The world of NFTs is so dumb yet so entertaining as it allows regular folks like you and me to laugh at rich idiots who waste their money! The internet is great!
Around December 15th, 2020 Jack Dorsey minted a new NFT comprised of his (and the site's) first ever tweet. For those unaware, Dorsey is a co-founder and former CEO of twitter and the current founder and CEO of Block, Inc. This NFT was minted with much hype at the time, but to say that the offers came pouring in would be a misinformed overstatement. Yes there was a lot of buzz, but funnily enough looking at the bid history only one offer came in that day for one dollar. The price eventually rose, with an offer put forward on March 6th for 2.5 million USD. 16 days later on March 22, that bid was worth 2.9 million USD and was subsequently sold to Sina Estavi. Estavi is currently the CEO of Bridge Oracle funnily enough was arrested in Iran following his purchase of the NFT for alleged "economic disruption". Estavi has since been freed for anyone wondering.
This past week Estavi made the attempt to resell this NFT with the starting price of a whopping 48 million USD. The plan was to donate half of the proceeds to charity while putting the other half into his company Bridge Oracle (which is currently in the midst of rebuilding its own crypto tokens and attempting to exchange investor's old tokens with new ones on the TRON blockchain). The starting offer Estavi received for his supposed multi million NFT? 0.0016 ETH. Better read as $4.96. Four dollars. That's it. Estavi had set the auction to expire by last Wednesday March 13 and by the end of the allotted time the highest bid received was only $280. Estavi of course turned down the offer and stated he would hold off on selling; but he hasn't removed his NFT from the market place. Rather, Estavi has allowed more bids to come in and to be fair they have with the most recent bid as of this post being $30,819.
Some folks online have claimed this was a publicity stunt by Estavi to draw attention and steadily build up a profitable offer. This makes Estavi seem like a kind of long game genius, who is able to not only correctly judge the market but also public attitude and shifts inside and outside the crypto community.
I say he is yet another naïve man who will come out of this not by business acumen or even by luck. Rather I predict a hairbrained scheme only those with a so-called "entrepreneurial" drive can achieve. Perhaps something along the lines of borrowing money to buy the NFT from himself and subsequently using those funds to take care of Bridge Oracle investors and coin holders. This leaves him with the problem of having to pay back the lenders he went to for funds to purchase the NFT, and that is not an oversight on my part. It is just the sort of plans these types of people come up with, the ones that when questioned are answered simply with "We can deal with that later". I wouldn't be surprised if the 50% Estavi promised to give to charity is rerouted to him through some other 3rd party.
My point is that while Estavi will probably be fine, I wouldn't care if he wasn't. The world is not black and white, but there are lines that a person can cross that make a characterization easier. Estavi doesn't seem to have ay malicious intent in this scheme but rather just an overblown sense of entitlement and naivety. But when someone builds their company, their entire brand around their incredible sense of business acumen it's hard to empathize when it turns out it was all a shame. Sure everyone fibs on their resume, but for the majority of us it doesn't lead to defrauded investors, Iranian jail. and a piece of merchandise that lost 99% of it's perceived value in just over a year.
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