The
much-anticipated
sale
of
a
debut
collection
of
“Quantum
Cats”
Bitcoin
inscriptions
by
the
Ordinals
project
Taproot
Wizards
was
marred
by
technical
issues
on
Monday,
leaving
users
frustrated
and
forcing
an
embarrassing
delay.
The
planned
sale
of
around
3,000
digital
cats,
designed
to
honor
a
Bitcoin
improvement
proposal
known
as
OP_CAT,
commenced
with
a
two-hour
“whitelist”
window
at
17:00
UTC
(noon
ET)
on
Monday,
but
this
had
to
be
postponed
until
Tuesday
due
to
the
issues
encountered.
“There’s
been
an
incredible
demand
for
the
cats
today,
and
our
servers
simply
couldn’t
handle
the
amount
of
people
who
were
trying
to
mint,”
Taproot
Wizards
posted
on
X.
The
collection
was
on
sale
for
0.1
BTC
($4,300),
meaning
as
much
as
300
BTC
($12.9
million)
could
have
been
raised
if
every
cat
was
to
be
sold.
According
to
the
tweet,
around
30%
of
the
cats
were
minted
on
Monday.
That
would
equate
to
nearly
1,000
cats,
for
around
around
100
BTC
($4.3
million).
It
was
an
inauspicious
start
for
Taproot
Wizards,
which
raised
$7.5
million
in
a
seed
funding
round
in
November,
reflecting
the
high
hopes
for
projects
focused
on
the
fast-growing
arena
of
inscriptions
from
the
Ordinals
protocol,
colloquially
referred
to
as
“NFTs
on
Bitcoin.”
The
first
item
in
the
Quantum
Cats
series,
a
special
image
known
as
“Genesis
Cat,”
sold
earlier
this
month
on
the
auction
house
Sotheby’s
for
an
eye-popping
$254,000.
Udi
Wertheimer
apologizes
Udi
Wertheimer,
one
of
the
company’s
co-founders,
apologized
to
would-be
buyers
during
a
live
Spaces
session
on
the
social-media
platform
X.
“There’s
been
some
glitches,”
Wertheimer
said.
“I
know
this
isn’t
the
experience
people
were
expecting.”
Following
the
two-hour
whitelist
window,
the
plan
was
for
minting
to
pause
for
an
hour
before
the
remaining
cats
became
available
for
general
sale.
Complaints
filled
the
project’s
Discord
channel
on
Monday:
“This
has
got
to
be
one
of
the
worst
mint
experiences
I’ve
ever
seen,”
one
user
wrote.
The
Ordinals
protocol
allows
the
inscriptions
of
data
into
satoshis
–
the
smallest
units
of
bitcoin
–
effectively
creating
non-fungible
tokens
(NFTs)
on
the
Bitcoin
network.
The
protocol
debuted
at
the
start
of
2023,
becoming
a
contentious
issue
for
the
Bitcoin
community,
with
some
users
saying
they
are
pointlessly
congesting
the
network.
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