Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is auctioning off the first-ever tweet
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has put up his first-ever tweet for sale as a non-fungible token (NFT). The tweet reads "just setting up my twttr" and was posted on March 22, 2006. The tweet has been listed on Valuables, a tweet marketplace. On Friday, minutes after Dorsey tweeted a link to the listing, offers went as high as $2,500,000.
An NFT is a token representing a unique and irreplaceable digital entity, in this case, Dorsey's tweet. The system relies on the Ethereum blockchain to keep track of who owns a digital item. NFTs can be traded but are not mutually interchangeable like Bitcoin. This is because each NFT is a different digital entity, unlike Bitcoin where one Bitcoin is interchangeable for another.
just setting up my twttr
— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006
Now, Dorsey's sale listing saw the highest bidder ready to part with $2,500,000 (as of this writing) for ownership of his first-ever tweet. The trading platform Valuables compares sale of tweets to sale and trading of autographed baseball cards. It emphasized that only one unique signed version of a tweet exists.
Valuables explained that the tweet's buyer will get an autographed digital certificate signed using cryptography. It will include the metadata of the original tweet. Despite the sale, the tweet will remain online and Dorsey will be shown as the original author for as long as Twitter chooses to keep it that way.
NFTs are all the rage these days, with legendary memes such as Nyan Cat and the "deal with it" sunglasses being listed for auction. In a day and age where each new sociopolitical development kicks up a storm of memes, a system to determine ownership of digital content is the next logical step. However, the price that Jack Dorsey's tweet demands is truly mind-boggling.
