BAYC – The Bored Ape Yacht Club has been the highest-profile NFT since the 2021 boom.
Even after the crypto market crash last year, the BAYC NFTs continued to be one of the best-selling tokens on the market.
This year, one of the most valuable Bored Ape NFTs underwent a significant change.
Over the weekend, BAYC #1626 was permanently removed from circulation.
The news
The removal of the Bored Ape surprised many, but its owner had an explanation.
According to the Ape’s owner, they wanted to symbolically shift its underlying blockchain to Bitcoin, having originally come from Ethereum.
The NFT last went on sale on OpenSea in November 2022, selling for 108 ETH, around $432,000 at the time or $169,000 in today’s prices.
Burning NFTs
Like most NFTs, BAYC #1626’s ownership was recorded on the Ethereum network before it was burned.
NFTs can be permanently removed from circulation through burning, which typically involves sending the NFT somewhere it can’t be retrieved.
Jason Williams, the owner of BAYC #1626 said he burned it in the weekend, which means it can never be sold again on the Ethereum network.
“Essentially throwing a Lamborghini into a trash compactor – it’s kind of fun,” said Williams.
“Whether putting bloated JPEGs on Bitcoin’s base chain is smart or not is a whole ‘nother [SIC] discussion, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun seeing how it plays out.”
Ordinals
Despite burning the NFT, Jason Williams isn’t totally sure where his Ape is now, but he speculates BAYC #1626 is now on Bitcoin.
His guess can be traced to a link to an Inscription through Ordinals.
Ordinals was created by Casey Rodarmor.
It is a project that assigns content (images and videos) to individual satoshis, the smallest unit a Bitcoin can be split to, where they will permanently reside as Inscriptions on the Bitcoin network.
While the amount of Inscriptions on Bitcoin is around the 100,000 mark, there are still marketplaces for people to trade them.
A number of buyers and sellers are currently linked through Ordinal’s Discord server.
The burn happened with a new feature for Ordinals called Teleburn, which creates a unique destination with each new Inscription so digital assets can be burned.
Teleburn
Teleburn lets users assign an asset from another network to a Bitcoin Inscription, removing it from circulation.
It transfers the token between chains, which can be seen by the creators of Teleburn.
Rob Hamilton collaborated with Rodarmor to create Teleburn, and he said:
“The idea is that you are one-way, permanently burning an asset on another chain and pointing it to the ordinal that lives on the Bitcoin chain.”
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Hamilton approached Rodarmor about developing the Teleburn feature last weekend at Bitcoin Park.
Bitcoin Park is a coworking space in Nashville, Tennessee, that was made for the Bitcoin community.
They collaborated after Hamilton showed Rodarmor that Williams wanted to burn BAYC #1626.
“Let’s go write some code right now,” said Rodarmor, who was excited at the prospect of burning a BAYC NFT.
Potential
BAYC #1626 wasn’t the first time they used Ordinal’s Teleburn feature.
Casey Rodarmor first tried it out on his ENS domain.
He and Hamilton later oversaw Jason Williams.
Rodarmor first came up with the term Teleburn when he combined the words teleport and burn, referencing its hasty development.
Rob Hamilton believes Teleburn will gain traction, acting as a way for people to bridge their digital collectibles.
Rodarmor is also looking to extend the feature to support assets on other chains like Tezos and Solana.
“This has now set the standard of representing an asset across the chain,” said Hamilton.
“It’s going to be the way to actually have skin in the game.”
He also alluded to how assets burned are permanently gone from the market.
Reaction
When news of the BAYC burn erupted online, Greg Solano, one of Yuga Labs’ co-founders, weighed in on the matter.
He said the Inscription linked to BAYC #1626 is an unlicensed reproduction of the original because Williams no longer owns it on the Ethereum network.
“If you transfer your Ape to an address you no longer control (even if it’s the ‘burn’ address), you have effectively given up your license,” said Solano.
He also waved off the idea that BAYC #1626 is permanently gone as it still exists on-chain.
However, people can no longer access the Ape.
