It may very well dumbfound many that the world’s first-ever tweet sold for a seven-figure amount some years ago. That was down to two things: the rarity of the item, and the rise of a new technology that made that sale possible in the first place. Here, we introduce you to both, first looking at NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and then at how they are becoming so collectible, in order to show you how this huge sale happened. Strap in, buckle up, and prepare to get to grips with the online marketplace’s next big trend.
The Tweet
The first-ever tweet on Twitter is of course a very rare item. There are over 500 million tweets posted every single day, but only one can take the place of being the very first of them all. This tweet, of course, was from the founder of Twitter, which means there’s a celebrity element to the tweet too. Twitter also plays a huge part in online culture overall, so this is a hugely coveted addition to someone’s digital assets. No wonder someone wanted to buy it for so much cash. But how were they actually able to do it?
Making a Sale
If you’re wondering how you can sell a tweet – how it changes hands, and how the owner of the tweet can actually prove in any substantial way that they own it and not the original tweeter – you’re on the right track. Selling something is easy when you have something tangible, such as when you sell and buy a house. A digital asset is different, so a different mechanism is used to register the sale. That mechanism is called blockchain technology, and the deed that passes between sellers and buyers is called an NFT.
NFTs
An NFT is a Non-Fungible Token, which is essentially a marker on a digital ledger that shows that you’re the sole owner of a digital asset that no one else can copy or claim to own themselves. Without this kind of technology, it’s difficult to imagine anyone buying a tweet in the first place, as they won’t be able to keep it as their own. If you’re interested in what the NFT market looks like today, you should head over to an NFT marketplace to discover what’s for sale in this intriguing new field – and what’s selling for a high value.
The Tweet
So, back to the original tweet. It is obviously a collector’s item, because it was the first-ever broadcasted message on one of the internet’s most popular websites. It also possesses that sought-after celebrity factor. Ultimately, though, it was the fact that the tweet could be made into an NFT that generated the huge sale of an asset that’s worth almost $3 million. We have the rise of the NFT to thank for this kind of sale, and many subsequent sales that are to come in an interesting, constantly changing market.
Make use of these insights to explore NFTs on your own, seeing which investments might suit you.