After 2 years of waiting, Bitcoin (Ordinals)s most anticipated new project Taproot Wizards will finally be released tomorrow. Although in terms of influence, this project is undoubtedly the leader in the Bitcoin NFT market. But its minting price, 0.2 BTC, is completely incredible in the current NFT market environment. So, why is this NFT project made by a foreigner worth a minting price of 0.2 BTC? In this market environment, why are NFT players still generally optimistic about the success of such a huge total amount of sales?
A look at this amazing NFT minting from the data
Based on the data from cryptoslam.io, we selected all Bitcoin NFT series with a total transaction volume of more than $100,000 in the past 30 days (excluding the transaction volume of BRC-20 tokens), and the total transaction volume was less than $35 million. In other words, excluding long-tail assets, the average daily transaction volume of Bitcoin NFT in the past 30 days was only about $1.15 million.
The total supply of Taproot Wizards is 2121, 36 of which have been airdropped to some early supporters over the past two years, 100 to the most involved supporters, Quantum Cats holders with the gold cape feature, and a very early raffle for Bitcoin Wizards holders, and 200 team reserves. In other words, only 1785 Taproot Wizards entered this release.
The total number of white orders is set at 1,750. Among them, 828 white orders are minted at a price of 0.1 BTC, which is a discount obtained by staking 2 Quantum Cats (the characteristics of 2 Quantum Cats must be 1 alive + 1 dead). Another 922 white orders are minted at a price of 0.2 BTC, which are selected from active users who have actively participated in various activities of Taproot Wizards in the past two years.
If all 1,750 white tickets are sold out, the Taproot Wizards team will receive 267.2 BTC in minting revenue, which is approximately $23.4 million. If there are any unsold items, they will be put into the public sale of the Dutch auction model together with the remaining 35.
Including the minting income of 300 BTC (about 13 million US dollars at the Bitcoin price at that time) from the Quantum Cats previously issued by the Taproot Wizards team, the income of the Taproot Wizards team through minting will be at least 36.4 million US dollars. According to the data on DefiLlama, this will make the Taproot Wizards team 8th in the total list of NFT historical minting income.
The minting price of 0.2 BTC is approximately 8.4 ETH, 17,560 USD, and 127,000 RMB, which is a rather exaggerated price in the current NFT market.
Considering that Quantum Cats has never fallen below the issue price of 0.1 BTC in Bitcoin terms, the theoretical cost of staking Quantum Cats to obtain a discounted whitelist for minting is also 0.3 BTC in Bitcoin terms. Therefore, if the total supply of 0.2 BTC * 2121 is used as the initial market value of Taproot Wizards, Taproot Wizards will open at 424.2 BTC (about 37.2 million US dollars) and rank 21st in the NFT market value ranking.
Coincidentally, the three before the 21st place are all Bitcoin NFTs, namely Quantum Cats (440 BTC, about 38.6 million US dollars), NodeMonkes (435 BTC, about 38.2 million US dollars) and Bitcoin Puppets (434 BTC, about 38.1 million US dollars). Quantum Cats has been considered as the warm-up series of Taproot Wizards. This series is not only the Bitcoin NFT series with the highest total market value, but also has long served as a price reference for Taproot Wizards.
If the opening price doubles, Taproot Wizards total market value ranking will surpass Solana NFT leader Mad Lads and come to No. 7. As for the top 6, it is a comprehensive challenge from Bitcoin NFT to Ethereum NFT leaders.
When was the last time we saw such a crazy new NFT project minting? If we look at the total amount of minting revenue, it should be traced back to Azuki Elementals at the end of June 2023, which sold 10,000 NFTs for 20,000 ETH (about 38 million US dollars). If we look at the minting price, it may be traced back to Moonbirds in April 2022, with a minting price of 2.5 ETH (about 7,500 US dollars).
Why are NFT players still generally optimistic?
Received $37.5 million in financing
On November 16, 2023, Taproot Wizards announced the completion of a US$7.5 million financing round, led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Geometry, Collider Ventures, StarkWare, UTXO Management, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Masterkey and Newman Capital.
Bitcoin Frontier Fund partner @TO shared his previous letter of intent to invest in Taproot Wizards on social media, This is the list of terms for investing in Taproot Wizards that I sent to @udiWertheimer and @ercwl on April 5, 2023. After reading the (Taproot Wizards) promotion, I only wrote it in 5 minutes to make sure it was as early as possible.
And just like that, @TO completed a basic term sheet on a section of toilet paper.
On February 5 this year, Taproot Wizards received another $30 million in Series A funding, led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Cyberfund and Collider Ventures. The funds will be used to advance the construction of OP_CAT, thereby promoting the implementation of smart contracts on the Bitcoin mainnet.
These financings are quite incredible. You know, the OP_CAT opcode is still disabled on the Bitcoin mainnet. Although there is a BIP-347 proposal to re-enable the opcode, it is still unknown when the proposal will be passed and finally implemented.
Udi Wizardheimer, the most troublemaker in the Bitcoin ecosystem
Ordinals protocol @ordjingle once described Udi Wizardheimer, the founder of Taproot Wizards, as the catfish of the Bitcoin ecosystem. An NFT project has been in operation for two years from its emergence to its official launch, and it can still be considered the leader of Bitcoin NFT. There is definitely a reason for this.
The Ordinals protocol first came out of the circle when Taproot Wizards filled the entire block with a 4MB image on the Bitcoin mainnet on February 1, 2023.
The above picture created the largest block and transaction in the history of Bitcoin at that time. This incident caused a great shock to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Bitcoin Core developer LukeDashjr and others believed that the Taproot Wizards move caused the Bitcoin blockchain to expand rapidly and may also cause abnormalities in some facilities, and even indicated that this was an attack on Bitcoin rather than an innovation. At the same time, it also made the Ordinals protocol receive attention from the entire crypto community for the first time.
In March 2023, Taproot Wizards officially shared the founder Udi Wertheimers experience on social media: On the day when Silicon Valley Bank announced its bankruptcy and USDC panic, I decided to launch the Taproot Wizard NFT project today and let people record videos of themselves bathing in wizard costumes. Cosplaying as a wizard and then taking a bath and shooting a video later became another hot topic in the NFT circle. Even Yuga Labs co-founder Gordon Goner once personally recorded and released a bathing video to get a Taproot Wizard.
In early 2024, Taproot Wizards released an NFT project called Quantum Cats, which is called Quantum Cats in the Chinese-speaking world. Like the official launch of Taproot Wizards this time, Quantum Cats was also in a stage where the market conditions were not very good when it was launched, but it never broke the issue price and was considered a Bitcoin blue-chip NFT series from the beginning. When AIXBT was the hottest, Udi Wizardheimer once again made a move, allowing AIXBT to take the initiative to ask for a Quantum Cat, and after getting it, he changed his Twitter avatar to Quantum Cat. Of course, the biggest purpose of Quantum Cat is to promote the resurrection of OP_CAT. This matter has now obtained an official BIP proposal number, and the Quantum Cat community has played a major role under the leadership of Udi.
One of Bitcoins oldest memes
The image of the Bitcoin Wizard first appeared in February 2013, when theymos, the administrator of /r/Bitcoin, solicited community advertising ideas. Within an hour, a friend named /u/mavensbot submitted this work titled Magic Internet Money Wizard. The creative painting style, eye-catching picture design, and simple and direct cultural slogan quickly became the most popular answer in the forum.
Later, this image was selected as the official promotional image of the /r/Bitcoin forum and was posted on Reddit for a while. The simple brainwashing design brought a lot of traffic to the /r/Bitcoin forum, and more and more people clicked in to see what this not-quite-advertising ad wanted to express and represent. Many people also learned about, understood, purchased, and spread Bitcoin. It is worth mentioning that at that time, Bitcoin was only $287.
In addition to commemorating the classic image of the wizard in the Bitcoin community, Taproot Wizards also believes that Bitcoins Taproot upgrade is of great significance to Bitcoin NFT, so it added the word Taproot to the name of its project.
It is worth mentioning that mavensbot, the original creator of the wizard meme, is also active in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem. He already has a Bitcoin NFT series called Bitcoin Wizards, which the Chinese community calls Little Wizards to distinguish from Taproot Wizards. He will also release a wizard PFP series with a total of 10,000 pieces, and already has the rune MAGIC•INTERNET•MONEY.
As for why the original creator is small and Taproot Wizards is big? Because Udi is really a marketing genius, and Taproot Wizards has a much greater influence in the entire NFT circle than Bitcoin Wizards.
Conclusion
We have previously covered Taproot Wizards and Quantum Cats in depth. If you are interested in a more in-depth look, you can check out:
Bitcoin OG joins Taproot Wizards. Why is “Wizard Culture” so popular?
Taproot Wizard: Bitcoin-native Meme NFT
The era of Bitcoin NFT has changed? Why are “Quantum Cats” attracting so much attention?
The sale of this NFT project is quite amazing even in the heyday of NFT. Now that NFT has not received market attention for a long time, will Taproot Wizards make Bitcoin NFT and even the entire NFT market lively again? We will wait and see.
