In an age where everything is going digital, it’s only a matter of time before even auction items extend to the digital sphere beyond jewellery of dead monarchs and cars of late footballers.

The latest item to go under hammer making waves is the first tweet by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, which reads “just setting up my twttr” published on 22 March 2006.

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

On auction till 21 March 2021, it has captured a frenzy of interested buyers, reaching US$2.5 million two days ago.

The tweet will be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT), a digital certificate digitally signed and endorsed by Dorsey and the metadata of the original tweet, acknowledging the buyer’s ownership. Despite the purchase, however, the tweet will remain publicly available, so long as Twitter or Dorsey doesn’t delete it.

What is NFT?

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) allow one to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and track the ownership using blockchain technology. It can contain anything digital, from drawings, songs, animated GIFs, items from video games or a Tweet, in this case.

The material will be called an NFT and can either be one-of-a-kind, like a painting, or a copy of many, like trading cards. The blockchain is what’s responsible for keeping track of the ownership of these files.

Lately, NFTs have risen to sell for millions. Some of them include the Nyan Cat meme as well as the “deal with it” sunglasses.

Crypto for Charity

At the height of the bid, Dorsey tweeted that he will converting the proceeds from the auction to Bitcoin and donating it to Give Directly’s Africa Response, a Covid relief effort that sends money with no strings attached to people living under the poverty line in Africa, including Kenya, Rwanda, Liberia, Malawi and Togo.