Screenshot of the original Bitchcoin Mine, 2015-03-08 04:19:15 PM
Sarah Meyohas first launched Bitchcoin in February of 2015 at Where, a gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Meyohas wrapped the interior of the gallery, headquartered in a 40-foot shipping container, with a reflective mylar surrounding a single mining computer and monitor. The space was viewable through a live-streamed webcam, and token buyers received a certificate with key number encryption granting them access to the Bitchcoin software program.
Bitchcoin initially operated as a fork of Bitcoin and could be exchanged in perpetuity for the artist's work, each backed with a five-inch by five-inch portion of her Speculations photographs. At the time, Ethereum had not yet launched, and tokenizing art on the Bitcoin blockchain directly was not yet possible. Almost a decade later, with the recent development of Bitcoin Ordinals, Meyohas returns to the Bitcoin blockchain to inscribe this history onto a satoshi from Block 346783. This block was in the process of being mined at the same time that the inscribed screenshot of the gallery's webcam was taken, which is timestamped 04:19:15 PM Eastern Time on March 8th, 2015, highlighting the temporal nature of Bitcoin Ordinals compared to counterparts like Ethereum NFTs.
