In a world where monetization of products and services have become popular, there are very few things that don’t have a value associated with them. But how about Twitter? Better yet, how about a tweet from Twitter?
That’s right. Tweets have more than viral and social value. They can be lucrative. According to a Bloomberg report, the first-ever tweet by Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is now worth $48 million. That’s 16 times more than the original price point. The historic tweet’s multi-million dollar price tag is being sold on the nonfungible token marketplace, OpenSea.
Sina Estavi, CEO of Bridge Oracle (a Malaysian blockchain service) has an NFT version of the 16-year-old tweet, announcing it was up for sale for 14,969 Ether (equivalent to $48M). In March of 2021, he paid $2.9 million for the original tweet.
Although NFTs are becoming more and more popular, the nearly $50 million sales price can be considered pretty excessive. For context, the gigantic price tag is comparable to the price range for famous works of art produced by historic artists like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, as reported by CoinMarketCap.
In terms of profit, Estavi is not going to use the entire profit of the sale for personal gain. He followed up his original announcement about the sale by promising to donate 50% of the profit to GiveDirectly, a non-profit that gives cash to individuals who live in poverty.
Dorsey supports this initiative associated with the sale but challenged Estavi to give more. He responded via Twitter by asking, “why not 99% of it?” Dorsey made Estavi, GiveDirectly, and Elon Musk (founder and CEO of Tesla), the target of his donation challenge.
I decided to sell this NFT ( the world’s first ever tweet ) and donate 50% of the proceeds ( $25 million or more ) to the charity @GiveDirectly
🖇 https://t.co/cnv5rtAEBQ pic.twitter.com/yiaZjJt1p0— Estavi (@sinaEstavi) April 6, 2022
Estavi responded to Dorsey noting that he was not interested in using the remaining 50% for himself.
“I don’t want the rest for myself; I’d prefer to use the rest to support blockchain projects (@bridge_oracle) and help my people, but your suggestion is valuable to me. If you like, I would donate 100% of it to charity if you let me know,” the Malaysian CEO tweeted.
