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Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet has been sold for the equivalent of $2.9m (£2.1m) to a Malaysia-based businessman.
The tweet, which said “just setting up my twttr,” was first published on March 21, 2006 and was auctioned off by Mr Dorsey for charity.
The Malaysia-based buyer Sina Estavi compared the purchase to buying a Mona Lisa painting.
The tweet was bought using the ether cryptocurrency, a rival to bitcoin.
It was sold as a nonfungible token (NFT) on Monday to Mr Estavi, the chief executive of technology firm Bridge Oracle.
An NFT is a unique digital certificate that states who owns a photo, video or other form of online media. Each NFT is unique and acts as a collector’s item that can’t be duplicated, making them rare by design.
NFTs have become hugely popular this year, with expensive digital artwork also being sold this way.
Mr Dorsey said he would convert the proceeds to bitcoin and then donate them to the Give Directly’s Africa Response fund.
“This is not just a tweet!” Mr Estavi posted on Twitter. “I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting.”
This is not just a tweet!
I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting https://t.co/vnA5pz3esQ
— Sina Estavi (@SinaEstavi) March 22, 2021
Source: BBC
