This week, half-giddy, half-cautious optimism unfold throughout crypto circles as Bitcoin surged previous $37,000 for the primary time in 18 months on pleasure concerning the approval a spot Bitcoin ETF, and Ethereum pumped previous $2,100 on comparable information of a pending ETH ETF software from BlackRock.
There’s clearly an emergent hope inside crypto that the underside—lastly—is in. However to those that protest that it might by no means be a real bull market with out obscenely costly, seemingly pointless JPEGs buying and selling palms: there’s now purpose to rejoice on that entrance as nicely.
On Friday, two separate on-chain pictures of illustrated rocks—one hosted on Ethereum as an NFT, the opposite inscribed on Bitcoin as an Ordinal—bought for six-figure respective sums on secondary markets.
An NFT from the EtherRocks assortment, EtherRock #95, traded palms this morning for 100 ETH, or simply over $209,000. Simply hours prior, an Ordinal from the visually similar Bitcoin Rock assortment bought for two.99 BTC, value simply over $111,000 at writing.
EtherRock 95 bought for 100 ETH ($209,990)
1 hr 55 minutes in the past (Nov-10-2023 04:13:35 PM +UTC)
Txn: https://t.co/VXLXAVWkP7#EtherRock #EtherRocks pic.twitter.com/tkZjJOt3aO
— EtherRock (@EtherRock) November 10, 2023
The JPEGs don’t include any affiliated memberships or perks, or something that doesn’t meet the attention. They’re, fairly merely, flippantly illustrated pictures of almost indistinguishable grey boulders that don’t even characteristic backgrounds.
Bitcoin Rock #75 has bought for 3btc on the secondary market.
Congratulations to @Scobra9000 on the sale.
A heat welcome to @GrantWSchneider, already a legendary collector within the ordinals neighborhood, who has now taken it to the very best degree. pic.twitter.com/wkqkk8Kbn9
— BITCOIN ROCKS ◉ (@ordrocks) November 10, 2023
Dumb as rocks?
EtherRocks first launched in 2017 to little fanfare. Solely in the course of the top of the NFT bull run, in late 2021, did the 100-piece assortment catch hearth—largely as a way to poke enjoyable on the absurdity of worth and the crypto market. Particular person EtherRocks often bought on the time for lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} a chunk; one bought for the equal of $1.3 million.
“Financial worth of artwork is all an phantasm,” an EtherRocks purchaser wrote on the time. “The pet rocks current the proper shock worth, it’s so silly that it’s excellent. Destiny loves irony.”
Ethereum Pet Rock NFTs Are Promoting for Extra Than $100,000
In January, an apparently unaffiliated Ordinals consumer inscribed a set of 100 pictures nearly similar to the EtherRocks onto small denominations of Bitcoin, creating a brand new assortment: Bitcoin Rocks. Whereas that Ordinals assortment has not loved the identical success as its Ethereum predecessor, it has generated five-figure secondary market gross sales in latest months.
Within the context of latest market tendencies, although, Friday’s gross sales seem like hitting otherwise. Quite a few Twitter customers noticed the information as a harbinger of the return of the kind of obscenity, absurdity, and flagrant monetary foolishness that outlined the earlier crypto bull run.
Lol that rip-off once more.
We’re so again— Dr.M₳ryJ⚡I purchase Shitcoins,I maintain ₿itcoin ❤₳d₳ᴺᶠᵀ𓊽 (@mary_el83) November 10, 2023
Members of the crypto neighborhood seem divided about whether or not that’s factor or a foul factor.
This house by no means fails to amaze me
— sugarspicysauce (@sugarspicysauce) November 10, 2023
However regardless of the return of bull market antics, crypto exercise is nowhere near the degrees loved when EtherRocks had been final ascendent. Although Bitcoin Ordinals buying and selling did certainly hit a six-month excessive earlier this week, and NFT buying and selling quantity posted its finest numbers since August, these numbers nonetheless pale compared to the kind of quantity witnessed in the course of the 2021/2022 NFT bull run.
Final week’s apparently encouraging NFT figures, for instance, marked a 93% lower in buying and selling quantity from the market’s peak in April 2022. However these expensive digital rock purchases level to not less than a want for a similar sort of frothy, frenzied pleasure that outlined that earlier period.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
