JACK DORSEY SOLD HIS FIRST TWEET AS AN NFT THEN THE BUYER COULDN'T RESELL IT
In 2021, someone paid nearly $3 million for a digital certificate connected to five words. One year later, the same asset struggled to attract even a few thousand dollars.
On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted Twitter's first tweet:
“just setting up my twttr”
Fifteen years later, that sentence became one of the strangest sales in internet history.
1. DORSEY TURNED A TWEET INTO AN NFT
In March 2021, Dorsey offered an NFT associated with his first tweet through Valuables, a platform created by Cent.
An NFT is a blockchain-based token representing a particular digital asset or record.
The important distinction:
The buyer did not acquire Twitter.
The buyer did not acquire Dorsey's account.
The buyer did not acquire the copyright to the tweet.
The NFT represented a digital collectible associated with the original post. Contemporary reporting specifically noted that the NFT did not transfer copyright or commercial rights to the tweet.
2. SOMEONE PAID $2.9 MILLION FOR IT
The buyer was crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi.
On March 22, 2021, Estavi acquired the NFT for:
1,630.5825601 ETH
Cent recorded the value at approximately:
$2.92 million
At the time, the NFT became one of the most expensive examples of the new NFT market.
Dorsey converted the proceeds into Bitcoin and donated them to GiveDirectly's Africa Response.
The transaction looked like a perfect example of the NFT boom:
A famous internet artifact
↓
A blockchain certificate
↓
A wealthy buyer
↓
Millions of dollars
But there was one problem.
Someone eventually had to want it again.
3. ESTAVI DECIDED TO SELL
About a year later, Estavi decided to put the NFT back on the market.
And he wasn't asking for $3 million.
He wanted approximately:
$48 million.
That was more than 16 times what he had paid.
Estavi described the NFT as the “Mona Lisa of the digital world.”
He also said he planned to donate at least half of the proceeds to charity.
On paper, it sounded like a spectacular investment opportunity.
Then the bids arrived.
4. THE MARKET GAVE HIM A VERY DIFFERENT NUMBER
The auction took place on OpenSea.
After the auction period, the highest bid reported was initially only about:
$280.
There were just seven offers in the first auction, ranging from fractions of an ETH to roughly $280.
Later reports put the highest offer around:
$6,800.
Still nowhere near:
$48 million.
And nowhere near the original:
$2.9 million.
Estavi did not have to accept the offers.
So the NFT wasn't necessarily “sold for $280.”
The important point was that the market wasn't willing to pay anywhere close to his asking price.
5. THIS IS WHERE NFT PRICING GETS INTERESTING
The NFT had not changed.
The tweet was still the same.
The blockchain record still existed.
The historical significance hadn't disappeared.
But the price people were willing to pay had changed dramatically.
Why?
Because an asset can be technically unique without having a liquid market.
Think about the difference:
Unique ≠ valuable
and
Valuable ≠ easy to sell.
A rare object can be worth millions to one person and almost nothing to the next buyer.
6. THE FIRST BUYER CREATED THE PRICE — BUT NOT NECESSARILY THE MARKET
Estavi's $2.9 million purchase established that one buyer was willing to pay $2.9 million at that particular moment.
It did not prove that the NFT had a permanent $2.9 million market value.
And his $48 million asking price didn't prove that it was worth $48 million either.
There is a huge difference between:
Asking price
and
Transaction price.
The first is what the owner wants.
The second is what someone actually pays.
7. THE NFT ALSO HAD A STRANGE OWNERSHIP BOUNDARY
This is one of the most misunderstood parts.
Imagine buying a signed baseball.
You own the signed baseball.
But you don't automatically own:
The Dorsey NFT worked similarly.
The buyer owned the token.
But the underlying tweet remained publicly viewable, and the NFT did not automatically transfer intellectual-property rights to the tweet.
So what exactly was being bought?
A blockchain-based certificate connected to a famous internet moment.
That distinction mattered.
8. THE REAL PRODUCT WAS SCARCITY
Anyone could read Dorsey's first tweet.
Anyone could screenshot it.
Anyone could link to it.
But only one wallet could hold that particular NFT at a time.
That was the business proposition:
The image isn't scarce.
The blockchain token is.
NFTs attempted to turn digital objects that could be copied endlessly into assets with a unique ownership record.
The difficult question was:
Would people continue to care about that ownership record after the initial excitement disappeared?
The Dorsey NFT became an unusually visible example of that problem.
9. THE $48 MILLION ASKING PRICE EXPOSED THE DIFFERENCE
Estavi had paid:
$2.9M
He wanted:
$48M
The market's early bids were:
Hundreds of dollars
and later:
Thousands of dollars.
That enormous gap wasn't simply about mathematics.
It showed how difficult it can be to price an asset whose value depends heavily on attention, cultural relevance and the existence of another willing buyer.
10. DIGITAL ASSETS CAN BE EASY TO OWN — BUT HARD TO SELL
This is the part businesses and investors should pay attention to.
Buying something can be simple.
Selling it for the price you want is another problem entirely.
A house has a market.
A company's shares trade on an exchange.
Government bonds have established markets.
But a highly specific collectible may depend on finding one person who wants that exact thing badly enough.
That creates liquidity risk.
And liquidity can disappear much faster than ownership.
MAACAT PERSPECTIVE
The Dorsey tweet NFT wasn't a story about a tweet suddenly becoming worthless.
It was a story about how price is created.
In March 2021:
One buyer → $2.9M
One year later:
One seller → $48M asking price
The market:
Mostly uninterested
The lesson goes far beyond NFTs.
An asset isn't worth what someone once paid for it.
And it isn't worth what the owner wishes they could sell it for.
Its market value ultimately depends on something much harder to create:
another buyer willing to pay.
