Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to donate proceeds of $3.7m tweet NFT to GiveDirectly

A seemingly innocuous 15-year-old message from a tech billionaire has been sold to a man who thinks it will be the next “Mona Lisa”.

Could this be the Mona Lisa of tweets? One investor thinks so.

Billionaire Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has accepted the sale of his first ever tweet as a non-fungible token (NFT), and promised to donate the more than $3.7 million it netted to charity.

Mr Dorsey’s tweet was put up for sale on Cent network’s Valuables site earlier this month.

The novel sale added to swelling interest in the emerging field of “non-fungible tokens”, which work on the blockchain technology used by cryptocurrencies.

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Could this be the Mona Lisa of tweets? One investor thinks so.

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While cryptocurrencies are intended to be a form of tradeable currency, NFTs are more like collector’s items, (you can read more about the fascinating and at times bewildering new world of NFTs here).

The NFT of Mr Dorsey’s tweet has been sold to BridgeOracle and Cryptoland CEO Sina Estavi for 1630.5825601 “Ether”.

In traditional dollars that translates to $US2,915,835.47 ($A3,760,281.83).

Mr Dorsey previously announced the bidding wouldn’t continue beyond March 21, when he planned to cash out and donate the money to the GiveDirectly charity, which provides aid in the form of cold hard cash to people in African nations.

He’s now announced the proceeds have been converted to Bitcoin and sent to the charity.

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Sent to @GiveDirectly Africa fund 🌍Thank you, @sinaEstavi. pic.twitter.com/aEZu07auLV

— jack (@jack) March 22, 2021

Incredible - huge thanks @jack and @sinaEstavi – looking forward to getting this $ into recipients' hands soon https://t.co/0VBsie8Nx8

— GiveDirectly (@GiveDirectly) March 22, 2021

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Mr Estavi will be hoping his new NFT does what many bullish investors predict it will and increase in value in the future.

On Twitter, fittingly, he said that in the future “people will realise the true value of this tweet” and likened it to the Mona Lisa.

This is not just a tweet!

I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting https://t.co/vnA5pz3esQ

— Estavi (@sinaEstavi) March 22, 2021

Originally published as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to donate proceeds of $3.7m tweet NFT to GiveDirectly