Shown at Christie's New York headquarters at Rockefeller Center, the computer is a strawberry-colored iMAC, "his personal computer, which he was using for development and research when the site launched on January 15, 2001," writes the company in a press release.
The second batch is an NFT, a certified unique digital object using blockchain technology, "created by Jimmy Wales and which renders what Wikipedia looked like when he installed it and launched his first page, with the words + Hello world + ", explained to AFP Peter Klarnet, specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie's.
The page, presented in JPEG image format, will be interactive and can be "edited" by the buyer to "recreate the experience of building Wikipedia", then "return to its initial state using a timer" , writes Christie's.
In the statement, Jimmy Wales says part of the sale will fund his WT.Social project, "a decentralized, non-commercial social network with no advertising, tracking and data collection, and disinformation," he said.
On its home page, WT.Social describes itself as the "non-toxic social network".
Both lots are on sale online until Dec. 15, starting at $ 100 each, but Christie's hopes to sell them "for hundreds of thousands of dollars," Klarnet said.
New darling of certain collectors or groups of digital investors, NFTs have become essential for auction houses and the art market, the program behind the web ($ 5.4 million at the start of July 2021 at Sotheby's), to the fully digital work of the American artist Beeple ($ 69.3 million in March at Christie's, record for an NFT).
On Friday, Christie's also announced the online sale, until December 9, of a bulletproof vest worn by rapper Kanye West during one of the presentation parties of his latest album, Donda, on August 5, 2021 in Atlanta.
A bulletproof vest worn by rapper Kanye West during an evening of presentation of his last album in August, exhibited at Christie's headquarters in New York, December 3, 2021 KENA BETANCUR AFP
An object accompanied by its digital replica protected by an NFT, allowing the object to "live both in the physical world and in the metaverse", assures Christie's.
© 2021 AFP