The first tweet from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is well known on the platform. Published almost 15 years ago, the tweet read, “configuring my twttr.” While there is no doubt that it is significant in popular culture, Dorsey apparently also seems to believe that it has monetary value. And it looks like he’s right.
Dorsey posted a Link for the auction, hosted by a platform called Valuables, on Twitter on Friday without a comment or explanation. Some of you may be wondering, how can he sell a tweet? Dorsey is selling a “non-fungible token” from his tweet, known as NFT. Things that are not fungible are unique and cannot be exchanged for something of equal value. Tokens represent an asset on your blockchain, or the mechanism by which cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ether, are bought and sold.
Now, what exactly does the person who wins the auction earn by Dorsey’s tweet? According Valuables, you receive a “digital tweet certificate, unique because it was signed and verified by the creator”. Despite the sale, the tweet will remain alive on Twitter.
“This autographed digital certificate will only be issued once at Valuables. It is signed using encryption and includes metadata from the original tweet, such as: when the tweet was posted, what is the content of the tweet’s text, the date and time of the tweet and the digital signature of the creator’s encrypted wallet address, ”said Valuables.
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While this may not seem like a big buy, or even a buy worth the millions that people are betting on, buying NFTs is one thing at the moment. Grimes sold NFTs of his art, which included videos, for about $ 6 million earlier this month. In February, an NFT from the Nyan Cat GIF sold for about 300 Ether. The cryptocurrency was worth approximately $ 587,000 at the time of the sale.
How NPR pointed out, while some may think you are just buying something similar to a barcode, it can also be seen as a certificate of authenticity for a version of art registered on a blockchain as being yours.
“What you’re buying is code that manifests itself as images,” Donna Redel, of Fordham Law School, told the vehicle. “You are buying a different art format.”
However, buying an NFT generally does not mean that you are obtaining the copyright or trademark of the original. Artists can sell multiple NFTs for their work. Case in point: Grimes has released thousands of copies of two NFTs that she put up for auction. Per The Verge, nearly 700 copies of the NFTs, which consisted of short videos, were sold for $ 5.18 million.
Until the publication of this blog, the highest bid for Dorsey’s tweet is $ 2.5 million. The person who made the jaw-dropping bid for Dorsey’s tweet was Hakan Estavi, CEO of Oracle Bridge, a company based in Malaysia that uses Oracle systems to enable smart contracts on the TRON network.
However, on Twitter on Saturday, Estavi said he would be really willing to shell out a much more for the tweet. He’s willing to go up to $ 10 million.
Gizmodo contacted Twitter to ask why Dorsey was selling the tweet and what he planned to do with the money generated from the sale. A Twitter spokesman said the company did not comment.
You know what they say: art gets its value from what you are willing to pay for it. I think that means that tweets are art now.