Bitcoin NFT Auction by Yuga Labs Draws In $16.5 Million Despite Criticism

The Yuga Labs 12Fold Collection auction ended yesterday. The event kicked off on March 5 and based on the announcement, 288 bidders will receive 288 inscriptions from the 300 NFT-like images on Satoshi using Ordinals. 

Even though many people criticized the auction model, the event was a huge success. Yuga Labs announced the auction’s success, stating it netted $16.5 million in one day, recording the targeted 288 winning bids. 

First Bitcoin NFT Auction Recording Huge Success

In its Twitter post, Yuga Labs congratulated the 288 winners promising to send their Bitcoin NFTs within 7 days. It also assured the other bidders who lost of returning their BTCs to their wallets within 24 hours.

From the auction details on the TwelveFold Collection site, Yuga Labs realized 735 BTC worth almost $16.5 million at market price. The highest bidder among the winners paid a little above 7BTC, amounting to $161,000 for one Bitcoin NFT. 

Recall that Yuga Labs’ announcement last month disclosed that the NFTs would be around a 12×12 grid with highly-rendered 3D elements and hand-drawn features. The winners are excited to receive their NFTs and eagerly share their victory on Twitter. For instance, one of the winners, Carsonturner, took to Twitter to announce it expressing excitement over his bid’s success. 

With such a huge success recorded in the first-ever bitcoin NFT auction sale, the adoption of the Ordinals protocol will likely increase, and the company has successfully set the pace by leveraging the number 1 crypto blockchain in the growing sector.

Yuga Labs Auction Model: A Scammer’s Delight

The Yuga Labs auction was successful even with criticisms about its model as the process of sending the BTC to the company’s wallet didn’t sit well with many people.

For instance, the Ordinals creator, Casey Rodarmor, warned the NFT company to refrain from following such a process again, or he will wash his hands off the project and influence others to do so.

Another Twitter user, Giancarlo, asked if Yuga Labs is still in the Stone Age, given that it aims to return BTCs to those who lost manually. Also, another Twitter user, @veryordinally tweeted about the process, stating that Yuga Labs is setting the wrong precedence by its model. 

The argument was that such a process would lead to many future fraudulent acts by fake NFTs creators. He mentioned that although Yuga Labs would return the BTCs as promised, other scammers won’t.

Nevertheless, Yuga Labs has promised to return the BTC of bidders who didn’t win within 24 hours. But only time will tell if fraudsters will utilize the Yuga Labs model to scam buyers, as the critics feared.

Featured image from Pixabay and chart from Tradingview.com