‘Merry Christmas’: world’s first SMS sent in 1992 fetches US$121,000 as NFT

The first-ever text message sent was sold for €107,000 (US$121,000) as a non-fungible token (NFT) at a Paris auction house on December 21, 2021. The text, which reads “Merry Christmas”, was sent on December 3, 1992. It was put up for auction by the British telecoms company Vodafone. NFTs are a type of digital asset that has been traded since 2017. The digital objects – encompassing images, video, music and text – are units of data stored on a blockchain that guarantees each digital asset to be unique and immutable. NFTs can be owned and traded like physical items in the real world.