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For sale as NFT: Tim Berners-Lee's original World Wide Web source code

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee is auctioning the original source code for the World Wide Web.

Image: Open Data Institute / Protocol

The man who invented the World Wide Web is embracing one the latest trends in the digital world: non-fungible tokens.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web in 1989, is auctioning off the original code for his invention, which made the internet accessible to the world.

The auction, titled "This Changed Everything," will be run by Sotheby's in London from June 23-30. Bidding will start at $1,000. Proceeds from the auction will go to "initiatives" supported by Berners-Lee and his wife, the auction house said.

"NFTs, be they artworks or a digital artefact like this, are the latest playful creations in this realm, and the most appropriate means of ownership that exists. They are the ideal way to package the origins behind the web," Berners-Lee said in a statement.

Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

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