Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's tweet auctioned for $2.4 million
Twitter CEO Jock Dorsey's first-ever tweet was auctioned for a whopping $2.4 million (around Rs. 18 crore). The Twitter founder declared that the entire auction proceeds would be donated to charity of Dorsey's choice, fittingly in the form of Bitcoins. The winning bid for the tweet came from Sina Estavi, who is the CEO of Malaysian crypto exchange CryptoLand and blockchain firm Bridge Oracle.
Dorsey donates proceeds to African COVID-19 relief as Bitcoins
Dorsey had tweeted promising that the $2.4 million proceeds will be converted to Bitcoins and then donated to GiveDirectly's initiative to provide COVID-19 relief to Africa. The endeavor, which is currently operating in four African countries, has reached $120.4 million of its $160 million goal. Dorsey's donation will account for 1.5 percent of the total target.
What is NFT and how it differs from Bitcoin
The tweet has been sold as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), which are blockchain-driven digital entities whose ownership is tracked using Ethereum infrastructure. What separates NFTs from Bitcoins and other blockchain tokens is their non-fungible nature, which basically means there is only one unique NFT that cannot be duplicated or split into parts. This makes them ideal for trading and collecting art, memes, and media.
Tweet auctioned on dedicated tweet marketplace Valuables
The 15-year-old tweet has Dorsey simply saying, "just setting up my twttr". The tweet was put up for auction as an NFT on Valuables, which is a digital marketplace dedicated to trading tweets. Valuables likens the idea of collecting tweets to collection of autographed baseball cards. The tweets are digitally autographed by the creators and irrevocably assigned to the buyer using Ethereum's blockchain infrastructure.
Auction winner is blockchain entrepreneur who floated his own cryptocurrency
Malaysian blockchain entrepreneur Estavi who won the auction was recently in the news due to a high-profile lawsuit involving Bitcoin.com's CEO Mate Tokay. Tokay sued Estavi for allegedly failing to pay him $525,000 worth of Bridge Tokens (BRG) as compensation for attracting $8 million investment to Estavi's BRG initial exchange offering in late-2020. Estavi's cryptocurrency has risen in value despite the lawsuit.
