Just days after the news the the massively popular viral video “Charlie Bit My Finger” would be removed from YouTube and sold as an NFT, the NFT’s new owner has reversed that course, deciding that the video would continue to be available on the popular video streaming site. One of the most-viewed viral videos ever, with over 880 million views to date, “Charlie Bit My Finger” was a 55-second video wherein an infant bites his older brother’s finger. It was originally uploaded in 2007, and the NFT sale also included an opportunity to create a new video featuring the two brothers.
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The 1/1 NFT auction is the lastest high-profile non-fungible token, a term for crypto-digital art that replicates scarcity through constantly checked digital certificates of authenticity for collectors and speculators. Per the video’s auction site, it appears to have sold for over $760,000.
“After the auction we connected with the buyer, who ended up deciding to keep the video on YouTube,” Davies-Carr said in a statement (via Quartz). “The buyer felt that the video is an important part of popular culture and shouldn’t be taken down. It will now live on YouTube for the masses to continue enjoying as well as memorialized as an NFT on the blockchain.”
Per the story at Quartz, the buyer, whose username is 3fmusic, appears to be a music studio in Dubai.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have exploded in popularity in recent months, but they remain controversial. Digital certificates of authenticity that prove the copy of the image or video they’re attached to is the creator-sold and authentic “original,” and NFTs are seen by many artists and creators as a way to maintain the integrity of ownership of their work, as well as make considerably more money off of their digital creations. However, the massive energy draw of the elaborate encryption and validation process raises concerns about potential environmental threats. One artist who recently decided against creating a planned line of NFTs, because in his research he discovered that a single NFT can use as much energy as the average citizen of the European Union uses in a month.
The “Charlie Bit My Finger” is not the first example of viral videos jumping on board the NFT train. Zoë Roth sold the NFT of the “Disaster Girl” meme photo (featuring herself as a child) for nearly half a million dollars, while the “Bad Luck Brian” meme photo NFT sold for $36,000.
Earlier this month, news hit that Rick & Morty creator Dan Harmon was creating a new TV series, Krapopolis, which will be “the first-ever animated series curated entirely on the Blockchain,” with FOX and Bento Box Entertainment launching a “dedicated marketplace for Krapopolis that will curate and sell digital goods, ranging from NFTs to a one-of-a-kind character and background art and GIFs, as well as tokens that provide exclusive social experiences to engage and reward super fans.”
