulation and linked to an Ordinals inscription. The action was celebrated by a group of Bitcoin enthusiasts as a daring and attention-grabbing feat1.
CryptoPunk #8611, which was sold for approximately 55 Ethereum or $95,000 on Saturday, was hours later ‘burned’. The process of burning a digital asset involves locking it up forever in a digital wallet that nobody controls, and in this case, CryptoPunk #8611 was laid to rest in a renowned burn address also containing $21 million worth of Ethereum1.
The decision to effectively destroy CryptoPunk #8611 was a community-led effort conducted by Wolf Capital Developer Nathan Stein and holders of Bitcoin Bandits, a Western-themed collection of Ordinals inscriptions. Around 150 people rallied behind the idea and contributed to the cause1.
Ordinals is a Bitcoin protocol that was launched earlier this year, used to create NFT-like assets on Bitcoin by “inscribing” data to individual satoshi, the smallest denomination a Bitcoin can be broken down into. This data can include images, videos, or even plain text, which people have used to create BRC-20 tokens1.
The process of redirecting high-value NFTs from the Ethereum space to other assets on Bitcoin, referred to as ‘teleburning’, is becoming increasingly common. The community surrounding Ordinals is still shaping up and has been associated with hype, bugs, and scams related to crypto’s oldest coin1.
This is not the first instance of a high-value NFT being burned to symbolically shift an asset’s underlying chain from Ethereum to Bitcoin. In February, an NFT from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection worth around $169,000 at the time was burned by Jason Williams1.
However, the burning of CryptoPunk #8611 wasn’t done purely for entertainment. The ultimate goal is to create a series of Ordinals inscriptions that correspond to a piece of ownership in CryptoPunk #8611, even though the underlying asset itself can no longer be owned by anyone on its original chain. The collection of inscriptions will be created after the one that currently points to CryptoPunk #8611 is ceremonially sent to a digital wallet belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, in what is effectively a one-way trip1.
The Bitcoin Bandits community, which pooled funds together to purchase CryptoPunk #8611, did so more to show the way, believing that CryptoPunks deserve better than ETH1.
As for whether this will start a wave, it remains to be seen. However, as the concept of teleburning gains traction, and as the community surrounding Ordinals grows, we may witness more high-profile NFTs being symbolically transitioned from Ethereum to Bitcoin.
