Another day, one other piece of web historical past being became a wildly costly NFT. This time, that historic remnant comes from Wikipedia; on Friday, Christie’s Auction House announced it will be auctioning off the primary edit made to the platform greater than 20 years in the past.

That edit—a “Hello, World!” written on the platform’s homepage—was initially penned by the positioning’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales, shortly after the positioning first rolled out to the general public in mid-January, 2001. Since that preliminary put up, Wikipedia’s expanded into, effectively, Wikipedia: an absolute behemoth of digital info that includes greater than 6.4 billion articles spanning each subject you’ll be able to presumably think about, largely overseen by numerous volunteer moderators from across the globe. As of this 12 months, the free digital encyclopedia’s the 13th hottest web site on the internet, with shut to 2 billion individuals visiting the positioning every month.

Wales’ little greeting is hardly the primary little bit of e-history to be auctioned off. Back in June, Sotheby’s introduced it will begin accepting bids on an NFT of the unique, time-stamped digital information from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the pc scientist who’s credited with creating the World Wide Web in 1989. Before that, Jack Dorsey had sold off an NFT of his first-ever tweet for a hefty $2.9 million. NFT’s that includes more than a few traditional memes from the early 2000s, in the meantime, have been bought off for equally bonkers costs (an NFT of the notorious “disaster girl,” for instance, sold in April for $500,000).

It’s unclear what the ultimate worth will probably be on the NFT of Wales’ put up—the bids begin at $100, in line with the auction’s latest update. Between now and December fifteenth, anybody can throw down bids each for that put up and for the strawberry-colored iMac computer that Wales used when he was first hammering out his first edits.

Because that is Wikipedia we’re speaking about, whoever finally ends up being the ultimate purchaser for Wales’ preliminary put up will have the ability to edit and revert his two-word message to their coronary heart’s content material. Opening the NFT to edits is Wales’s method of “express[ing] artistically” what he felt was “meaningful” in regards to the second that Wikipedia first got here to be—“that you might make something amazing, or you might make something that doesn’t work at all,” he informed Christie’s in an announcement.

Whatever cash Wales earns off this public sale, in line with the Christie’s announcement, will go in direction of supporting Wales’ present undertaking, WT.Social, which he payments as a “non-toxic” various to main social platforms like Facebook or Reddit. Christies additionally says the funds will go in direction of supporting a “variety of charities” that align with Wales’ pro-free culture ethos.