Initially purchased for the tidy sum of US$2.9 million, the NFT (non-fungible token) of the very first tweet in historyissued by the social network’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is now only worth around $1,000.
As the NFT market exploded in March 2021, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sina Estavi acquired ownership of Jack Dorsey’s infamous tweet in March 2006. Sober, the original tweet simply reads “just setting up my twttr” (“just setting up my twttr”). setting up my twttr”, in free translation) and has accumulated more than 140,000 shares on the social network to date. However, the value of its NFT has fallen sharply in the last year and a half.
When Estavi put the NFT up for sale last April, it was asking for $48 million. He promised to donate half of the sum to the charity GiveDirectly, which helps people living in poverty in developing countries.
I decided to sell this NFT ( the world’s first ever tweet ) and donate 50% of the proceeds ( $25 million or more ) to the charity @GiveDirectly
? https://t.co/cnv5rtAEBQ pic.twitter.com/yiaZjJt1p0— Estavi (@sinaEstavi) April 6, 2022
However, no satisfactory offer was made. On Monday, the highest bid on the OpenSea site, which is used to sell NFTs, was just $22.58. On Tuesday, the highest offer had risen slightly to $1,129.10, although still far from the 48 million originally requested by Estavi.
When the entrepreneur bought the tweet in 2021, the NFT market was booming. It is now experiencing more difficult days, as are cryptocurrencies, whose value is in free fall.
Non-fungible tokens, known as NFTs (for “non-fungible tokens”), are certificates of authenticity linked to digital objects such as works of art, pieces of music or videos. These certificates are stored on the blockchain, a technology on which the operation of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is based.