An iconic Ordinal is being donated to the team that kickstarted the upstart protocol.

Announced today, Bitcoin Magazine is gifting one of its 23 ‘Historic Covers,’ unique one-of-one Ordinals representing our print magazine’s original run, to the Open Ordinals Institute, a new non-profit dedicated to fostering development of the open-source Ordinals protocol.

Launching at the beginning of August, the OOI is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization that plans to accept donations, including those in Ordinals, on behalf of the development team.

This means that, a short few months after its debut, ‘Historic Ordinal #3’ is officially off the market.

“We are proud that this prized collectible can give back to the team that has helped kickstart a new era of building on the Bitcoin blockchain,” said Namcios, Bitcoin Magazine Editor and project lead of its Ordinals OTC desk, Rare BTC.

To date, Bitcoin Magazine’s Historic Covers have seen over 4.3 BTC in total volume, with our ‘Historic Cover #1’ selling for 1.25 BTC, worth over $30,000 at the time of sale.

Since its January launch, the Ordinals protocol has caused no shortage of discussion in the Bitcoin community for its much-debated design trade-offs, most notably its ability to enable any arbitrary data to be stored in a bitcoin block and secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.

Already, over 20 million ordinals have been minted using the protocol, a feat detractors say is bloating the blockchain.

“We’re honored to receive one of the Bitcoin Magazine Historic Covers, a tangible piece of Bitcoin history,” said Erin Redwing, President of the Open Ordinals Institute. “As one of the first and most notable collections launched on the Ordinals protocol, these will stand the test of time. And how fitting that it’s a cover of the first Bitcoin ape!”

Bitcoin Magazine ‘Historic Covers’ are now for sale on popular secondary Ordinals markets, including Gamma and MagicEden.