After spending just over two weeks on the market, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for the strangely specific amount of $ 2,915,835.47. The winning bidder was Sina Estavi, who had the highest bid since the $ 2.5 million bid on March 6. He increased his bid for that number at the last moment (and if anyone can tell us what that number represents, we’d love to hear his theories).
Dorsey put the tweet on digital auction as a NFT – non-fungible token – a digital asset that lives on the Ethereum blockchain on March 5. The bids were handled on a platform called Valuables by Cent, which allows people to bid on tweets that are “autographed by their original creators”.
Bids for Dorsey’s first succinct tweet “just configuring my twttr” on March 21, 2006 increased rapidly and Dorsey later said he would end the bidding on the tweet’s 15th anniversary. According to the Cent’s date and time, Estavi made his final bid, winning on Monday afternoon, and according to Reuters, paid using the Ether cryptocurrency worth 1630.5825601 ETH. Estavi, CEO of blockchain company Bridge Oracle, said Reuters he was “grateful”.
Dorsey said earlier that he would convert the winning offer into bitcoin and donate it to GiveDirectly for his response to Africa, and he tweeted his receipt on Monday afternoon. GiveDirectly is a charitable organization that gives money directly to people living in poverty.
The auction winners at Cent receive a digital certificate for the tweet with the purchase, which is “unique because it was signed and verified by the creator”. Dorsey receives 95% of the sale price and Cent gets 5%, according to his FAQ.