The auction for Yuga Labs’ new NFT collection on Bitcoin, TwelveFold, ended on Monday, netting $16.5 million from bidders.
The official Twitter handle of Yuga Labs announced on early Tuesday, March 7th, that auction had ended and the top bidders would receive TwelveFold inscribed satoshis within one week. Unsuccessful bidders will get their funds back in a day.
Top 288 Bidders Spend $16.5 Million
As reported, on February 28th, Yuga Labs, the creator of the famous NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), announced TwelveFold, a 300-piece generative art NFTs collection on Bitcoin Ordinals. The collection was to be released in an auction.
The auction began on Sunday, March 5, and closed the bidding on Monday, March 6. According to auction mechanics, of the 300 pieces, 288 were made available to bidders in the auction. 12 TwelveFold NFTs are held back for contributors, donations, and philanthropic efforts.
The TwelveFold auction garnered 3,246 total bids during the 24-hour auction. The leaderboard data suggests that the highest bidder paid 7.11 BTC for one of these 288 pieces. This calculates to $159,829 at the current price of Bitcoin. The lowest successful bid was 2.2501 BTC, or just over $50,000.
In total, the top 288 bids yielded about 735 BTC worth approximately 16.5 million. The successful bidders will receive their Twelve Fold inscribed satoshis within one week.
TwelveFold collection includes highly-rendered 3D elements as well as hand-drawn features, crafted in-house by Yuga Labs’ art team using 3D modelling, algorithmic construction, and high-end rendering tools. The creator describes the collection as a “base 12 art system localized around a 12×12 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Community Critizes Auction Process
Although the TwelveFold auction ended on a high note, it also earned criticism from the crypto community. In a March 5 blog post explaining the auction process, Yuga Labs said that it would return the funds of unsuccessful bidders. This means that until the return of funds, Yuga Labs will have custody of these BTC funds.
This model has been criticized by many in the community who called this model a “scammer dream”. A Twitter user wrote:
“Yuga is establishing REALLY bad precedence running an auction like this. They are taking custody of bidders’ bitcoin with a promise to send back unsuccessful bids. Not doubting they’ll do that, but this model is a scammer’s dream, and credible players need to set better examples.”
Some pointed out that manual refunding is like the “stone age” process. Casey Rodarmor, an Ordinals creator, also weighed in heavily on the TwelveFold auction discussion.
