The sale of a debut collection of “Quantum Cats” Bitcoin inscriptions by Ordinals project Taproot Wizards was marred by technical issues on Monday.
“There’s been an incredible demand for the cats today, and our servers simply couldn’t handle the amount of people who were trying to mint,” Taproot Wizards posted on X, adding that 30% of the cats had been sold. This would equate to around 90 BTC ($3.9 million).
The collection was on sale for 0.1 BTC ($4,300), meaning as much as 300 BTC ($12.9 million) could have been raised if every cat was to be sold.
Udi Wertheimer, one of the company’s co-founders, apologized to would-be buyers during a live Spaces session on the social-media platform X.
“There’s been some glitches,” Wertheimer said. “I know this isn’t the experience people were expecting.”
Following the two-hour whitelist window, the plan was for minting to pause for an hour before the remaining cats became available for general sale.
Complaints filled the project’s Discord channel on Monday: “This has got to be one of the worst mint experiences I’ve ever seen,” one user wrote.
