Nowadays, every Internet user has already consulted a Wikipedia page at least once. The very first page in the history of the online encyclopaedia, published in 2001, was sold by Christie’s auction house as a non-fungible token (NFT) for $750,000.
Wikipedia gets into NFTs
Anyone searching the Internet for information is likely to be directed to one of the 6,408,480 Wikipedia articles currently online. Twenty years after its creation, the encyclopaedia has become an essential tool for accessing information on the Internet.
On Wednesday 15 December, Wikipedia marked a new stage in its history by selling its first non-fungible tokens (NFT). Entitled “The birth of Wikipedia”, the sale, which included two lots of NFTs, took place on the online platform of Christie’s, the famous auction house.
The two Wikipedia NFTs sold by Christie’s (Source: Christie’s website)
The first is a pink Apple computer, the one Jimmy Wales used to launch Wikipedia in 2001, and sold for $187,500. The second is the very first page that was published on the online encyclopedia and went for $750,000.
This NFT has the exact layout of the 2001 Wikipedia homepage. It shows the first message posted on Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales after he launched the site on 15 January 2001. A simple “Hello, World!” marking a unique moment in the history of the Internet.
Christie’s is one of the largest auction houses in the world. Christie’s entered the NFT sector in early 2021 with one of the most notable sales in the sector, that of digital artist Beeple. Beeple’s NFT, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”, sold for over $69 million in March, becoming one of the most expensive NFTs in the world.
