Twitter CEO and Billionaire bitcoin advocate Jack Dorsey is auctioning off an important piece of the social media platform’s history. Indeed, Jack Dorsey is offering to sell his very first tweet by auctioning it as a special digital asset class known as a non-fungible token. As a long-time cryptocurrency advocate, jumping into the NFT craze is not a surprising move by Dorsey.
The billionaire shared a link to digital auctioning platform Valuable on Saturday, which shows his very first tweet is being offered to the highest bidder, a March 21, 2006 tweet in which Dorsey wrote “just setting up my twttr”.
Crypto boss Justin Sun upped his bid twice, ultimately offering $2 million for Dorsey’s tweet. But the highest bid for the piece of Twitter history is from Sina Estavi, CEO of the Bridge Oracle platform, according to the Valuable’s website.
As of Tuesday, the highest bid is at $2.5 million from Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi. The tweet is being sold on a platform called Valuables. The new digital outfit is built on blockchain outlets Ethereum and Matic Network which enable users to tokenize and sell individual tweets.
“Owning any digital content can be a financial investment, hold sentimental value, and create a relationship between collector and creator,” Valuable said on its Frequently Asked Questions page. “Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable.”
Anyone can put their public tweets up for sale using Valuables, and 95% of the money made will go to the tweet’s original creator, while the rest goes to the company. For secondary sales, 87.5% goes to the seller, 10% goes to the creator, and 2.5% goes to Valuable.
Selling tweets through digital auction platforms have already gained traction as popular digital collector’s items. Recently, a Miami-based art collector sold a 10-second video for $6.6 million at a Christie’s auction.
The money is automatically credited to the seller’s crypto wallet when they agree to sell. It generally takes an hour for the transaction to clear on the Ethereum network.
Square, where Dorsey is chief executive officer, purchased 3,318 bitcoins in February, an investment of $170 million. The move came after the company purchased approximately 4,709 bitcoins at an aggregate price of $50 million in October. In addition, Twitter recently said that it was considering paying employees in cryptocurrencies if they prefer that form of payment.
Meanwhile, electric automaker Tesla said in an SEC filing last month that it was investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin to “further diversify and maximize” the return on its cash. The company also noted that it expects to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its cars in the “near future.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that he was a “supporter of bitcoin” when asked about his thoughts on cryptocurrencies during a live-streamed interview on the popular audio chat app Club House on Feb.1. “Many friends of mine have tried to convince me to get involved in bitcoin for a long time,” he said.
Like Dorsey, Musk has auctioned off his own tweets on Valuable. Estavi recently bid $20,000 on a Musk tweet of an eggplant while a Lion King meme posted by Musk currently has a bid of $3,500.
In addition, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the U.S., recently announced that it would be the first global bank to create a “digital assets” service later in 2021. Credit card company MasterCard also said it would start supporting certain cryptocurrencies later this year.
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