What happened after a Wired reporter sold an NFT for $500

Kate Knibbs

Wired senior writer Kate Knibbs writes about what happened after she sold an NFT — nonfungible token — of one of her tweets for $500.

Knibbs writes, “After I sold my tweet NFT, a flurry of writer pals messaged me eagerly, asking how to do it. Shortly after that, several WIRED editors messaged me—considerably less eagerly—because we hadn’t had a conversation about what the actual implications of accepting an offer like this might be. As long as I’m on staff at WIRED, I have to ask permission before I take any paid freelancing assignments from other outlets. Did I have to ask permission to sell an NFT? Did it matter that what I was selling was essentially a bit of digital performance art, the act of signing my name to a token, rather than the writing itself? It was more like selling an autograph than my actual words, after all—did we have a company policy on digital autographs? These were new questions, because this was a novel way for a writer to earn money. I called Addison Cameron-Huff, a lawyer who specializes in blockchain, to hear his take. ‘If it’s not your job at WIRED to make art, and you’re a writer, and your job is to write—if you want to sell art on the side, I wouldn’t think they’d stop you,’ he says. ‘You’re selling the process of selling.’ Still, considering I didn’t know why my bidder bought my tweet—they didn’t respond when I asked them—it wasn’t clear whether they were buying it because they liked me or simply because I am a WIRED journalist. The whole situation felt knotty. And if selling bits of digital content as NFTs catches on, I suspect there will be lots of conversations between writers, artists, and outlets about where the boundaries of independent digital identity and work identity should be drawn. (I promised my editors not to accept any more NFT bids until we figured out the rules, just to be safe.)”