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(Newser) – Update: Some people flip houses; others, NFTs. But for Sina Estavi, his attempt to pull off the latter didn't bring in the return on investment he'd hoped for. Last year, the CEO of blockchain firm Bridge Oracle scooped up the non-fungible token of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's very first tweet—a 2006 post that read "just setting up my twttr"—for $2.9 million. In a weeklong auction this month, Estavi expected to sell the NFT for nearly $50 million and donate half of the proceeds to charity, but, as CNET reports, the winning bid, out of seven in total, was a little lower than that: Try a whopping 0.09 ether, or about $280. The OpenSea NFT marketplace, however, allows sellers to reopen auctions if they don't like the bids that came in, and Estavi tells CoinDesk that's what he plans to do. "If I get a good offer, I might accept it," he says. Or: "I might never sell it." Our original story from March 2021 follows:

The auction for Jack Dorsey's first tweet is over. The winning bid? More than $2.9 million. It's just the latest non-fungible token (NFT) to be sold for a wild amount of money; other examples include the "Ocean Spray guy's" viral video, a 10-second video clip that went for $6.6 million, and a JPG file that brought in a staggering $69.3 million. (As Engadget explains, NFTs are an offshoot of cryptocurrency.) Dorsey's 2006 tweet, the first ever sent on the social network, famously reads, "just setting up my twttr." Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of the site, sent proceeds of the sale to Africa for emergency COVID-19 relief, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi was the winning bidder; while Dorsey's tweet will remain online as he originally posted it, Estavi now owns "a digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator," per the company that ran the sale, and including metadata like the time and date it was posted. "This is not just a tweet!" Estavi tweeted after the sale. "I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting." The Verge notes that Estavi's winning bid of $2,915,835.47 was "oddly specific," and wonders if the number signifies anything. But, as CNBC reports, the sale was made using ether, a cryptocurrency, in which the winning bid was 1,630.58 ether. (Much more on the NFT craze and how this all works here.)