Ozzy Osbourne will launch more than 9,000 NFT bats as a nod to his 1982 bat-biting moment

The Prince of Darkness is headed to the world of NFTs. 

Ozzy Osbourne announced Monday he will be releasing 9,666 digital bats into the NFT world in January. Each of the bats, called Cryptobatz, has been uniquely designed from the mind of Osbourne and NFT creator Sutter Systems. 

An NFT, or nonfungible token, is a piece of data that verifies you maintain ownership of a digital item like artwork, a meme, a tweet or in this case a pixelated image of a bat. 

The prince of darkness chose to use bats as his NFT initiation in a nod to his infamous 1982 concert in Des Moines, Iowa during which he stuck a bat in his mouth and bit its head off on stage, shocking the audience with the stomach-churning act. 

Osbourne's NFT bats aren't biteable but have the one-time ability to bite back at other NFTs that exist. 

"Every Cryptobat holds an innovative power ... the ability to 'bite' and NFT from a different blue chip project and create a 'mutantbat' that shares the DNA of both tokens," the website says. 

The 73-year-old rockstar changed his Twitter profile photo to reflect one of the crypto bats designed to appear like Osbourne with his recognizable round sunglasses, a gold chain and black hair. 

Osbourne's entrance into the NFT world follows many other celebrities who have sold digital art to NFT collectors. Ellen DeGeneres auctioned off an NFT of her holding up a drawing of a cat in April, the digital clip raised more than $30,000 for charity; Snoop Dogg auctioned off an NFT sitcom featuring him and the Harlem Globtrotters in November, and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey auctioned off his first tweet in March for almost $2.9 million. 

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