NFT crash?

I might well be stealing Mark's thunder here, as he has written extensively on NFTs in the past.

As you'll recall, Mark's opinion on NFTs is that they're basically a scam, with some nasty blockchain environmental downside thrown in. And they're certainly an extremely risky investment vehicle - certainly more on the gamble end of the spectrum.

NFTs were designed as a way of selling the rights to something unique, and usually digital. In the age of the internet, where creating a digital copy of an artwork and distributing it is easy, NFTs gave a way of claiming ownership of that unique thing.

So, one of the “things” that was turned into an NFT was Jack Dorsey's first tweet. Jack Dorsey is CEO of Twitter, and issued its first tweet back in March 2006.

Dorsey's first tweet - seems pricey!

Back in March last year, a crypto “entrepreneur”/conman Sina Estavi purchased the NFT of Dorsey's first tweet for $2.9M USD. Estavi was born in Iran but lives in Malaysia. He was the person behind the ill-fated Crypoland scheme that Mark previously reported on - the one where an island in Fiji would be a paradise where crypto investors (most likely men, known as “crypto-bros”) would hang out.

Sina Estavi

Recently, the NFT of Dorsey's first tweet was listed for sale with an asking price of $48M USD. Estavi pledged to give half of the proceeds of the sale to charity.

However, as of last week, the highest bid for the NFT was $277 USD worth of Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency. I'm guessing his purchase of the NFT might now be viewed as a bad decision. Of course, Estavi is unlikely to allow it to be sold at this price and will likely continue to hold onto it, assuming he can afford to. Maybe the price will rise again in the future when some (bigger fool) thinks it's worth more. Such is the essence of gambling!

Let's hope that this is the end of the madness that is the world of NFTs, though you can bet that something else just is weird and inane (insane?) will arise.