Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is auctioning off the first-ever tweet as digital memorabilia, Reuters reports. The tweet, from Dorsey, reads “just setting up my twittr” and was sent in March 2006.
Dorsey will list the famous post as memorabilia on the “Valuables by Cent” tweet marketplace website for selling tweets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The post received offers on Friday (March 5) for as much as $88,888.88 within minutes of the announcement on the social media site.
There were some older offers for the tweet, suggesting it could’ve been put on offer last December. But it received a deluge of offers by Friday.
NFTs are digital files serving as digital signatures telling who owns certain photos, videos and other online media. Dorsey’s 15-year-old tweet is one of the most famous on the platform and might attract especially high bids from collectors. As of Saturday, the highest bid was for $2 million. That offer was made by Justin Sun, who is a cryptocurrency pioneer and won an auction for Warren Buffet’s charity dinner. The highest bid to date is now $2.5 million by Sina Estavi, CEO of Bridge Oracle
Valuables by Cent was launched three months ago and compares the buying of tweets with purchasing an autographed baseball card, saying there’s “only one unique signed version of the tweet, and if the creator agrees to sell, you can own it forever,” Reuters reports.
The eventual buyer of a tweet gets the autographed digital certificate signed with cryptocurrency. That comes with the metadata of the original tweet.
But, the original tweet will continue to be available on Twitter, according to Valuables.
NFTs have become popular as a novelty value and have begun fetching some very high prices, up to the millions — and in one case, a video clip sold for millions while it could’ve been viewed the same way online for free.
PYMNTS posits that the trend may be more of a fad as people look for new collectibles. That said, blockchain as a tool to underpin transactions has defenders because it irrefutably records transactions, and adds a scarcity that could make NFTs legitimate.