The First-Ever Tweet in NFT Format Sold for $2.9 Million in March 2021. The Most Recent Bid Is $132. A once-buzzy NFT faced yet another super-low bid on Sunday. It has lost almost 100% of its initial value.
By Gabrielle Bienasz •
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The NFT of the first-ever Tweet, which was first purchased for $2.9 million, has suffered yet another ground-floor bid — of $132.72.
just setting up my twttr
— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, auctioned an NFT of the first Tweet in March 2021.
Ending this March 21st
— jack (@jack) March 9, 2021
Will immediately convert proceeds to #Bitcoin
And send to @GiveDirectly Africa Response
Dorsey sold the NFT for $2.9 million, converted the proceeds to Bitcoin, and then donated it to the organization Give Directly, an NGO that allows people to donate string-free to impoverished people around the world.
The NFT's new owner was Sina Estavi, CEO of Malaysia-based cryptocurrency company Bridge Oracle. He then went to list it the following month, and his plan was to then sell the NFT for $48 million and donate half of the result to charity — which failed miserably, per CoinDesk.
One of its biggest bids was around $280.
But on OpenSea, billed as the world's largest NFT market, someone put in another offer Sunday of even less money, of 0.1 Ethereum, or $132.72.
Owners can run specific auctions on OpenSea, but any user can just put in a bid for an NFT at any time.
Estavi is still the NFT owner, and it is unclear if he has any interest in selling right now. He did not respond to a request for comment via Twitter DM.
Estavi is also coming back from a rocky few years. According to CoinDesk, he was arrested in May 2021 for "disrupting the economic system" in his home base of Iran and has been accused of misleading investors.
But, he was released after nine months, and in April 2022, set out to revive his crypto token, BRG.
Estavi bought his NFT Tweet in a different world for crypto and tech-related ventures at large.
The same month Estavi bought the Twitter NFT, The New York Times raked in over half a million for an NFT of one of its columns.
Amazon reported a quarterly profit in May 2021 that was 220% higher than the same quarter in 2020. Technology stocks in general pushed the S&P 500 to a record high in October 2021.
But it all came crashing down. The tech industry at large has been rocked by layoffs. One high-flying cryptocurrency startup, Celcius, went belly-up, pausing withdrawals and filing for bankruptcy.
NFTs are purchased with cryptocurrency, and while the currency has had low periods, this year has been particularly brutal. Bitcoin, for example, lost nearly 60% of its value since the start of the year.
