Jack Dorsey's first-ever tweet, which sold as an NFT, or nonfungible token, last year for over $2.9 million, is now only worth thousands of dollars.
In March 2021, Jack Dorsey, then-CEO of Twitter, auctioned his first tweet as an NFT on the "Valuables" platform run by Cent, a blockchain-powered social media network.
The 15 year-old anodyne tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — was purchased by crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for 1,630.58 ether, which was worth an estimated $2.9 million at that time.
Last Wednesday, Estavi announced on Twitter that he was selling the NFT on OpenSea, a NFT trading platform, and planning to donate 50% of its proceeds to charity. However, as of the time this story was published, the highest bid for the tweet was worth $9,968, a $2,905,867 drop in value.
Estavi, who is the chief executive of blockchain company Bridge Oracle, said on Thursday that he "may never sell" the tweet unless he receives a "high bid" of an unspecified amount, according to the BBC.
Estavi appears to be taking the drop in value in stride, however. He retweeted a tweet suggesting that "maybe Elon will buy it" — a reference to Elon Musk's takeover bid for Twitter, which was announced Thursday morning.
Using blockchain technology, NFTs are cryptographic tokens of digital media sold by artists, musicians, celebrities, sports entities and others that can be traded or sold on a decentralized network of computers around the world.
The lack of high bids for such a high-profile NFT suggests there are some limits to the NFT market, which exploded in value over the last two years. Trading in nonfungible tokens totaled $17.6 billion last year, an increase of 21,000% from 2020, according to a report from NFT data company Nonfungible.com.
