Bids for Twitter co-founder’s first post reach $2.5m

A signed copy of Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities bearing a personal inscription went on sale for £275,000, while a letter signed by physicist Albert Einstein was auctioned for $75,000 (£54,000).

But bids for the first ever tweet look poised to eclipse them both after offers hit $2.5m (£1.8m) in an online auction.

The post will be sold as a digital collectible, or a modern version of an autograph - but instead of passing into a private collection, it will remain on company founder Jack Dorsey's Twitter feed for all to see and it is not clear anything could be done to stop him from deleting it.

Instead the buyer will be given a so-called non-fungible token (NFT), a digital certificate that states who owns a photo, video or other type of digital media. Sina Estavi, boss of software company Bridge Oracle, has made the highest bid so far.

Advocates see NFTs as one of the first successful online systems that enables property rights to be enforced online. However, there is no guarantee they will be worth anything in the long run.

Dorsey’s first post on the social media platform in 2006 said: “just setting up my twttr.”

The tweet was listed for sale on a marketplace for tweets called Valuables by Centin in December, but it gained traction after Mr Dorsey tweeted about it last week.The platform compares the buying of a tweet to that of a more traditional autograph or piece of memorabilia.

A total of 95pc of the proceeds from a sale will go to the original creator with the remainder going to Valuables by Centin.

“Owning any digital content can be a financial investment,” the firm says.

“[It can] hold sentimental value. Like an autograph on a baseball card, the NFT itself is the creator’s autograph on the content, making it scarce, unique, and valuable.”

One of the most valuable signatures at present is US president George Washington’s inscription on his personal copy of the Constitution. It was sold at auction in 2012 for $9.8m, but its value is likely to have increased.

Meanwhile, one of the most expensive inscriptions by a musician belongs to guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, whose signed contract in 1965 turned out to be worth $200,000.

The post will remain publicly available on Twitter despite being sold off, with the buyer receiving a certificate signed by Dorsey. It is unclear if he could delete his tweet and what the implications would be if he did.

The third highest bid on the platform is for one of Elon Musk’s tweets in 2018 at $420,000. It says: “Am considering taking Tesla at $420. Funding secured.”

Twitter declined to say if the co-founder himself is selling the tweet rather than a separate party.

Earlier this month, British auction house Christie’s launched the sale of its first ever digital-only artwork.

The two week auction of the digital collage by US artist Beeple is due to close on Thursday, with bids as high as $3m (£2.1m) coming in.

According to data from NonFungible.com, so far this year, the total value of NFT transactions so far is $983m (£704m), compared to the total for 2020 which was just $250m (£179m).

Last year virtual art was the strongest performing part of the market with sales volumes up 28-fold.