Historic tweet by Jack Dorsey hits $2.5M in digital auction

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is auctioning off an important piece of the social media platform's history.

Dorsey shared a link to digital auctioning platform Valuable on Saturday, which shows his very first tweet is being offered to the highest bidder, a March 21, 2006 tweet in which Dorsey wrote "just setting up my twttr".

As of Monday, the highest bid is at $2.5 million from Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi.

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The tweet is being sold as a non-fungible token, or NFT. An NFT is a unique digital token that can turn any item in the digital world from tweets to Gifs, to videos into a collectible asset. Like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, NFTs are sold and bought via the blockchain. Non-fungible tokens verify authenticity and ownership by encrypting the creator's signature on the blockchain.

The tweet is being sold on a platform called Valuables. The new digital outfit is built on blockchain outlets Ethereum and Polygon which enable users to tokenize and sell individual tweets.

"Owning any digital content can be a financial investment, hold sentimental value, and create a relationship between collector and creator," Valuable said on its Frequently Asked Questions page. "Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable."

Anyone can put their public tweets up for sale using Valuables, and 95% of the money made will go to the tweet's original creator, while the rest goes to the company. For secondary sales, 87.5% goes to the seller, 10% goes to the creator, and 2.5% goes to Valuable.

The money is automatically credited to the seller's crypto wallet when they agree to sell. It generally takes an hour for the transaction to clear on the Ethereum network.

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Dorsey, an advocate of digital currencies, recently put #bitcoin in his Twitter bio.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
TWTR	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.
SQ	BLOCK INC.	73.50	-3.49	-4.53%

Square, where Dorsey is chief executive officer, purchased 3,318 bitcoins in February, an investment of $170 million. The move came after the company purchased approximately 4,709 bitcoins at an aggregate price of $50 million in October. In addition, Twitter recently told CNBC that it was considering paying employees in cryptocurrencies if they prefer that form of payment.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
TSLA	TESLA INC.	161.48	-9.57	-5.59%

Meanwhile, electric automaker Tesla said in an SEC filing last month that it was investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin to “further diversify and maximize” the return on its cash. The company also noted that it expects to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for its cars in the "near future."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that he was a "supporter of bitcoin" when asked about his thoughts on cryptocurrencies during a live-streamed interview on the popular audio chat app Club House on Feb.1.

“Many friends of mine have tried to convince me to get involved in bitcoin for a long time,” he said.

Like Dorsey, Musk has auctioned off his own tweets on Valuable. Estavi recently bid $20,000 on a Musk tweet of an eggplant while a Lion King meme posted by Musk currently has a bid of $3,500.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
MA	MASTERCARD INC.	459.79	-5.59	-1.20%

In addition, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the U.S., recently announced that it would be the first global bank to create a "digital assets" service later in 2021. Credit card company MasterCard also said it would start supporting certain cryptocurrencies later this year.

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Interested buyers can still make a counter offer for Dorsey's tweet as long as the bid is an increase of 10% or $1 compared to the previous offer, whichever is more. Though all values will be shown in US dollars, counter-offer minimums will be calculated using the current price of Ethereum.