Bored Ape Owner Burns NFT on Ethereum, Moves It to Bitcoin

Bitcoin recently added NFT support, and now it has a Bored Ape on the network too. The owner of Bored Ape #1626 "burned" his NFT on Ethereum and transferred it to the Bitcoin network using a new protocol called Teleburn, which allows NFTs to be burned on one blockchain and inserted into Bitcoin as Ordinals–Bitcoin's new version of an NFT.

The Bored Ape was originally purchased for 108 ETH (~$430k at the time of purchase) and was worth about $170k when it was burned. Now its value is hard to place, since it's the first Bored Ape NFT on Bitcoin, there's no major exchange for Bitcoin NFTs, and it's not clear if Bitcoin investors even care about NFTs.

The Teleburn function allows users to send an NFT to an address on a different blockchain by burning it on the original blockchain and minting it on the new blockchain with the same metadata and owner information. But the NFT still technically exists on the old blockchain too, so I don't really see the point.

You can't "burn" an on-chain asset–that's the whole point of the blockchain. Instead, the process of burning is simply sending the NFT to a "burn" address that no one controls. You can still see Bored Ape #1626 on Ethereum, but its old owner can't do anything with it anymore.

As you may remember, Bored Ape holders also hold the intellectual property rights to their Ape's appearance. Seth Green starred in a TV show using his Ape, and other investors have used their Apes to sell merchandise and even fast food. According to Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs, once you move your ape to a burn address, you lose the rights to the Ape.

So now Bored Ape #1626 is just... gone? Sure it's on Bitcoin, which has massive liquidity, but there isn't much liquidity for NFTs on Bitcoin yet. Also, Bitcoin is a terrible blockchain for NFTs anyway. Bitcoin is slow, and it's not made to store smart contract data on-chain. Add in that Bitcoin holders are basically gold hoarders with computer skills and there's some serious resistance to mainstream Bitcoin NFT adoption.