#6 Lost Punks
Low and cursed inscriptions
Background Information
When I first got into ordinals, I loved the idea of inscription numbers. The number itself tells you how early an inscription was created. With millions of inscriptions now, the first 100,000 feel very special and exclusive to me, especially since they represent the earliest entries in this space.
I wanted to collect sub-100k inscriptions, but at the time, official collections were worth thousands of dollars. Then I discovered a sub-100k inscription page on Magic Eden. Not only did it show sub-100k inscription collections, but it also listed sub-100k inscriptions with no collections.
These low inscriptions with no collection fascinated me because they were a tenth of the price of official collections. I thought to myself that, in a few years, most official collections might be abandoned, and the difference between official and non-official inscriptions would diminish.
So, I started collecting sub-100k punks that weren’t part of any collection. As I was buying, I joked that someone might eventually create a collection with all these non-collection inscriptions.
The Creation of Lost Punks
Fast forward over a year, and I came up with the idea of creating multiple mini-collections within one big collection. I wanted exposure to all the different narratives within ordinals, but there were two things I couldn’t inscribe: low inscriptions and cursed inscriptions.
Looking at the punks I had collected, an idea struck me. Since no one had claimed these inscriptions and I now owned them, what was stopping me from claiming them for my own collection? By doing so, I could create a low-inscription collection that would fit perfectly into my mini-collection concept.
I had already collected a good number, but I needed more, so I bought additional low-inscription punks and low-inscription cursed punks. Since I was essentially adopting these “homeless” punks into my own collection, I called them Lost Punks.
Inscription Details
10 inscriptions ranging from #23,306 to #40,953
10 cursed inscriptions ranging from #-22,935 to #-77,477
These inscriptions were not created by Occulum but were claimed and added to the Occulum collection.
What was Special?
We are the first collection to take unverified low inscriptions and integrate them into our own collection. For most collections, this wouldn’t work because the inscription art wouldn’t match the project’s art. However, Occulum’s structure—allowing mini-collections within one big collection—makes this possible.
Now our holders have exposure to both low inscriptions and cursed inscriptions. If you don’t know, cursed inscriptions are unique because they have negative inscription numbers, a feature that has been patched and can no longer be created. There are fewer than half a million cursed inscriptions in ordinals, and we’ve added sub-100k negative inscriptions to our collection.
Unlike Ethereum or Solana, Bitcoin has no update authorities. If you own an inscription, you fully own it. On other chains, you typically need to be the creator to make a collection, but on Bitcoin, you only need to be the owner. If no one has created a collection for an inscription you own, you can claim it and build a collection around it.
Closing Remarks
It’s wild to think that, as I write this Substack, there are over a hundred million inscriptions, and we have exposure to the first 0.05% of them. As time passes, those low numbers will become increasingly exclusive. The premium people pay for official collections versus non-collection inscriptions will likely fade as founders abandon projects.
I can see a future with over a billion inscriptions, where any low inscription number will be highly sought after. And I’ll be proud to say I was part of that.