The first ever tweet in the world, ‘just setting up my twttr’ is up for grabs but unless you have more than a cool $2 million dollars as spare change, this non-fungible token (NFT) will be bought by Justin Sun, a Chinese Cryptocurrency Modern Emperor as his is the highest bid to date.
Throughout history humankind has been collecting objects. Earlier shells, pebbles, small rocks and other small items were used for barter or kept as collectibles for future exchanges. As humankind evolved art, music pieces, classic furniture, old tech and musical instruments and other tangible objects became a “must have” piece for the rich and the famous.
As sports and games evolved to capture the fancy of billions, sports memorabilia became “hot property.” With the advent of the twenty first century, a unique digital signature or digital art or other media on a social media platform has become a coveted object to own by the wealthy.
In 2017, NFTs reached mainstream sales when CryptoKitties started selling virtual cats. However, Andrew Steinwold, a writer and podcaster says that NFTs originally came into existence in 2012, when Colored Coins cryptocurrency was created. Block chain-backed market placed such as Nifty Gateway, Open Sea and Rarble are popular marketplaces for NFTs. In February, one of the oldest auction houses– Christie’s, put a piece of digital art carrying a token, for auction.
Jack Dorsey had put his March 2006 tweet, the first one ever in the history of the social media platform, on Valuables by Cent, a marketplace for NFTs on Twitter. A Friday tweet about it rekindled bids including one from Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Justin Sun from New York, whose bid stands at $20 million on Saturday morning, as per a report from Bloomberg.
On Friday after Dorsey’s post which included a link to Valuables by Cent, offers poured in and reached up to $88,888.88. The last offer seen was 20 million by Sun who had also won a charity bid in the past, which included a dinner with Warren Buffet.
The Twitter market place compares NFTs to baseball cards with autographs. There is only a single exclusive signed version of the tweet. If an owner of the tweet is willing to sell it, the buyer owns the tweet forever. A buyer gets an autographed digital certificate, with metadata of the original.
NFTs or nifties are also similar to cryptocurrencies but cannot be exchanged. They have collector value and can be still images, GIFs, music clips, videos, graffiti, memes, digital art and more. Although they have been around for close to a decade, Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, “just setting up my twttr” and Jason Sun’s $20 million bid has created a buzz like none before.
