Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_61bbbe2fe4678" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Santos additionally bought the Strawberry iMAC Wikipedia co-founder used while developing the website</li>
 <li>PleasrDAO’s NFT collection consists of the popular Doge meme, Edward Snowden court documents and more</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



An NFT of Jimmy Wales saying “Hello world” on Wikipedia sold for $750,000 at <a href="https://www.christies.com/features/First-Wikipedia-edit-to-be-sold-as-NFT-11983-1.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Christie’s</a> auction house on Wednesday. Prominent Web3 investor Santiago Santos purchased the NFT for PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization most commonly known for buying the one-of-kind <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/music/wu-tang-clan-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WuTang album</a>, Blockworks has exclusively learned. 



“I bought it because I think it&#8217;s priceless,” Santos said.



The bidder, who was initially anonymous, told Blockworks that he spent almost $1 million on the collectible because it was “emblematic of Web3.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Wikipedia also open-sourced knowledge,” Santos said, adding that the website has also gone through similar stages as cryptocurrency. “There&#8217;s a lot of parallels. We&#8217;ve [also] gone through this phase of [people seeing] crypto as a scam.”</blockquote>



The non-fungible token (NFT), which displays co-founder Wales’ first-ever edit in 2002, was auctioned off alongside the Strawberry iMAC Wales used while developing the website. Santos purchased this at auction as well on Wednesday.&nbsp;



“What you see displayed is what Wikipedia looked like at the moment that I set up the software,” Wales previously told “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/3/22808679/jimmy-wales-nft-first-wikipedia-edit-imac-christies-auction" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Verge</a>,” adding that proceeds from the auction will go toward charities like WT.Social, a donation-backed social network that he founded three years ago.



The ultimate buyer of the NFT will now be able to edit the post — and change it back to its original appearance — whenever they want, according to a statement from Christie&#8217;s.&nbsp;



Santos said that he was “shocked” at paying just $750,000 for the NFT and “thought it was going to go for way more.” He said that he was prepared to bid a maximum of “$2.5 million or more.”



“I think a lot of times when you&#8217;re collecting, you have to ask yourself, ‘Does this endure the test of time?’” Santos said. “There&#8217;s already so much emotional and historical attachment attached to Wikipedia.”



The NFT will be placed in PleasrDAO’s collection, which consists of tokenized <a href="https://foundation.app/@Snowden/~/24437" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Edward Snowden</a> court documents, the popular <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/original-4m-doge-nft-meme-auctioned-off-in-17-billion-pieces" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Doge meme</a> and more, according to Santos, who was a founding member of the organization.



This is not the first time a prominent auction house has associated itself with a DAO.



The winning bid for the Wikipedia NFT follows the explosive efforts around <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/constitutiondao-shutting-down-after-raising-49m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ConstitutionDAO</a>, a group of more than 17,000 crypto investors who raised roughly $48.9 million to buy a copy of the US Constitution at Sotheby&#8217;s in November.&nbsp;



“It’s really exciting to see these auction houses get so embedded in NFTs,” Santos said. “It speaks to where the space is going and how mainstream NFTs have become.”



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