The Lemon Fool

Man who paid $2.9m for NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet set to lose almost $2.9m....

Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi made headlines in March 2021 when he paid $2.9m for an NFT of Twitter boss Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. But his efforts to resell it have run aground, with a top bid of just $6,800 as of Thursday.

The initial purchase was at the time among the most expensive sales of a non-fungible token, or NFT, and came amid a flurry of interest in the niche crypto assets.

Estavi put the tweet up for resale on the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea last week, initially asking for $48m.

That price tag was removed after offers in the first week were in the low hundreds of dollars. As of Thursday, the highest bid was 2.2 of the cryptocurrency ether – equivalent to about $6,800.

“My offer to sell was high and not everyone could afford it,” Estavi told Reuters via Twitter direct message, adding that he was no longer sure if he would sell the NFT.

“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,” Estavi said.

But Estavi was confident in the value of his purchase.

“This NFT is not just a tweet, this is the Mona Lisa of the digital world,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/14/twitter-nft-jack-dorsey-sina-estavi

What a time to be alive....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

In case you don't have $48m, or even a pair of imaginary tokens, have this one on me:

https://twitter.com/Jack/status/20

Sympathy......none.

Same needs to happen to bitcoin.

GS

Itsallaguess wrote:
But Estavi was confident in the value of his purchase.

“This NFT is not just a tweet, this is the Mona Lisa of the digital world,” he said.

Jeez, how out of touch with reality can a human bean get?

"Pretentious? Moi?", to quote Miss Piggy.

A (non-lemon) fool and his money.

Itsallaguess wrote:Man who paid $2.9m for NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet set to lose almost $2.9m....

A veritable twit of Twitter.

V8 (schadenfreude...)

I hope he manages to sell it as I have some tulip bulbs to sell him once he's flush.

Possibly it's worth pointing out that the report is seriously dodgy.

He didn't pay $2.9m.

He actually paid in crypto currency. The report is only valid if you accept that the crypto that he paid was "worth" $2.8m. Strange that the report ignores the fact that he paid crypto, but mentions that he was offered crypto.

We could debate the worth of replica soup tin's, paint splatters by Pollock, or paintings by or of Nim Chimsky.

However, should we?

He places many values upon this NFT. He won't sell it to "just anyone". Sounds just like your or me. We value things, not by what we would be paid for them, but by what they mean to us.

So, what is left? A man pays for something new, in something new and wont sell it for small amounts of something new.
Have I got that right?

As for the tulip reference, isn't this about a tulip trader? Should we ask how his tulip trading is going rather than what art he likes?
Assuming of course that you accept the tulip link. I'd be very dubious to do so from anyone who accepted the $2.9m initial claim!
Can you both claim that it's all tulips, all the way down, yet argue that spending tulips should be seen as spending $'s?

Urbandreamer wrote:Possibly it's worth pointing out that the report is seriously dodgy.

He didn't pay $2.9m.

He actually paid in crypto currency. The report is only valid if you accept that the crypto that he paid was "worth" $2.8m. Strange that the report ignores the fact that he paid crypto, but mentions that he was offered crypto.

Wrong. The madness was that people at the time actually accepted that the crypto was worth $2.8m and that the seller (who Urbandreamer seems to have forgotten about) would have had the liquidity to realise his $2.8m in hard currency. The losers in this story are the (literally) poor sods who put all their spare real-money savings into these scams in the hope of making a quick profit, my wife's cousin who lost thousands without recourse being typical -- Urbandreamer seems to have forgotten about them too.

GS

GoSeigen wrote:The losers in this story are the (literally) poor sods who put all their spare real-money savings into these scams in the hope of making a quick profit, my wife's cousin who lost thousands without recourse being typical -- Urbandreamer seems to have forgotten about them too.

GS

It's funny but my Brother had exactly that experience and has those feelings, but about the stock market.

Of course I have sympathy for anyone who loses money on ANY savings or investment. However I confess that I was totally unaware of anything about this story that touched on savings or investment. That is unless you are arguing that all markets, art, wine, food etc should be viewed in investment terms.

There is only one person mentioned in this story and I really don't think that he matches your description at all.

Urbandreamer wrote:He places many values upon this NFT. He won't sell it to "just anyone". Sounds just like your or me. We value things, not by what we would be paid for them, but by what they mean to us.

He'll sell it to anyone who will pay $48m for it.

Everything else is just waffle.

Urbandreamer wrote:
We could debate the worth of replica soup tin's, paint splatters by Pollock, or paintings by or of Nim Chimsky.

However, should we?

I think probably we should. If only because I don't understand the nature of this tweet he has purchased.

I can see the artistic value in a painting of a can of soup, splattered paint and even the Mona Lisa, less so a pile of bricks. Even less so a tweet. What is it exactly, that has been purchased? The series of words comprising the tweet? An image or screenshot of the tweet? Is it equivalent to someone buying a poem or a song, perhaps? I really don't know.

Mike4 wrote:

Urbandreamer wrote:
We could debate the worth of replica soup tin's, paint splatters by Pollock, or paintings by or of Nim Chimsky.

However, should we?

I think probably we should. If only because I don't understand the nature of this tweet he has purchased.

I can see the artistic value in a painting of a can of soup, splattered paint and even the Mona Lisa, less so a pile of bricks. Even less so a tweet. What is it exactly, that has been purchased? The series of words comprising the tweet? An image or screenshot of the tweet? Is it equivalent to someone buying a poem or a song, perhaps? I really don't know.

As I understand it, he has purchased proof that he is the 'true' owner of the digital item (in this case a tweet). If you thought crypto-currencies seem a 'bit iffy', then non-fungible tokens take it to a whole new level.

But as you point out, other easily copied items can have very high perceived value, e.g. the pile of bricks.

NFTs make complete sense, but only if you consider them as a money laundering operation.

Consider you have been running some kind of boiler room scam and have accumulated £3 M in cryptocurrency, there is no way you can just convert that to £s in an exchange and then pay it into a UK bank account, it's going to raise all kinds of flags and probably a 'proceeds of crime' investigation.

So instead you spend the money buying an NFT of a monkey from your cousin Bert, now anyone tracing the destination of those bitcoins will find they end in a monkey jpeg registered to the name of Mickey Mouse.

Meanwhile cousin Bert uses his new found LEGAL wealth to buy you a Yacht!

Now as to why this guy is trying to profit from trading an NFT, I can only assume he completely misunderstood how this play is supposed to work.

Perhaps someone could explain it to Rishi?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... create-nft

NotSure wrote:As I understand it, he has purchased proof that he is the 'true' owner of the digital item (in this case a tweet). If you thought crypto-currencies seem a 'bit iffy', then non-fungible tokens take it to a whole new level.

But as you point out, other easily copied items can have very high perceived value, e.g. the pile of bricks.

Indeed. I confess that I was thinking of NFT's as art. However in this case it's actually a historical digital document. What value a first edition book? Or one of the original copies of the Magna Carts, or the US Constitution? I do hope that we all understand that NO single original exists, or indeed can exist for those examples. Just limited remaining copies.