World Wide Web source code NFT sells for $5.43 million

That’s one expensive NFT.

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What you need to know

On June 23, 2021, Sir Tim Berners-Lee’sauction for an NFT of the source code for WWW(that thing you type in before a website name in the search bar) went live. A week later, on June 30, it closed, with the winning bidder having agreed to pay$5.43 millionfor their prized NFT.

However, that’s not all the winner is slated to receive. Beyond just the NFT, some additional goods are included in the lot. Here are the contents of the $5 million haul:

Whether that collection sounds worth a lump of money in the mid-seven-figures range is your call, but know that someone has eagerly shelled out the cash to own the digital rights to one of the biggest pieces of internet history.

As to why Sir Tim Berners-Lee opted for the NFT route over any other kind of auctioneering methodology, he toldthe Guardian, “this is totally aligned with the values of the web.” What he meant by this is left ambiguous. However, it could stand to reason he meant that a piece of internet history being sold exclusively over the internet utilizing new internet-based technologies is the point of the auction, as opposed to him just printing out the source code and mailing a framed picture of it to someone.

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Robert Carnevale is the News Editor for Windows Central. He’s a big fan of Kinect (it lives on in his heart), Sonic the Hedgehog, and the legendary intersection of those two titans, Sonic Free Riders. He is the author ofCold War 2395. Have a useful tip? Send it to robert.carnevale@futurenet.com.