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.