I know you will be wondering why someone will buy something as trivial as a tweet, least you worry about how much it was paid. Before we begin the discourse, what does Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) truly mean?.
“fungible” is a term used for things that can be exchanged for other things of the same kind. The Nigerian Naira is fungible, because you and I can exchange #100 notes, and each of us will still have the same amount. Most cryptocurrencies are fungible, for instance, a Bitcoin is a Bitcoin and nothing more. However, items such as cars, houses, and land are nonfungible – this means that they have unique qualities, and you can’t just exchange them for others of the same type. Will you be willing to exchange your 1acre of land in Lagos for 1acre of land in Ibadan? Even if you can, you will first consider the value of one over the other.
In cryptocurrency, Tokens mean units of value stored on a blockchain. Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin are tokens, however, not all cryptocurrencies can be used as money. Tokens can be tied to tangible goods like an art, a jewel or intangible goods, like access to a private chat room or storage space on a cloud server. This is to say that anything rare and unique can be an NFT.
Having established the fact that NFTs are digital files that are not easily accessible, which can be stored in a blockchain wallet. NFTs are like the certificate of authenticity you might get if you bought an expensive sculpture. The sculpture could be copied or forged — or someone could break into your house and steal it — but because you have the certificate of authenticity, you can prove that you are the owner of the original.
The Multi-Million Dollar Tweet
Meet Sina Estavi, chief executive at Malaysian crypto project Bridge Oracle who bought the NFT of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Estiva bought in March 2021 Jack Dorsey’s first tweet of 2006, “just setting up my Twitter.” for $2.9 million with the hope to resell it for $48 million.
Estiva Tweeted that he plans to donate 50% of the proceeds to charity. However, things didn’t turn out for him as planned. At the deadline, Estavi only received seven total offers that ranged from 0.09 ETH ETHUSD, -0.70%, or $274, to 0.0019 ETH, or $5.80, the highest bid stood at less than $300.
Estavi called on Elon Musk, the world’s richest and current Twitter’s largest shareholder, to bid for the NFT. Musk sounded uninterested stating that he already bought 9.2% of Twitter’s outstanding stock and thinking of buying the remainder of the company’s stock from other shareholders.
Optimistic Estavi didn’t seem discouraged at all, “The deadline I set was over, but if I get a good offer, I might accept it, I might never sell it,” More bids have come in since Wednesday, with the highest one offering 3.3 ETH, or about $10,048, he told CoinDesk.
Estavi also called on Elon Musk the world’s richest and Twitter’s largest shareholder, to bid for the NFT. Musk in an uninteresting remark disclosed last week that he had purchased 9.2% of Twitter’s outstanding stock and set to buy the remaining stock of other shareholders.
Though Estavi owns the digital asset representing Dorsey’s tweet,
it is uncertain if he owns the copyright of it. Dorsey or Twitter could choose to remove the tweet anything which will nullify any claim Estavi has on the tweet. Let’s wait and see how things unfold.
