Bitcoin accidentally births a new breed of NFTs and the crypto world got a little stranger.
Yes, digitally inscribed 3D images of objects such as multi-colored spheres onto a tiny fragment of bitcoin are being sold for $16.5 million.
Bitcoin network upgrades have enabled each satoshi - the smallest denomination of bitcoin, or one hundred millionth - to store a few megabytes of data, from text and images to audio and video.
Now crypto enthusiasts have embedded a total of 385,000 "inscriptions" known as Ordinals on bitcoin since January.
Yuga Labs calls the set "a visual allegory" for data on the blockchain.
They became a lucrative allegory this month when the company auctioned 288 of them off for $16.5 million, according to data from research firm Delphi Digital.
Although the market for bitcoin NFTs has only been going since January, Galaxy estimates it could be worth $4.5 billion by 2025