Fifteen years after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent the world’s first tweet, the message has sold for nearly $3 million as an NFT. The winning bid came from Sina Estavi, CEO of blockchain company Bridge Oracle.
Dorsey announced earlier this month that he would auction his first tweet on Valuables, with proceeds going to Giving Directly Africa Response fund. On Monday, Dorsey confirmed he had donated 50 BTC to the organization, which is helping people affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
As Valuables explains on its website, “owning” a tweet doesn’t change its status on Twitter. Rather the winning bidder is buying “a digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator.”
The sale is the latest high-profile example of the current NFT craze that’s made waves in the art and cryptocurrency community in recent months. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens are an offshoot of cryptocurrency that permanently links a digital asset to a crypto-authenticated token. The actual asset — in this case, a tweet — can still be freely shared and viewed and copied by anyone on the internet, but only Estavi will hold the original “signed” version.
