The first-ever Tweet on Twitter, sent by the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, is up for grabs, as a Non-Fungible Tokens or NFT. The ongoing auction for the digital asset or virtual property has reached $2.5 Million.
Fifteen years after Jack Dorsey sent out his first-ever Tweet that introduced Twitter to the World Wide Web, the CEO is auctioning the brief introduction as an NFT.
NFT allows purchasing verifiable and authenticated digital assets for real money:
Twitter first introduced its micro-blogging nature to the world on March 21st, 2006. Jack Dorsey sent out his and the platform’s first-ever Tweet:
just setting up my twttr
— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006
The Tweet is excessively brief, just like the very nature of Twitter. However, with Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs, this particular Tweet could earn millions of dollars.
Non-Fungible Tokens or NFTs allow interested buyers to purchase, sell, or trade ‘Digital Items’. Blockchain technology is at the backend of these transactions as it maintains the ledger, chain of purchases, authenticity, and necessary verifications.
Currently, NFTs support Ethereum ERC-721 and ERC-1155 Standard. Unlike normal currency or cryptocurrency, NFTs are unique and are not interchangeable.
Understanding the opportunity to trade in virtual, intangible, or digital objects, several artists have readily adopted NFTs as the platform to hawk their creations that reside on a computer network.
— jack (@jack) March 6, 2021
Valuables, a relatively new platform that deals in NFTs, has put up Jack Dorsey’s first-ever Tweet for auction. Interested buyers can place their bids.
Currently, the highest bid is $2.5 Million. It is from a user who identifies himself as Sina Estavi.
Valuables FAQ observes that when buyers purchase an NFT from their platform, they are actually buying a unique “digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator.”
Speaking about Dorsey’s digitally-autographed NFT, Valuables has confirmed that the Tweet will remain public. In other words, Twitter users will continue to have viewing rights to the first Tweet of the world.
Why would buyers be interested in a publicly available digital-only product?
Justifying NFT’s acquisition is a little difficult. After all, buyers aren’t getting any tangible product that they can showcase. Moreover, their acquisition not only resides on the internet, anyone could essentially screenshot or copy the same.
However, NFTs are digitally backed by Blockchain. Hence, there’s a tamper-proof chain of ownership. Having a uniquely identified token (which is the core aspect and appeal of Blockchain) gives people abilities on the internet that they didn’t have before.
NFTs grant the ability to exclude, “own”, and prove uniqueness in a digital context. For example, artists could create special content or digital prop (NFT) and offer/sell them to their select fans. There could be special NFT tickets for a special event.
Non-Fungible Tokens may sound odd, but there’s a lot of potential to a technology that can authenticate, authorize, trace, and prove chain of ownership in a digital world. Legal documents, certificates, copyrights, etc. are just some of the many examples of digital inventory that could benefit from Blockchain-backed NFT.