‘Scammers dream’ — Yuga’s auction model for Bitcoin NFTs sees criticism

‘Scammers dream’ — Yuga’s auction model for Bitcoin NFTs sees criticism

Mar 05. 2023

By Jesse Coghlan

Yuga Labs' first Bitcoin NFT collection saw some backlash from the crypto community over the weekend, pointing to flaws in the way it's conducting the auction.

Nonfungible token (NFT) conglomerate Yuga Labs is facing some criticism from the cryptocurrency community, including the creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, over how it plans to auction its new Bitcoin NFT collection.

On Mar. 5, Yuga opened bids for its “TwelveFold” collection which will see 300 NFT-like images inscribed on Satoshis using the Bitcoin-native Ordinals protocol, with 288 from the collection sent to the highest 288 bidders.

According to a Mar. 5 press release, those participating in the bidding process will be required to send their entire bid amount in BTC to a unique BTC address controlled by Yuga. Winners would simply pay up the BTC they bid, while Yuga said it would return the BTC to those unsuccessful in placing a top bid.

Such a plan however has earned the ire of some within the crypto community, with some pointing out that having to manually conduct refunds for unsuccessful bids is like the “stone age.”

The user behind an Ordinals-focused Twitter account “ordinally” called the auction model a “scammers dream” and added while they doubt Yuga would keep the BTC from failed bids, the way it carried out the auction sets a “REALLY bad precedence.”