A Blockchain-based token representing the original source code for the World Wide Web written by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee sold for $5.4 million at Sotheby’s in an online auction on Wednesday, the auction house said. The source code was sold in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) –a kind of crypto asset which records ownership of digital items.

The winning bidder will remain anonymous, according to the auction house rules, but that could change if the buyer steps forward. The NFT was created by the English scientist, Mr Berners-Lee, in 2021 and represents ownership of various digital items from when he invented the World Wide Web in 1989. 

To be sure, the World Wide Web itself has not been sold. What was sold was a Blockchain-based record of ownership of files containing the original source code for the World Wide Web. The final price was $5,434,500 and half of the bidders were new to Sotheby’s.

The World Wide Web, or the web, is the system for navigating and accessing information on the internet. The NFT is considered valuable by some because Blockchain authenticates that it is one-of-a-kind and has been officially created, or minted, by Mr Berners-Lee himself.

“We have placed it in a public forum, we have sold it at basically no reserve (the bidding started at $1,000), and we let the market decide what the value is going to be. There have been multiple bidders who have all agreed that it’s valuable,” said Cassandra Hatton, the global head of science and popular culture of Sotheby’s. 

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 Mr Berners-Lee in June 2021, reflecting on his invention. 

The letter begins: “As people seemed to appreciate autographed versions of books, now we have NFT technology, I thought it could be fun to make an autographed copy of the original code of the first web browser.”