Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s web source code NFT sells for $5.4 million
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22557765/www-nft-tim-berners-lee-sothebys-source-code
Reported today in The Verge.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee's web source code NFT sells for $5.4 million
The latest mega-auction of an NFT tied to a piece of internet history is complete, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee selling a digital item representing source code to the original web browser for $5,434,500. Berners-Lee is credited as the creator of the world wide web that this site is published on, and the NFT includes a time-stamped signed archive including 10,000 lines of the source code that initially made it possible to display an HTML document, among other things.
For comparison, the highest price for an NFT remains the $69 million or so MetaKovan paid to own Everydays: the First 5000 Days by the artist Beeple, while Jack Dorsey's digital collectible representing the first tweet on Twitter sold for a little less than $3 million.
NFTs allow you to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and keep track of who owns them using the blockchain. NFT stands for "non-fungible token," and it can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, animated GIFs, songs, or items in video games. An NFT can either be one-of-a-kind, like a real-life painting, or one copy of many, like trading cards, but the blockchain keeps track of who has ownership of the file.
NFTs have been making headlines lately, some selling for millions of dollars, with high-profile memes like Nyan Cat and the "deal with it" sunglasses being put up for auction. There's also a lot of discussion about the massive electricity use and environmental impacts of NFTs. If you (understandably) still have questions, you can read through our NFT FAQ.
After the auction was announced, there was some backlash to the plan, whether due to general unease over NFTs, environmental concerns, or otherwise. Berners-Lee and his