The iMac on which the online encyclopedia was created will go on sale for its 20th anniversary

On the occasion of Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary, Christie’s auction house is offering two items related to the famous online encyclopedia. The first is the computer used by Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, to compile site code during development. It’s a strawberry-colored iMac. “This is his personal computer, which he was using for development and research when the site was launched on January 15, 2001,” the company explains.

The second object is an NFT certificate from the first page of the encyclopedia. “It was created by Jimmy Wales and renders what Wikipedia looked like when he installed it and launched his first page, with the words ‘Hello world’,” Klarnet told AFP. The NFT comes in the form of a JPG image. It is interactive and can be edited by the buyer. “What you see displayed is what Wikipedia looked like when I configured the software,” says Jimmy Wales.

For the good cause

The profits will be used in part to fund WT.Social, a social network developed by Jimmy Wales. He describes it as a “decentralized, non-commercial social network, free of ads, data collection or disinformation and non-toxic.”

Both items are up for auction until December 15, with a starting price of $ 100 each. So far, the computer has auctioned $ 600, while the NFT is currently at $ 2,400.