Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia, put up for auction the computer with which he launched the site and an NFT of the first publication of the web encyclopedia.
The personal computer that Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales was using when he launched it 20 years ago and a certified digital object (NFT) from the first page of the famous web encyclopedia, are for sale at Christie’s auction house.
Exhibited at Christie’s New York headquarters, this pink computer is the one used by Wales “for the development and research of the portal’s launch on January 15, 2001,” the auction house wrote in a statement.
The second batch is an NFT, a unique certified digital object thanks to blockchain technology, “created by Jimmy Wales and which shows what Wikipedia was like when he installed it and launched it with the message ‘Hello world'”, Peter Klarnet explained to AFP, Christie’s book and manuscript specialist.
The image, in JPEG format, It is interactive and the buyer will be able to “edit” it to “recreate the experience of building Wikipedia”, before it “returns to the initial state thanks to a timer,” Christie’s writes.
In the statement, Jimmy Wales announces that part of the sale will finance his WT.Social project, “a decentralized social network, without commercial purposes, without advertising or monitoring or data collection and without disinformation,” he explains.
On its home page, WT.Social describes itself as the “non-toxic social network”.
The two lots will be on sale until December 15 with a starting price of $ 100 each, but Christie’s is confident of selling them “for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” explained Peter Klarnet.
New sensation from some collectors or digital investor groups such as DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), lNFTs are now an unavoidable part of auction houses and the art market, such as the program that gave rise to the web – sold for $ 5.4 million in early July 2021 at Sotheby’s – or a fully digital work by American artist Beeple that fetched $ 69.3 million in March at Christie’s , a record for an NFT.
Christie’s also announced this Friday the online sale, until December 9, of a bulletproof vest worn by rapper Kanye West on August 5, 2021 in Atlanta during the presentation of his latest album, Donda. (I)
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