Yuga Labs TwelveFold NFT Collection Brings in $16.49M

Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, recently concluded its debut Bitcoin NFT collection auction. The new collection was called TwelveFold, and it ended with 288 successful bidders each nabbing a piece of the limited series. All in all they spent a combined $16.49 million worth of BTC. TwelveFold features 300 generative art pieces inscribed to the Bitcoin blockchain via Ordinals, a recently launched method of committing art to Bitcoin.

Each of the 288 pieces won at auction will be generated by the same code, and pieces won at a higher bidding price will not appear qualitatively differently from pieces won at lower bidding prices, according to Yuga. Pieces from the collection will be numbered and generated according to their rank in the bidding process.

The bidding process, however, stirred some controversy, with would-be TwelveFold holders having to deposit the full amount of their bids directly with Yuga to be considered in the auction. Yuga promised it would return rejected bids within 24 hours of the auction’s conclusion. The creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, Casey Rodarmor, criticized Yuga for creating a system that could be easily manipulated by project creators to steal funds from bidders.

Despite the criticism, TwelveFold generated significant buzz, receiving over 3000 bids within 24 hours. The highest bid was 7.1159 BTC, or approximately $159,500, while the lowest successful bid was 2.2501 BTC, or just over $50,000. The top 288 bidders will receive their inscriptions within the week, while the last 12 pieces of the 300-count limited series will be held for contributors and distributed as part of Yuga’s philanthropic programs.

This marked a departure from Yuga’s previous work, and showcases the company's move towards the Bitcoin blockchain, which has recently become a popular platform for NFT collections. Yuga has only ever previously released NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. All other collections besides TwelveFold created or owned by Yuga also featured at least 10,000 NFTs.

In conclusion, Yuga Labs' TwelveFold auction was a success.