Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) #1626 is a highly coveted NFT, a digital asset that represents ownership of an item, often digital art. The Ape, from the most valuable project in the NFT space, was last sold on OpenSea in November for 108 Ethereum, equivalent to nearly $432,000 at the time of the transaction, or around $169,000 at current prices. The ownership of BAYC #1626 is recorded on the Ethereum network, where it was tradable until recently. However, the asset can be permanently removed from circulation through a process known as burning. Jason Williams claims to have burned the NFT, symbolically shifting it from Ethereum to Bitcoin. This is because the location to which BAYC #1626 was burned is linked to an Inscription made through Ordinals, a project that allows videos and images to be assigned to individual satoshis on Bitcoin’s network, where they exist permanently as Inscriptions. Williams believes his Ape now exists on Bitcoin, and he sees the process as a fun experiment, even if it is questionable whether putting large digital files on Bitcoin’s base chain is a wise move.
The newly developed feature for Ordinals, called Teleburn, enables users to assign an existing asset from another network to a Bitcoin Inscription, effectively transferring the token between chains. The burn took place at Bitcoin Park, a co-working space in Nashville, Tennessee, where Rob Hamilton approached Casey Rodarmor to develop the Teleburn function after Williams expressed interest in burning his Ape. The feature creates a unique location with each new Inscription, where digital assets can be burned, removing them from circulation on the original network.