Tim Berners-Lee Sells Digital Artifact for $5.4 Million

The original code for the World Wide Web in the form of a non-fungible “NFT”, written by Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has sold for $5.4 million at an auction held by Sotheby’s.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, born in London, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998.

An NFT is a type of digital asset designed to show someone owns a unique virtual item, such as online photos and videos, or even sports trading cards.

Created online by British computer scientist and web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, “NFT” technology includes original sealed files, according to a tweet by Tim Berners-Lee on Twitter.

The sale actually consists of a blockchain-based certificate of ownership of the files containing the original source code of the World Wide Web. The final price was $5434,500, and half of the bidders were new to the world’s fourth largest auction house, Sotheby’s, according to a tweet posted by the official Twitter account.

#AuctionUpdate One of the most historically significant digital artefacts ever sold, an NFT of the source code for the Web has brought $5.4 million. Offered by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, proceeds will benefit initiatives that Sir Tim & Lady Berners-Lee support.#ThisChangedEverything

— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) June 30, 2021

“Since people seem to appreciate signed copies of books, we now have NFT technology, and I think it might be interesting to create a signed copy of the original code for the first web browser,” the message reads.

Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, Cassandra Hutton, said: “The symbolism, the history and the fact that it came from the creator himself is what makes it so valuable, and there are a lot of people who collect things for exactly these reasons.”

She explained that the code was presented in a public forum, and the auction started at a price of $1,000, and the rest was left to the market, which determined the final price of the encrypted code.

The sale is the latest in a series of moves by traditional auction houses to embrace blockchain-based assets, which went viral in early 2021.