The original source code for the World Wide Web, written by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has been sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) for $5,4-million.
The auction by Sotheby’s took place yesterday.
An NFT is a crypto asset that uses blockchain to record ownership of a digital item.
Berners-Lee created the NFT, which represents ownership of various digital items from when he invented the Web in 1989 as a way of navigating and accessing information on the Internet.
Included in the purchase are NFTs representing around 9 555 lines of code written in 1990-1991, a 30-minute animated visualisation of the code, a digital poster of the code, and a digital letter written by Berners-Lee in June 2021, talking about the invention of the Web.