Jailhouse Block: Elvis Digital Art Collection Inscribed on the Bitcoin Network

As a veteran analyst with a background in both traditional art and blockchain technology, I find this intersection of Elvis Presley’s iconic legacy and the cutting-edge world of Bitcoin intriguing. The “Elvis Side $Btc” collection represents not just a digital reimagining of the King of Rock and Roll, but also a testament to the evolving landscape of digital art and its monetization.

The legendary musician Elvis Presley has made his debut on Bitcoin through a collection of digital artwork representing the King of Rock and Roll, which has been etched onto Ordinals.

1,935 unique, generative images titled “Elvis Side $Btc” have been created as a collaboration between the Bitcoin-centric intellectual property (IP) project Royalty and inscription service OrdinalsBot. These digital artworks draw inspiration from the artwork of Joe Petruccio, an artist who holds a license from the Elvis Presley Estate.

The Ordinals protocol enables data engraving onto single satoshis, the smallest BTC denomination at 0.00000001 BTC. This process gives each satoshi a distinct identity and potential value, similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum that popularized digital art in 2021.

Among the notable projects in the Bitcoin development sphere, OrdinalsBot stands out as one of the most impactful. This platform is known for minting approximately 80% of the top 10 largest inscriptions on the Bitcoin network, including the largest block ever, a manifesto from privacy-focused tech stack Logos, which required an investment of 3.5 BTC ($235,000) to be inscribed.

These types of inscriptions are often called “nearly 4MB records,” since they’re nearly as big as the maximum size of a single Bitcoin block, which is approximately 4MB.

Toby Lewis, one of the founders of Ordinals, likened the project to owning a billboard in Times Square, emphasizing its perpetual visibility within the Bitcoin network during an interview with CoinDesk.

(The new Elvis-themed series are more of the regular variety of inscriptions, not four meggers.)

As a researcher, I am excited to announce that we are preparing to release a lightweight whitepaper in the upcoming weeks. This document will outline our plans for allocating 5% of primary and secondary sales revenue towards the Elvis Legacy Council, a self-governing, decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The objective of this DAO is to steer the future of Elvis Presley’s digital legacy. This governance will be facilitated through our native token.