A digital copy of the first-ever tweet — by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey — has been offered for about almost US$48-million (R705-million) on non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea, 16 times what the owner paid for it a year ago.

Sina Estavi, the CEO of Malaysian blockchain service Bridge Oracle, announced on Twitter that he’d put the NFT version of the 21 March 2006 tweet saying “just setting up my twttr” up for sale for 14 969 ether. He paid $2.9-million for it in March last year.

After his initial tweet announcing the sale, Estavi followed up with another promising to donate 50% of the proceeds to the charity GiveDirectly, which gives cash to people living in poverty, and which Dorsey had said he’d supported after the first sale of the NFT.

Dorsey responded on Twitter: “Why not 99% of it?” He directed his response to Estavi, GiveDirectly and Tesla founder (and recent Twitter board member) Elon Musk.

Twitter’s stock rallied 27% on Monday after news broke that Musk had taken a 9.2% stake in the company. A day later, Twitter appointed him to its board of directors. Dorsey stepped down as Twitter’s CEO in November. — (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP