The first-ever tweet sold as an NFT for $2.9 million

New York(CNN Business) Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold the first-ever published tweet as an NFT, a digital collector's item of sorts. The final bid was $2.9 million.

The tweet, which said, "just setting up my twttr," was published on March 21, 2006. It has been shared more than 120,000 times and liked more than 160,000 times. A digitally autographed version was purchased 15 years later, almost to the day, by Sina Estavi, the CEO of Malaysian blockchain service Bridge Oracle.

"This is not just a tweet! I think years later people will realize the true value of this tweet, like the Mona Lisa painting," Estavi tweeted Monday.

Estavi bought the non-fungible token, or NFT, tweet on "Valuables," a digital platform that allows for the buying and selling of tweets autographed by their creators. He paid for the using the cryptocurrency Ether, according to the website where the tweet was sold.

Dorsey said he will immediately convert the money from the sale to Bitcoin and the proceeds will be sent to Give Directly Africa Fund, a charity that helps people in poverty.

NFTs, have picked up steam in recent months as a popular technology to sell digital art and other musings such as drawings or music. An NFT is a unique digital token which effectively verifies authenticity and ownership. It is encrypted with the artist's signature on the blockchain, a digital ledger used in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

In recent weeks, NFTs have sold for seven or even eight figures, mirroring a broader market euphoria currently propping up stocks, sports trading cards and cryptocurrencies.

-- CNN's Jazmin Goodwin and Rishi Iyengar contributed to this report.