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Twitter's Dorsey to convert proceeds from auction of first ever tweet to bitcoin

March 09, 2021 at 12:26 pm EST

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc boss Jack Dorsey said on Tuesday he will convert proceeds from the digital auction of the first ever tweet on the platform to bitcoin for charity.

"just setting up my twttr" - the first ever tweet went live for sale after Dorsey listed it as a unique digital signature on a website for selling tweets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

NFTs are digital files that serve as digital signatures to certify who owns photos, videos and other online media. Dorsey, a known bitcoin enthusiast, said the auction will end on March 21.

Payments company Square Inc, also led by Dorsey, invested $170 million more in bitcoin last month, adding to the mainstream acceptance of the digital currency that has been winning support from several big investors.

Dorsey's 15-year old tweet could attract bidders to pay a high price for the digital memorabilia. The highest bid for the tweet stood at $2.5 million as of 17:05 GMT on Tuesday.

The proceeds are being donated to GiveDirectly, a fundraising project to give cash directly to families experiencing extreme poverty in Africa.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Stocks mentioned in the article

	Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
	BLOCK, INC.	70.42 USD	-2.28%	-8.53%	43.76B
	TWITTER, INC.	53.7 USD	+0.66%	+7.64%	41.03B

Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey is Twitter’s co founder. In 2010, Twitter had more than 105 million users who “tweet” about 55 million times a day.

Until fourteen years old, Jack Dorsey, grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri. He had studied science and Technology at University of Missouri and then joined University of New York.

In 2000, he founded a service which allows to send messages from the Web in order to find quickly a taxi. The idea of communicating in a real time comes from AOL instant messenger.

He meets Odeo’s founders, Noah Glass and Evan Williams. Noah Glass markets AudioBlogger, an application allowing to publish audio files on a blog via telephone. Evan Williams is known as co-founder of Pyra Labs, which in origin was a platform of blogs, taken over by Google in 2003.

Together they create a Twitter’s prototype. The idea is allowing users to say what they are doing via SMS. Open to public on July 13 2006, the first version is called stat.us and then twitter.

Until October 16 2008, Jack Dorsey is a CEO. Then he became chairman of the board, and Evan Williams succeeded him.

With its ease of use, Twitter becomes rapidly very popular. In 2007, Twitter won South by Southwest Web awards for blogs.

In May 2009, Dorsey announced his new project, Square, originally the name was Squirrel. This is a start-up which allows people to receive payments by credit card through a small device installed on their mobile phone.

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