British telecommunications giant Vodafone reportedly plans to auction the world’s first short message service (SMS) in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) on December 21. The SMS with the inscription “Merry Christmas” was received 29 years ago over the Vodafone network on December 3, 1992 and was received by Richard Jarvis, an employee at the time.
The historic 15-character SMS will be auctioned as NFT in a one-time auction carried out by the Aguttes auction house in France. according to to the Romanian news agency Ziarul Financiar.
By auctioning the world’s first SMS in the form of NFT, Vodafone intends to pass the proceeds on to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (the UN Refugee Agency) to help displaced people.
Source: Ziarul Financiar
The banner above means “Merry Christmas. The world’s first SMS auctioned off as NFT for charity”. Vodafone’s SMS-NFT sale will take place this Tuesday December 21st via an online auction where participants can place bids via Ethereum (ETH). The highest bidder has exclusive ownership of the communication protocol with which the world’s first SMS was transmitted.
To the fame of SMS, it took nine years for other networks to have Vodafone’s ability to send and receive SMS. This move to coin the world’s first SMS is yet another example of NFT’s ability to tokenize history and digitally preserve it.
Related: Adidas Originals launches its first NFT collection
The NFT ecosystem has catalyzed mainstream adoption of crypto as companies find their use cases within their existing business models. Just last week, the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas announced the launch of an “Into the Metaverse” NFT collection.
As reported by Cointelegraph, the Adidas Originals NFT sale on December 17th will be hosted on the company’s official website at a price of 0.2 ETH, which is worth around $ 810 at the time of writing.
Just a few days before Adidas joined, Nike also acquired a virtual sneaker and collector’s brand RTFKT, indicates a strong interest in the metaverse.
RTFKT is now part of the NIKE, Inc. family. pic.twitter.com/5egNk9d8wA
– RTFKT studios (@RTFKTstudios) December 13, 2021
