Taproot Wizards is about to launch, and the Bitcoin ecosystem is reviving again?

Author: Cookie, Jaleel Gar Six

After two years of long wait, the most highly anticipated new project of Bitcoin (Ordinals), Taproot Wizards, is finally going to be released tomorrow. Although in terms of influence, this project is undoubtedly the leader in the Bitcoin NFT market. But its casting price, 0.2 BTC, is completely incredible in the current NFT market environment. So, why is this NFT project made by a foreigner worth 0.2 BTC to cast? In this market environment, why are NFT players generally optimistic about the success of such a huge sales amount?

Judging from the data, this magical NFT casting is

We selected all Bitcoin NFT series with a total transaction volume of more than $100,000 in the past 30 days (excluding the transaction volume of BRC-20 tokens), with a total transaction volume of less than $35 million. That is to say, excluding long-tail assets, the average daily turnover of Bitcoin NFTs in the past 30 days is only about $1.15 million.

The total supply of Taproot Wizards is 2121, with 36 airdrops to some early supporters over the past two years, 100 airdrops to the deepest involved supporters, Quantum Cats holders with the "Golden Cape" feature, and a very early raffle draw for Bitcoin Wizards holders, and 200 team reservations. That is to say, only 1,785 Taproot Wizards have entered this release.

The total number of white orders was determined to be 1750. Among them, 828 white orders have a casting price of 0.1 BTC. This part of the white orders is a discount for pledging 2 Quantum Cats (the characteristics of 2 Quantum Cats must be 1 "life" + 1 "dead"). There are also 922 white sheets with casting prices of 0.2 BTC. These white sheets are active users selected after actively participating in various activities of Taproot Wizards over the past two years.

When all 1,750 white orders are sold out, the Taproot Wizards team will receive 267.2 BTC of foundry revenue, about $23.4 million. If there is an unsold part, it will be sold in the Dutch auction mode with the remaining 35.

Including the minting income of 300 BTC (about $13 million at the price of Bitcoin at the time), the Taproot Wizards team's previous sales, the profits of minting by the Taproot Wizards team will reach at least $36.4 million. According to data on DefiLlama, this will bring the Taproot Wizards team to No. 8 in the NFT historical casting revenue list.

The minting price of 0.2 BTC is about 8.4 ETH, 17,560 US dollars, and 127,000 RMB, which is a rather exaggerated price in the current NFT market.

Considering that Quantum Cats has never fallen below the offering price of 0.1 BTC at the Bitcoin standard, the theoretical cost of staking Quantum Cats to get a discount whitelist to mint is also 0.3 BTC at the Bitcoin standard, so if the total supply of 0.2 BTC * 2121 is used as the initial market value of Taproot Wizards, Taproot Wizards will open at 424.2 BTC (about 37.2 million US dollars) to reach No. 21 in the NFT market value ranking list.

Coincidentally, the top three of the 21st place are all Bitcoin NFTs, namely Quantum Cats (440 BTC, about $38.6 million), NodeMonkes (435 BTC, about $38.2 million), and Bitcoin Puppets (434 BTC, about $38.1 million). Quantum Cats has been previously considered the "preheat series" of Taproot Wizards. This series is not only the Bitcoin NFT series with the highest total market value, but also has long played a role in "price reference" for Taproot Wizards.

If the opening price doubles, Taproot Wizards' total market value ranking will surpass Solana NFT leader Mad Lads to come to No. 7. As for the top 6, it is a comprehensive challenge for Bitcoin NFT to the leaders of Ethereum NFT.

When was the last time we saw such a crazy new NFT project casting? If we look at the total minting income, it should be traced back to Azuki Elementals at the end of June 2023, selling 10,000 NFTs and earning 20,000 ETH (about 38 million US dollars). If you look at the casting price, it may go back to earlier, with the unit price of Moonbirds in April 2022 at 2.5 ETH (about $7,500).

Why are NFT players still generally optimistic?

Received $37.5 million in financing

On November 16, 2023, Taproot Wizards announced the completion of a $7.5 million financing, led by Standard Crypto, with Geometry, Collider Ventures, StarkWare, UTXO Management, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Masterkey and Newman Capital.

Bitcoin Frontier fund partner @TO shared his previous investment book on social media about Taproot Wizards. "This is the list of terms I sent to @udiWertheimer and @ercwl for investing in Taproot Wizards on April 5, 2023. After reading the promotion (of Taproot Wizards), I only wrote for 5 minutes to ensure it was early."

In this way, @TO completed the basic investment letter of intent on a section of toilet paper.

On February 5 this year, Taproot Wizards received another $30 million in Series A financing, led by Standard Crypto, with Cyberfund and Collider Ventures and others participating. This fund will be used to promote the construction of OP_CAT, thereby promoting the implementation of Bitcoin main network smart contract.

These financings are quite incredible. It should be noted that the OP_CAT opcode is still disabled on the Bitcoin main network. Although there is a proposal to re-enable the opcode, it is still unknown when the proposal can be passed and finally implemented.

Udi Wizardheimer, the person who is the best at "making trouble" in the Bitcoin ecosystem

Ordinals protocolist @ordjingle once used "the catfish of the Bitcoin ecosystem" to describe Udi Wizardheimer, founder of Taproot Wizards. An NFT project has been in operation for 2 years from its appearance to its official release and release, and can still be regarded as the leader of Bitcoin NFT. There is definitely a saying among them.

The first appearance of the Ordinals protocol was caused by Taproot Wizards on February 1, 2023 to fill the entire block with a 4MB image on the main Bitcoin network.

The picture above created the largest blocks and transactions in Bitcoin history at that time. This incident has caused a great shock to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Blockstream CEO Adam Back, Bitcoin Core developer LukeDashjr and others believe that the Taproot Wizards move has caused the rapid expansion of the size of the Bitcoin blockchain, and may also lead to abnormalities in some facilities, even indicating that this is an attack on Bitcoin rather than innovation. At the same time, the Ordinals protocol has attracted the attention of the entire encryption circle for the first time.

In March 2023, Taproot Wizards officially shared the mental journey of founder Udi Wertheimer on social media: "On the day when Silicon Valley Bank announced its bankruptcy and USDC panic, I decided to launch the Taproot Wizard NFT project today and have people record videos of themselves taking a bath in wizard costumes." The cosplay wizard then took a shower and took a video, which later became another hot topic in the NFT circle. Even Yuga Labs co-founder Gordon Goner personally recorded and released a bath video to get a Taproot Wizard.

In early 2024, Taproot Wizards released an NFT project called Quantum Cats, which is called "Quantum Cats" in the Chinese-speaking circle. Like the official release of Taproot Wizards, "Quantum Cat" was also in a stage of poor market conditions when it was released, but it never broke the issue price, and it was considered the Bitcoin blue chip NFT series from the beginning. When AIXBT was the hottest, Udi Wizardheimer took action again, asking AIXBT to take the initiative to have a "quantum cat", and after obtaining it, it replaced its Twitter avatar with a "quantum cat". Of course, the biggest purpose of "Quantum Cat" is to promote the resurrection of OP_CAT. This matter has now obtained the official BIP proposal number, and the "Quantum Cat" community has played a major role under the leadership of Udi.

One of the oldest memes in Bitcoin

The image of Bitcoin wizard first appeared in February 2013, when /r/Bitcoin administrators theymos solicited creative ideas for community advertising. In just one hour, a friend named /u/mavensbot submitted the work called Magic Internet Money Wizard. Creative painting style, eye-catching picture design, and simple and direct cultural slogans soon became the most popular answers in the forum.

Later, the image was selected as a formal promotional image for the /r/Bitcoin forum and was posted on Reddit for a while. The simple brainwashing design has brought a lot of traffic to the /r/Bitcoin forum. More and more people clicked in to see what this "advertising that is not very similar to advertising" really wants to express and represent. Many people also know, understand, buy and spread Bitcoin because of this. It is worth mentioning that Bitcoin at that time was only $287.

In addition to commemorating the classic image of a wizard in the Bitcoin community, Taproot Wizards also believes that the upgrade of Bitcoin’s Taproot is of great significance to Bitcoin NFT, so he also added the word Taproot to his project name.

It is worth mentioning that mavensbot, the original creator of the Wizard Meme, is also active in the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem. He already has a Bitcoin NFT series called Bitcoin Wizards. In order to distinguish it from Taproot Wizards, the Chinese-speaking circle calls it "Little Wizards". He will also release a Wizard PFP series with a total of 10,000 pieces and already has rune MAGIC•INTERNET•MONEY.

As for why the original creator is "small" and the Taproot Wizards is "big"? Because Udi is really a marketing genius, Taproot Wizards' influence in the entire NFT circle is far greater than Bitcoin Wizards.

Conclusion

We have in-depth analysis of Taproot Wizards and Quantum Cats. If you are interested in getting a deeper look, you can refer to:

4MB raised by 7.5 million US dollars, why does capital like Bitcoin's "wizard culture"?

In an article analyzing Bitcoin memeNFT, what is the bald wizard paying tribute and expressing?

Bitcoin "Quantum Cat": Without smart contracts, how can inscriptions achieve dynamic changes?

The release of this NFT project is quite amazing even when it was at its peak. Now that NFT has not received market attention for a long time, will Taproot Wizards make Bitcoin NFT and the entire NFT market lively again? Let's wait and see.