Web3 Watch: ‘Buy Bitcoin’ sign, first post-halving satoshi go up for sale

If something in crypto can be sold, there’s a good chance it will be.

This week, a yellow legal pad with “Buy Bitcoin” scribbled on it sold for 16 bitcoin, worth over $1 million.

The legal pad was held up behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen during a 2017 Congressional hearing in an episode that’s become iconic in the Bitcoin community. The auction for the piece of memorabilia was held at PubKey, a New York City bar popular among Bitcoiners.

Christian Langalis, the then-intern on Capitol Hill who flashed the Buy Bitcoin sign, took home most of the auction’s proceeds.

Also this week, the crypto exchange CoinEx auctioned off the first satoshi of a block mined after Bitcoin’s recent halving event. Satoshis, or sats, are Bitcoin’s smallest unit and have been popularized recently by Ordinals being inscribed on them. CoinEx got access to the satoshi by way of a partnership with mining pool ViaBTC.

The sat netted double what the “Buy Bitcoin” sign did, selling in the end for $2.1 million.

Yet another alien punk sale

Bitcoin memorabilia weren’t the only items selling this week. For the third time since the beginning of March, a CryptoPunk sold for more than $10 million.

On Thursday, Punk #635 sold for $12.41 million, making it the fourth-most expensive punk sale ever. The second- and third-largest sales came on March 20 and March 4, respectively.

As with the other recent sales, Punk #635 is an alien punk, or one of nine CryptoPunks out of the 10,000 that have blue-ish skin.

“To me, owning a Punk has never been about the floor price…It’s about my belief that NFTs will be the future of ownership,” the punk’s apparent new owner wrote on X.

One interesting stat:

Crypto-focused VC firm Stratos reported that its investment in the memecoin DogWifHat yielded a 300x return for the fund in Q1.

Also of note:

Blockworks bought a goat.
Web3 restaurant loyalty app Blackbird sold free coffee passes in New York City.
The popularity of Bitcoin Runes caused miners to earn more from fees than from block reward for the first time ever.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.