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World Wide Web source code NFT sells on blockchain for US$5.4 million at Sotheby’s auction

  • The purchase includes non-fungible tokens representing the original source code for the web and a letter from inventor Tim Berners-Lee
  • NFTs have become a popular way of representing one-of-a-kind digital copies, giving artists and others a way to sell their works online

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World Wide Web founder Tim Berners-Lee poses for a photograph following a speech at the Mozilla Festival in London on October 27, 2018. Photo: Reuters
A blockchain-based token representing the original source code for the World Wide Web written by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee sold for US$5.4 million at Sotheby’s in an online auction on Wednesday, the auction house said.
The source code was sold in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) – a kind of crypto asset that records ownership of digital items.

The NFT was created by the English scientist Berners-Lee in 2021 and represents ownership of various digital items from when he invented the World Wide Web in 1989.

To be sure, the World Wide Web itself has not been sold. What was sold was a blockchain-based record of ownership of files containing the original source code for the World Wide Web. The final price was US$5,434,500 and half of the bidders were new to Sotheby’s.

The World Wide Web, or “the web”, is the system for navigating and accessing information on the internet.

The NFT is considered valuable by some because blockchain authenticates that it is one-of-a-kind and has been officially created, or “minted”, by Berners-Lee himself.

“The symbolism, the history, the fact that they’re coming from the creator is what makes them valuable – and there are lots of people who collect things for exactly those reasons,” said Cassandra Hatton, global head of science and popular culture at Sotheby’s.

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