The Sale of the First-Ever Tweet as an NFT
In March 2021, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sina Estavi made waves when he paid $2.9 million for an NFT of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first post, subsequently destroyed. However, his attempts to resell it have come to a grinding halt, with the highest offer coming in at almost $10,000 as of Thursday.
After being one of the most expensive purchases of a non-fungible token, or NFT, at the time, it was purchased during a frenzy of interest in niche crypto assets, which have subsequently produced billions of dollars in sales.
Estavi listed the tweet for sales on the prominent NFT marketplace OpenSea last week, with an asking price of $48 million at posting.
Check out my NFT listing on OpenSea! https://t.co/cnv5rtAEBQ via @opensea
— Estavi (@sinaEstavi) April 6, 2022
After bids in the first week totalled hundreds of dollars, the price tag was removed from the property. The highest bid was 3.3 units of the cryptocurrency ether, which is around $10,000 in value as of Thursday. In a Twitter direct message to Reuters, Estavi, who was just released from prison in Iran, said that his offer to sell the NFT was too exorbitant and that not everyone could afford it. He added that he was no longer certain to sell the NFT.
The buyer’s identity is crucial to me; I will not sell this NFT to everybody because I do not believe that everyone deserves this NFT, Estavi remarked.
‘I was a Victim of Cryptocurrency.’
NFTs are a kind of cryptographic asset that may be used to record the ownership of a digital file, such as a picture, a video, or a piece of written text. Unfortunately, there is no assurance as to the value of an NFT, and the market is plagued with scams, fraud, forgeries, and market manipulation, to name a few issues.
Estavi, on the other hand, felt sure about the worth of his acquisition. ‘I was a victim of cryptocurrency.’
“This NFT is more than simply a tweet; it’s the Mona Lisa of the digital world,” he said emphatically.
Estavi, who now resides in Malaysia, said that he was detained in Iran last May while on a business trip and was kept in solitary confinement until he was released in February. In May 2021, Iranian official media announced that he had been charged with “disrupting the country’s economic structure” by the government.
Estavi said that he was detained as a result of the rise of his cryptocurrency exchange, Bridge Oracle, and portrayed himself as a “victim of cryptocurrency.”
Estavi wants to Donate to Africa.
Estavi intends to give charity half of the proceeds, around $25m or more to poverty relief efforts in Africa.. No one has been able to verify the accuracy of these statements about his arrest independently. In an interview with Reuters, Estavi said, “I need the backing of the bitcoin community.” As part of the NFT sale announcement, which was made through a tweet on April 6, he committed to donate half of the revenues, which he estimated to be at least $25 million, to charitable organizations. He said that the remainder would be used to fund Bridge Oracle.
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
