This December, Sotheby’s New York is delighted to present an online sale featuring select BitcoinShrooms from the bitcoin ordinals project by Shroomtoshi. This is the first time works from the very anticipated collection will be available to the public, as the rest of the works have not been released. Elegantly weaving the nuanced tapestry of Bitcoin’s history, culture, and core technicalities, each unique, pixelated, and hand-crafted piece forms part of a masterful, yet playful guide to the revolutionary realm of Bitcoin. Within the BitcoinShrooms collection lies a trove of references — from iconic Bitcoin memes to advanced technical concepts— a visual symphony that captures Bitcoin’s essence from the perspective of someone there since the early days.
Shroomtoshi is a technically inclined digital artist and trailblazing figure in the booming Ordinal ecosystem. With encyclopedic knowledge of Bitcoin, Shroomtoshi created a standalone digital art collection that captures the cryptocurrency zeitgeist through nostalgic and hyper-referential modes. Advocating for values of freedom and self-sovereignty, Shroomtoshi operates in subtle mystery in the vein of Satoshi Nakamoto's mystique, aiming to educate and inspire appreciation for the cultural and technological revolution of Bitcoin. Learn more about Shroomtoshi.
Shroomtoshi on the Shrooms
“The BitcoinShrooms collection is a pixelated recap of the first 13 years of Bitcoin, a homage to the 8-bit style of art that expresses a slight nostalgia for the 90s, a way to soil 10s of thousands of SSDs spread across the world with my art (->next level cyber-vandalism), a tool to raise awareness about Bitcoin and what I personally view as its core principles, an ironic way to vent at what I see as its annoying pop elements and aberrations. it is a thank you to those I worked with and learned from, to those who are not around anymore but whose name should not be forgotten. it is knowledge condensed and a journey for the curious.”
Ordinals are the NFTs of the Bitcoin ledger. The terms “Inscriptions” and “Ordinals” may be used interchangeably in most circumstances, but in fact have different meanings. An ordinal is the unique, serialized satoshi – the asset itself – that may be transferred by its owner. The inscription is the encoded media content that is embedded within the ordinal.
While Bitcoin Ordinals share some similarities to Ethereum or Solana NFTs, its core differentiators lie in the heart of its underlying decentralized infrastructure. The Bitcoin blockchain is decentralized, hence, not tied to a centralized foundation or institution. Bitcoin assets are also physically immutable thanks to the “proof of work” consensus mechanism. All assets transferable through the Bitcoin blockchain are open, neutral, censorship resistant, and globally accessible for anyone to access and interact with.
Ordinals greatly benefit from the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, taking as an assumption many important qualities that are not usually observed by Ethereum NFTs:
1. On-Chain Immutability – Bitcoin Ordinals are as immutable as Bitcoin itself. The art is stored 100% onchain.
2. Sovereignty – Bitcoin Ordinals are controlled exclusively by whoever owns the Bitcoin address holding them. Bitcoin Ordinals are not subject to any “smart contract” logic that may create certain restrictions or limitations on transferability, or that may give privileged administrators permissions to modify or censor NFT metadata at will.
Shroomtoshi recommends the following resource to better understand Ordinals: The Ordinal Theory Handbook.
