Sentimental Items from Crypto's History Are Raising Millions

The crypto space has suddenly become all sentimental.

A slew of high-profile purchases have recently taken place for assets that represent a slice of this industry's history.

One powerful example comes in the form of a single Bitcoin sat — worth a mere $0.000639 — that sold for millions of dollars.

Satoshis are the smallest possible denomination of BTC. And the recent innovation of Ordinals, which allow NFTs to be created on the Bitcoin blockchain by attaching data to a sat, now means some sats are vastly more valuable than others.

Because Ordinals now allow sats to be numbered, the protocol's creator Casey Rodarmor recently explained that they can actually be divided into levels of rarity. In the "epic" tier and among the most prized of all is the very first sat that's mined after a halving takes place. Why? Because to this day, just four exist.

Miners, who were battling it out for a piece of Bitcoin history, were keenly aware of this. And as a result, the first sat generated after last week's halving has now sold for a cool $2.1 million at auction.

This does seem to be part of a wider trend.

CryptoPunk 635, one of just nine aliens in the 10,000-strong series, was also sold this week for an eye-watering $12.4 million to an anonymous buyer.

Aside from the rarity of its attributes, this blue-chip collectible is also significant for another reason: it was among nine CryptoPunks flogged off for $16,962,500 at the prestigious auction house Christie's during the NFT boom of 2021. The estimate at the time had been between $7 million and $9 million.

And that's not all.

Way back in 2017 — when BTC was trading at a mere $2,228 — an intern called Christian Langalis caused a splash by holding up a piece of paper that said "Buy Bitcoin" behind Janet Yellen, who was chair of the Federal Reserve at the time.

Those who had heeded Langalis's advice at the time would now be sitting on a cool profit of 2,763% — and his low-key intervention was widely attributed with helping propel Bitcoin into the public consciousness.

The yellow legal pad has now been framed, preserved and sold for 16 BTC at an auction in New York — worth about $1.01 million at current rates.

The story of crypto — its unlikely surge to a trillion-dollar industry, its resilience in the face of punishing bear markets, and downright craziness — is both jaw-dropping and compelling.

And in the coming months, it's possible that we'll see more misty-eyed enthusiasts who own a slice of history attempt to land a fortune by sharing it with the world.

As we've seen, there's clearly an appetite for this among collectors who want to lasting mementos of crypto's journey.