An NFT representing the original source code for the World Wide Web written by Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, was auctioned at Sotheby’s and sold for $5,434,500. The bid started at $1,000. Global Head of Science and Popular Culture at Sotheby’s Cassandra Hatton claimed that the auction house let the market decides the value of the NFT.

The World Wide Web is a system used to navigate and access information on the Internet. To make it clear, it is not the World Wide Web system that is being auctioned and sold, but the original written source code of the system which is represented in a non-fungible token or NFT. Tim Berners-Lee is also the one who created this blockchain-based token to represent the ownership of all the digital items under the World Wide Web that he created.

The reason why this token is so valuable is because blockchain authenticates that it is one-of-a-kind and has been created by Berners-Lee himself. Sotheby’s was originally selling traditional fine and decorative arts. This is the earliest NFT sale made by a traditional auction house, which is projected to gain traction in the future.