Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is selling his first ever wiki edit as an NFT

The online sale titled “The Birth of Wikipedia”  will take place from December 3 to 15. A portion of the sale proceeds will help support Wales’s alternative social media network pilot project WT.Social, an attempt to find a healthier and nontoxic alternative with existing social media platforms with a donation-only advertising-free model, as well as to help support a variety of charities working in the free culture world.

Christie’s will offer an NFT of the first edit to Wikipedia: “Hello, World!” made by Wales on the day Wikipedia launched, which would be the first in a long line of edits that would produce the “the largest and most-read reference work in history.” Wikipedia NFT preserves the layout of the Wikipedia home page in 2001,and also has a dynamic feature—enabling the owner to edit the page, which can be reset with a timer to revert to its original state.

The Strawberry iMac was Wales’ personal computer, which he used for development and research at the time of the website’s launch on January 15, 2001, monitoring the site’s early development, guarding against vandals, and marveling at its rapid growth. As the computer grew obsolete, it was relegated to the room of his young daughter, who used it to play video games. It was later stored away in its original box, which will be included with the sale.

“It’s been over twenty years since I first typed in the words “Hello, World!” to launch Wikipedia– and even today, I’m still amazed at the size and breadth of what it has become,” said Jimmy Wales in a statement. “I’m so pleased that we have this opportunity to celebrate the work of Wikipedia’s dedicated volunteers, and I hope that the funds raised can both contribute to furthering that effort and to help support my latest project, WT.Social, a decentralized, non-commercial social network free of advertising, tracking, information harvesting, and misinformation.”

Bonnie Brennan, President of Christie’s America, added “Christie’s is honored to present The Birth of Wikipedia, as it gives us a chance to celebrate, on a global stage, the initial creation of what has become the largest reference source ever assembled. In a year of firsts at Christie’s, particularly in the area of NFTs, we are delighted to offer this unique NFT.”

Meanwhile, Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Salman Khan, Sunny Leone are also jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon. It should be noted that people have spent over $9 billion in NFT sales so far—and total NFT sales are expected to reach $17.7 billion by the end of the year, according to a new research by Cointelegraph.