coincodex.com
Key highlights:
- An NFT representing the source code of the World Wide Web was sold for $5.4 million
- The NFT was authorized by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the auction was handled by Sotheby's
- Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989
World Wide Web source code NFT sells for $5.4 million
NFTs are obviously getting a lot of attention in last few months, despite the overall crypto market decline. For the unaware, an NFT or Non-Fungible Token is a unique digital object that represents ownership of things such as audio, video or text.
On June 23, 2021, Sotheby's, one of the world's largest brokers of art and collectibles, announced an auction for a Non-Fungible Token representing the original source code of the World Wide Web, written by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The source code contains about 9.555 lines of code, written in 1990-1991, a 30-minute visualization of the code, a digital poster of the code and a digital letter by Berners-Lee reflecting on his invention.
As the author commented on the auctioned item, he is not selling the code itself, but a picture of what a source code would be like, if it was stuck on the wall and signed by him. This was already the third auction at Sotheby's, offering NFT's.
Sotheby's put the auction on their public forum, with starting bid at $1.000, therefore basically with almost no reserve. There were multiple bidders, who clearly recognized the value in the auctioned NFT. Half of the bidders were new to Sotheby's and the auction ended with a staggering final price of $5.434.500.
Cassandra Hatton, global head of science and popular culture at Sotheby's, commented:
"The symbolism, the history, the fact that they're coming from the creator is what makes them valuable – and there are lots of people who collect things for exactly those reasons."
The auction was the latest in the series of digital artwork auctions. In March 2021 a digital artwork was sold at Christie's for nearly $70 million. Auctioned NFT carried the title "The First 5000 Days", and contained a collage of 5,000 individual images from American artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple.
Digital artwork interestingly can't and does not exist in physical form and has nevertheless clearly gained remarkable traction. One more proof, that blockchain technology is revolutionizing not only finances, but also other areas in the global community. The question is, who will be next to move on blockchain.