Bids for Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet Reach $2.5 Million

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey is auctioning his first ever tweet as a unique digital signature, sparking a frenzy of bids.

The tweet, which reads “just setting up my twttr”, was the first ever to be posted to the platform upon its launch on 21 March, 2006. It is being auctioned on Valuables by Cent – a marketplace for tweets – as a non-fungible token (NFT).

An NFT is a digital certificate attesting to the ownership of a piece of online media, such as an image or video. Despite this ownership, Dorsey’s tweet will remain publicly viewable even after the sale.

The buyer will receive a certificate digitally signed and verified by Dorsey along with the original tweet’s metadata, which contains information including the text of the tweet and its time of posting to the platform.

One noteworthy bidder for the tweet is Justin Sun, founder of blockchain platform TRON and head of streaming platform BitTorrent. He announced his initial half-million-dollar bid in a reply to Dorsey’s original tweet, later updating his bid to $2 million.

95% of the proceeds generated by the sale will go to Dorsey as the tweet’s original creator, with 5% going to Valuables by Cent.

“Owning any digital content can be a financial investment,” the Valuables website says. “[It can] hold sentimental value. Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable.”

Non-fungible tokens have seen a surge of new investment during the pandemic, with Miami art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile having recently sold the certificate of a 10-second video clip – viewable online for free – for $6.6 million after buying it for $67,000.