Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’s home computer, a strawberry iMac he used during the launch and development of Wikipedia as well as a non-fungible token (NFT) of the first edit he made to the platform were sold for nearly $1 million at an auction on Wednesday.
The strawberry iMac was the computer he used “during the site’s infancy,” auction house Christie’s which conducted the auction wrote on its website. “It was the computer on which he researched and partly developed the online encyclopedia, as well as the unit he employed to monitor the site for vandals late at night or simply watch in amazement as the project rapidly took on a life of its own,” it said.
The second item was an NFT of the first edit to Wikipedia made by Wales on January 15, 2001. The NFT features a “dynamic component” that will allow the purchaser to edit and recreate the experience of developing the site from scratch.
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“Reading simply, “Hello, World!”, this first edit captures the “big bang” moment for Wikipedia — the moment of creation for what is now the largest repository of human knowledge ever assembled,” it said. The action items were sold for a total of $9,37,500. The strawberry iMac fetched $1,87,500 while the NFT was sold for a whopping $7,50,000.
“Proceeds from the sale of the NFT will help support Wales’s alternative social media network pilot project WT.Social, an attempt to find a healthier and non-toxic alternative with existing social media platforms with a donation-only advertising-free model, as well as to help support a variety of charities working in the free culture world,” as per an article on Christie’s website.
