Richard Drew/AP
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is offering to sell his very first tweet by auctioning it as a special digital asset class known as a non-fungible token.
Dorsey shared a link Friday afternoon to a website called Valuables, which allows selling tweets as NFTs. The billionaire listed his very first tweet “just setting up my twttr” for bids even though it exists on Twitter and is free to view. As a long-time cryptocurrency advocate, jumping into the NFT craze is not a surprising move by Dorsey.
@jack/Twitter
Crypto boss Justin Sun upped his bid twice, ultimately offering $2 million for Dorsey’s tweet. But the highest bid for the piece of Twitter history is from Sina Estavi, CEO of the Bridge Oracle platform, according to the Valuable’s website.
NFTs, unlike other cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ether, cannot be directly exchanged for equal value. They are unique, easily verifiable digital assets that represent a wave of digital goods such as an image, GIF, video, music album, artwork, or even a tweet. They are a form of digital asset whose ownership can be recorded on a blockchain. The market for NFTs is rapidly entering the public cultural web sphere as a digital collectible.
Selling tweets have already gained traction as popular digital collector’s items. Recently, a Miami-based art collector sold a 10-second video for $6.6 million at a Christie’s auction.
“If Jack’s tweet is not inherently valuable to be sold at $2.3M as an NFT art for just being the first tweet, it is worth more for being the first piece of popular digital product drop to have made NFT art sale a mainstream discussion topic,” said Ashwin Ramasamy, cofounder of consumer insights firm PipeCandy.
