- The King of Rock and Roll will be inscribed on the Bitcoin network.
- The collection of 1,935 generative images, “Elvis Side $Btc,” will be minted by Bitcoin-focused IP project Royalty in partnership with inscription service OrdinalsBot.
- Royalty will use revenue from the collection to form the “Elvis Legacy Council” DAO.
Elvis Presley will soon arrive on Bitcoin thanks to a digital art collection of the King of Rock and Roll inscribed on Ordinals.
The collection of 1,935 generative images, “Elvis Side $Btc,” will be minted by Bitcoin-focused intellectual property (IP) project Royalty in partnership with inscription service OrdinalsBot, and is inspired by the artwork of Joe Petruccio, an artist licensed by the Elvis Presley Estate.
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The inscriptions will be among the first to mint when OrdinalsBot’s marketplace goes live later in the year.
“Elvis Side $Btc” generative artwork inspired by Joe Petruccio (Royalty/Joe Petruccio)
The Ordinals protocol allows data to be “inscribed” onto individual satoshis (the smallest unit of BTC at 1/100,000,000 of a full bitcoin), making them unique and therefore able to attain individual value. In this sense, they are the Bitcoin version of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which brought Ethereum-based digital art to mainstream prominence in 2021.
OrdinalsBot, a platform for minting the inscriptions, has emerged as one of the more influential projects in the Bitcoin development sector. It claims to be responsible for 80% of the 10 biggest files inscribed on the Bitcoin network, including the largest ever block, an inscription of the manifesto of privacy-focused tech stack Logos, which cost 3.5 BTC ($235,000).
Such inscriptions are referred to as “four meggers,” as their size is close to 4 MB, the maximum size of a Bitcoin block.
“We see it as being like acquiring a billboard in Times Square because of the visibility that it gives you within the Bitcoin network and that will last forever,” Ordinals co-founder Toby Lewis told CoinDesk in an interview.
(The new Elvis-themed series are more of the regular variety of inscriptions, not four meggers.)
Royalty is set to publish a litepaper in the coming weeks, detailing how 5% of primary and secondary sales revenue will fund the Elvis Legacy Council, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) aimed at “governing the future of Elvis’ digital legacy,” through a native token.
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CORRECTION (Oct. 18, 09:00 UTC): Correct that the collection has not been minted yet, but will be when OrdinalsBot’s marketplace goes live later in the year.