Twitter Inc CEO Jack Dorsey has sold a digital version of his first tweet for more than US$2.9 million more than two weeks after he announced a digital auction for the post.
The tweet from March 2006, which says: “Just setting up my twttr,” was bought by Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi, according to Valuables by Cent, the digital platform on which the auction was held.
The 15-year-old post was sold as a non-fungible token, or NFT — a digital certificate of authenticity that confirms an item is real and one of a kind by recording the details on a blockchain digital ledger.
Dorsey earlier this month wrote on Twitter that the proceeds would be converted to bitcoin, a digital currency not tied to a bank or government, and given to nonprofit charity GiveDirectly’s Africa Response. The charity has been raising money to support African families who have been financially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Valuables by Cent said that 95 percent of the proceeds from the sale price would go to the tweet’s original creator, while 5 percent of it goes to the platform.
On Monday afternoon, Dorsey posted the bitcoin receipt on Twitter, saying that the funds had been sent to the charity.
“Incredible — huge thanks @jack and @sinaEstavi — looking forward to getting this $ into recipients’ hands soon,” GiveDirectly wrote on Twitter following Dorsey’s announcement.
NFTs are sweeping the online collecting world. A digital artwork by the artist Beeple sold for US$69.4 million in an online auction by a British auction house earlier this month, with an NFT as a guarantee of its authenticity.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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