NFT News: 1st Tweets Brings $2.9m
The first message ever fired off at Twitter sold on Monday for $2.9 million when its sender Jack Dorsey accepted the winning bid for the collectible as a "non fungible token" or NFT at an auction.
"Jack accepted the offer from sinaEstavi for $2,915,835.47," read a tweet from the Valuables by Cent auction platform.
"This tweet is now minted on the blockchain."
The profile on the auction-winning account indicated it belonged to Sina Estavi, chief executive of blockchain technology-related startup Bridge Oracle.
A copy of Dorsey's inaugural tweet and a history of the bidding was posted at the v.cent.co website.
Dorsey's tweet highlighted a surge of interest around NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
NFTs use the same blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies to turn anything from art to sports trading cards into virtual collector's items that cannot be duplicated.
Fifteen years ago Dorsey typed out a banal message -- "just setting up my twttr" -- which became the first ever tweet, launching a global platform that has become a controversial and dominant force in civil society.
The short tweet was sent March 21, 2006 by the Twitter co-founder and chief, who said he would donate the money from its sale to charity.
"I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting," Estavi said in a Twitter post.
Dorsey on Monday tweeted thanks to @sinaEstavi, along with a message indicating the proceeds were sent to Give Directly nonprofit in East Africa that helps people living in poverty.
"Hey @jack , thank you for accepting my offer, and I'm glad this money is being donated to charity," Estavi responded in tweet from @sinaEstavi.
AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.
Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?
The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.
Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.