Jailhouse Block: Elvis Digital Art Collection Inscribed on the Bitcoin Network
2024-10-17

Elvis Presley has arrived on Bitcoin thanks to a digital art collection of the King of Rock and Roll inscribed on Ordinals.
The collection of 1,935 generative images, "Elvis Side $Btc," has been minted by Bitcoin-focused intellectual property (IP) project Royalty in partnership with inscription service OrdinalsBot, and is inspired by the artwork of Joe Petruccio, an artist licensed by the Elvis Presley Estate.
The Ordinals protocol allows data to be "inscribed" onto individual satoshis (the smallest unit of BTC at 1/100,000,000 of a full bitcoin), making them unique and therefore able to attain individual value. In this sense, they are the Bitcoin version of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which brought Ethereum-based digital art to mainstream prominence in 2021.
OrdinalsBot, a platform for minting the inscriptions, has emerged as one of the more influential projects in the Bitcoin development sector. It claims to be responsible for 80% of the 10 biggest files inscribed on the Bitcoin network, including the largest ever block, an inscription of the manifesto of privacy-focused tech stack Logos, which cost 3.5 BTC ($235,000).
Such inscriptions are referred to as "four meggers," as their size is close to 4 MB, the maximum size of a Bitcoin block.
"We see it as being like acquiring a billboard in Times Square because of the visibility that it gives you within the Bitcoin network and that will last forever," Ordinals co-founder Toby Lewis told CoinDesk in an interview.
(The new Elvis-themed series are more of the regular variety of inscriptions, not four meggers.)
Royalty is set to publish a litepaper in the coming weeks, detailing how 5% of primary and secondary sales revenue will fund the Elvis Legacy Council, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) aimed at "governing the future of Elvis' digital legacy," through a native token.