Twitter's founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet which was sold as a non fungible token last year for $2.9 million might now fetch under $14,000.
Sina Estavi, CEO of Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle, bought the NFT in March 2021 – at the beginning of the NFT boom – for $2.9 million, making headlines.
The tweet reads “just setting up my twttr."
This month, Estavi listed the NFT for $48 million on NFT marketplace Opensea and tweeted that he would give 50 percent of the proceeds to charity. As of Friday, however, the highest bid was about $13,940.
The very same day Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion.
NFTs are essentially unique digital receipts which can prove ownership of an underlying digital file. Even though the underlying file can be copied and pasted freely, the unique receipt will only belong to the true owner since it can't be replicated.
NFTs Losing Steam?
Estavi, who lives in Malaysia, was arrested in Iran last May for "disrupting the country's economic system" and was freed in February, according to Reuters.
He told the agency he was no longer sure if he would sell the NFT.
"My offer to sell was high and not everyone could afford it... It's important to me who wants to buy it, I will not sell this NFT to anyone because I do not think everyone deserves this NFT," he said.
The NFT market which saw a massive boom starting June 2021 and upticks in November and January is showing signs of slowing down once again.
According to NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam, global monthly sales of NFTs fell from almost $5 billion in August, to $2.4 billion in March, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to market tracker NonFungible, the average sale price of an NFT is now around $2,100, down from over $6,800 in January. Primary sales of NFTs have also dipped from nearly 26,000 per day at the beginning of the year to around 5000 per day.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that we’re seeing a little cooling off like we’re seeing in other markets as well," Jonathan Victor, NFT and gaming lead at Protocol Labs told WSJ.
He said that, after the high valuations of 2021, the market is now broadening and the focus is shifting to the utility that NFTs provide, instead of just the novelty factor.
The NFT market is also plagued by rampant plagiarism and stolen content. Cent, the platform on which Dorsey's tweet was first sold, temporarily suspended most transactions in February, due to this.
Scams and phishing attacks have also skyrocketed.
(With inputs from Reuters and The Wall Street Journal)
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