Ordinal Punks NFTs called out as ‘sketchy’

Anonymous Twitter account TheNorwegian expressed concerns about Ordinal Punks NFTs, asking, “[is this] the biggest NFT scam of all time?”

On Feb. 9, CryptoSlate reported on the rising popularity of Ordinal Punks, covering the sale of three NFTs according to social media posts, including #94, which reportedly sold for 9.5 Bitcoins ($215,800).

The novelty of NFTs on the Bitcoin chain and the chain’s provenance seems to be driving demand for these NFTs. However, some are questioning the collection’s legitimacy.

What are the concerns with Ordinal Punks?

Given that the Bitcoin chain was not originally designed to accommodate NFT functionality, there is no infrastructure to verify information such as sales or even to accommodate sales in a click-and-buy process.

Details about Ordinal Punks are restricted to people’s accounts of what happened rather than openly accessible data derived from on-chain information.

Citing the Director of Research at PROOF Collective, who got this information from a “Google doc,” TheNorweigan said Ordinal Punks have a current price floor of 55.4 ETH ($85,500). He added that this is the ballpark figure for a blue chip NFT collection but then questioned whether Ordinal Punks are worthy of being classed as blue chip.

Supporting this point, TheNorweigan pointed out the following, which leads him to think they are “sketchy”:

•  Everything is happening OTC
• There are a lot of scams
• There’s low to none transparency
• You need to run a Bitcoin node to mint
• Extreme information asymmetry

Demand for Bitcoin NFTs is going crazy

@seanbonner tweeted that Bitcoin Punks, a clone of Ethereum’s CryptoPunks, is taking off right now.

Bitcoin Punks suffer the same drawbacks as Ordinal Punks due to using the same inappropriate, undeveloped NFT infrastructure on Bitcoin.

Nonetheless, according to @seanbonner, despite the lack of smart contracts and the “square peg, round hole” approach, people are going crazy in Discord, trying to snap one up a Bitcoin Punk. He advised against falling for the FOMO due to the following:

“A. There’s no market so you have to rely on trust and scammers are everywhere B. Fomo is insane and people are asking stupid prices C. Receiving is hard, transferring is harder. Again this isn’t like eth in the way that we’re all used to.”

Bonner also pointed out that Bitcoin Punks are not “official,” adding they are just a copy of cryptopunks on any chain. The same could be said for Ordinal Punks, which