Two lots were sold on the internet: a strawberry-colored iMAC, a "personal computer" that Jimmy Wales was using when the site was launched on January 15, 2001, as well as a non-fungible token (NFT), that is, say a unique certified digital object - thanks to blockchain technology -, from the very first page edited on Wikipedia.
The computer sold for $ 187,500, while the NFT was sold for four times as much, at $ 750,000.
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).
The two lots, presented at the New York headquarters of Christie's, at Rockefeller Center, had been put up for sale twelve days ago with starting prices of 100 dollars each, and it is in the last moments that the auctions soared. .
According to Christie's, the NFT was still below $ 100,000 on Wednesday morning and the sale's close had to be postponed several times.
This digital object, in the form of a JPEG image, represents "what Wikipedia looked like when (Jimmy Wales) installed it and when he launched his first page, with the words + Hello world +", had explained to the 'AFP Peter Klarnet, specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie's, during his presentation.
According to Christie's, the page is interactive and can be "edited" by the buyer to "recreate the experience of building Wikipedia" and then "revert to its original state."
Jimmy Wales had announced that part of the sale would fund his WT.Social project, "a decentralized, non-commercial social network with no advertising, tracking and data collection, and no misinformation."
© 2021 AFP