The 'Charlie Bit My Finger' Video, Now an NFT, Will Be Taken off of YouTube
Published May 24 2021, 6:38 p.m. ET
NFTs, short for non-fungible tokens, are a type of digital currency seeing a crazy spike in popularity. Everyone from artists to creators of tweets, Instagram posts, and viral videos are turning their non-physical properties into NFTs and making big money off of them.
Now, the family behind Charlie Bit My Finger is getting in on the NFT action.
What are the 'Charlie Bit My Finger' kids up to now?
The Davies-Carr family has just announced that they've sold the viral video for $760,999 as an NFT at an auction, and that the clip will be pulled from YouTube. The online sale started heating up in the final hours of the bidding process, with a user by the name of 3fmusic winning the NFT over mememaster. The clip's been viewed over 880 million times ever since it was uploaded to YouTube.
While the video is currently unlisted and the comments have been disabled, Charlie Bit My Finger is still available to view if you head to this link. However, the BBC reports it'll be officially off of YouTube in late May of 2021.
Charlie Bit My Finger is just the latest viral piece to make the NFT rounds. The popular meme "Disaster Girl" recently sold for a whopping $473,000, but other NFTs have sold for even more. Beeple, an artist who sold a compilation of their first 5,000 pieces, made a whopping $69.3 million.
Another piece of art, CryptoPunk 3100, recently sold for $7.58 million. Plus, the first tweet ever published was made into an NFT and sold for $2.9 million. The message? "Just setting up my twttr," by platform founder Jack Dorsey.
The 'Charlie Bit My Finger' kids recently appeared on MSNBC's 'Closing Bell.'
If you want to feel old, just check out the clip below for yourself. In addition to making everyone feel like Methuselah, the kids from the iconic Charlie Bit My Finger clip discussed the massive sale of their video. Charlie explains that when the video was first uploaded to the YouTube platform, the streaming site was "the new thing."
Now, it's NFTs that are "the new thing," and the internet stars thought to capitalize on it by getting in on the trend early. It seems to have worked out in their favor as the brothers made a staggering amount of cash for its sale.
When asked if they were "famous" among their school friends, the older brother (whose finger was bitten by baby Charlie) said they're not really "famous." Rather, their viral video is an "exciting" tidbit people learn about them that then fades into "the background."
He went on to say that "it's really cool" that Charlie Bit My Finger has become one of the "big videos on YouTube."
Do you plan on getting into the NFT action?
