Bids for Jack Dorsey’s first tweet as a digital token reach $2.5 million

“just setting up my twttr,” Dorsey typed on March 21, 2006. This tweet is considered the first-ever tweet by any user on the platform, and it is not immediately clear when the bidding will end for the tweet.

Tech entrepreneur and cryptocurrency platform founder Justin Sun replied to Dorsey’s tweet, informing him that he bid $1 million on the Twitter CEO’s post, later updating his offer to $2 million.

BITCOIN ECLIPSES $1 TRILLION MARKET VALUATION

The current highest bid for Dorsey’s tweet “token” is $2.5 million by a user on Valuables named Estavi or sinaEstavi. None of this would be possible without the help of the NFT, or non-fungible token, trading that’s currently taking the internet by storm.

Every digital entity that becomes an NFT is still able to be shared, copied, and pasted anywhere on the internet. The difference between a standard image and that same image’s NFT is the record of existence of said image on a blockchain, which is substantiated by assigning a unique identifier to show ownership of the NFT.

Once someone owns an NFT on a blockchain, a data structure that holds transactional records, it will show up in the owner’s collection. Users on Valuables can also mint their own content, which means assigning NFT status to a digital entity.

NFTs have skyrocketed in popularity, and three of the top NFT marketplaces (NBA Top Shot, OpenSea, and Beeple) performed a combined $342 million in trading volume in February, according to Decrypt.

NFT brokers allow buyers to purchase ownership of a digital good. The content is usually an image, animation, or video in the form of a unique digital token living on a blockchain, according to Binance Academy, an informational source on cryptocurrency technology and blockchains.

Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin, but its blockchain also supports NFTs, which store extra information that makes them work differently from a typical cryptocurrency exchange.

The NFTs hinge on the idea that they are not fungible, which the academy defines as replicable or interchangeable.

“Fungibility refers to the property of an asset whose individual units are interchangeable and essentially indistinguishable from each other,” Binance defines in a glossary footnote. “For example, all fiat currencies are fungible.”

A painting such as the Mona Lisa or Starry Night would be considered non-fungible, given that there is only one original of each. Similarly, NFTs work through unique encryption technologies attached to online digital content, serving as a form of certification or signature.

Buyers of NFTs do not receive physical items to hang on their wall, instead attaining bragging rights or prestige among peers for certifiably owning digital pieces of content on a blockchain.

NFTs are also speculative assets, and many online stores such as OpenSea offer the ability to resell them, theoretically for much more than their initial value, so long as the support behind NFTs continues.

Other artists have capitalized on massive NFT trades in recent weeks, which translate to hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars, though most NFT transactions are facilitated through cryptocurrency exchanges. Singer and music artist Grimes listed several of her art pieces on the website Nifty Gateway and sold over $6 million to users bidding on her NFTs.

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Athletes are also joining the token-trading craze. A highlight of NBA star Lebron James just sold as an NFT to a buyer for over $200,000, showing the broad reach of the market.