World Wide Web source code NFT sells at auction for $5.4 million

AppleInsider

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's original source code for the World Wide Web, represented as a non-fungible token (NFT), has sold at auction for $5.4 million.

Credit: Sotheby's

The NFT, which is a type of blockchain-based asset that records ownership of digital items, sold at Sotheby's for $5,434,500 on Wednesday, the auction house has announced. It had a starting bid of $1,000.

Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, first announced the auction earlier in 2021. The NFT includes various digital items related to the invention of the web, including 9,555 lines of code written on a NeXT computer between 1990 and 1991.

All items in the lot were digitally signed by Berners-Lee. Proceeds from the auction will benefit initiatives that Berners-Lee and his wife support.

Berners-Lee conceived and wrote the code for the World Wide Web, a system for navigating the internet, between 1989 and 1991. The English scientist never patented the code, instead choosing to release it into the public domain. That code built the foundation for the internet as we know it today.

NFTs have exploded in popularity in recent months. Back in March, an NFT created by artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as "Beeple," sold for a final price of $69.3 million on the auction block. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million.

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xed

I can't think of another human being alive that has directly affected as many lives for the better as Sir Berners-Lee.

Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the RNA vaccine, has a good chance to be up there, but we're talking about decades of Berners-Lee creation on nearly all the world's population v something that only has doses equaling 1/3 of the world's population, by my last count.

xed

lmasanti said:

First: he surely deserves that money!

Second: $5,434,500 / 9,555 lines of code means: $568,76 per line!

Compared to other things people buy for historical reasons this seems pretty damn cheap. 

strangedays

When you have more money than you know what to do with, sure, a digitally-signed image may seem like a pretty good idea...but, it's still f'ing dense.

genovelle

AppleInsider said:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's original source code for the World Wide Web, represented as a non-fungible token (NFT), has sold at auction for $5.4 million.

Credit: Sotheby's

The NFT, which is a type of blockchain-based asset that records ownership of digital items, sold at Sotheby's for $5,434,500 on Wednesday, the auction house has announced. It had a starting bid of $1,000.

Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, first announced the auction earlier in 2021. The NFT includes various digital items related to the invention of the web, including 9,555 lines of code written on a NeXT computer between 1990 and 1991.

All items in the lot were digitally signed by Berners-Lee. Proceeds from the auction will benefit initiatives that Berners-Lee and his wife support.

Berners-Lee conceived and wrote the code for the World Wide Web, a system for navigating the internet, between 1989 and 1991. The English scientist never patented the code, instead choosing to release it into the public domain. That code built the foundation for the internet as we know it today.

NFTs have exploded in popularity in recent months. Back in March, an NFT created by artist Mike Winkelmann, also known as "Beeple," sold for a final price of $69.3 million on the auction block. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million.

Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.

Wow! The code was written on a NeXt computer! The OS that became the beginnings of Mac OS X

crowley

Utter madness

marvin

StrangeDays said:

When you have more money than you know what to do with, sure, a digitally-signed image may seem like a pretty good idea...but, it's still f'ing dense.

It's not money as such, this is an offshoot from cryptocurrency. The payments are made using cryptocurrency. The person who bought the $69m Beeple NFT was someone who claimed to be a crypto 'billionaire':

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/30/vignesh-sundaresan-known-as-metakovan-on-paying-69-million-for-beeple-nft.html
https://decrypt.co/62547/beeple-immediately-changed-his-53-million-nft-takings-from-eth-to-usd

This is like having monopoly money. Early crypto investors put in very little investment (some just mined the coins) and many crypto coins have gone up in value 1000x or more. Quite a few wallets hold $1b+ equivalent:

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

These billions are similar to the way stocks are valued, except not regulated:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-better-estimate-bitcoins-true-trading-volume-by-fiat-currencies-and-against-altcoins-41623ddc9827
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/03/22/95-of-reported-bitcoin-trading-volume-is-fake-says-bitwise

Apple, Microsoft etc are valued at $2t+ but they don't make trillions in revenue every year, they're valued at a multiple of their earnings. The overall value is based on how many shares multiplied by how much people are willing to buy new shares at.

Cryptocurrencies have been heavily manipulated to bring the coin prices up over the last few years, some of this is done by exchanging the coins against each other and then marketing the gains to investors.

If you had a $1b in fake money, spending a few million is not much of a concern. One of the motivations is to try and promote more use of cryptocurrency. If they convince more people to use crypto for art purchases, it gets more investors using crypto again, which can increase the value of their wallets more. If buying a $5m NFT boosts a crypto coin's value 20%, a wallet with $1b goes up $200m in value.

There will be more things like NFTs that seem crazy but they are all to get more people using crypto because people have little reason to use it normally. The more mainstream use and daily volume, the more the value goes up. The gains then convince people that if they don't invest now, they'll miss out:

https://coinmixed.eu/what-is-fomo/

These investments always mask the reality that in order for someone to gain big, it has to come at someone else's expense. The Bitcoin millionaires who cashed out did so because they sold coins at inflated values to someone else hoping to get the same kind of gains.

edited July 2021

randominternetperson

So people can use fake money to purchase the right to pretend they own some digital stuff that literally anyone else can view/use for free.  Awesome.  It makes the fake Brooklyn Bridge sales seem quaint in comparison.

rayz2016

I just … don’t get it. 

filemakerfeller

Xed said:

I can't think of another human being alive that has directly affected as many lives for the better as Sir Berners-Lee.

That would be "Sir Timothy" or "Sir Tim" - the "Sir" title from a knighthood is used with the recipient's first name, not last name.

But I agree, his influence has been huge.

xed

FileMakerFeller said:

Xed said:

I can't think of another human being alive that has directly affected as many lives for the better as Sir Berners-Lee.

That would be "Sir Timothy" or "Sir Tim" - the "Sir" title from a knighthood is used with the recipient's first name, not last name.

But I agree, his influence has been huge.

That's news to me. Thanks.

The prefix is used with the holder's given name or full name, but never with the surname alone. For example, whilst Sir Alexander and Sir Alexander Fleming would be correct, Sir Fleming would not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir