Wikipedia’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales is auctioning off a non-fungible token (NFT) of the site’s very first edit.
Wales wrote “Hello, World!” after establishing Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, and the moment has been captured in an NFT being auctioned by Christie’s, according to a statement from the auction house.
An NFT is a digital material that is linked to the blockchain, the digital ledger records transactions of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Ethereum. Digital artworks and other artefacts can be transformed into a one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that are simple to trade on the blockchain, which has sparked a lot of interest in the art world.
Wikipedia’s is not the first tech giant to create an NFT. The NFT auction in Wales is similar to two previous auctions held by the IT giant.
Tim Berners-Lee auctioned the source code for the World Wide Web as an NFT at Sotheby’s in June for $5.4 million.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million as a non-fungible token in March.
