The stars of the viral video “Charlie bit my finger - again” are auctioning off the nearly 14-year-old clip as an NFT, before deleting the original from YouTube forever.
At the time of writing, the YouTube video, which features Charlie and Harry Davies-Carr as children and the infamous line: “Charlie bit me,” has more than 881m views.
While the video’s views don’t make it among the top 20 most-viewed YouTube videos, it is one of the most recognisable, which the clip’s creators, who were one and three at the time, believe make it worth selling as an NFT.
The auction for the video will begin on Saturday 22 May, the 14th anniversary of the clip’s upload to YouTube, with The Verge noting that, once the auction ends, “Charlie bit my finger” will be deleted from YouTube “forever”.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are pieces of digital “art” that are sold on the blockchain, with this video to be sold over the Ethereum blockchain, according to the New York Post.
Of the decision to auction the classic video, Charlie, who is now 14 and lives in Marlow, England, told the outlet: “NFTs is the new thing. When we posted, YouTube was the new thing, but now NFTs is the exciting new thing.”
The sentiment was one echoed by the boys’ father, Howard Davies-Carr, who was the one to film the video and upload it to YouTube and who said: “We were one of the first to embrace YouTube and we’re being one of the first to embrace NFT’s and cryptos.”
Howard also said that the person who wins the auction will get the chance “to reenact the video,” and that the family would be willing to fly and meet them.
The auction of the video as an NFT comes as the digital assets have grown in popularity over the last year, with other memes and videos, such as the Disaster Girl photo, selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Additionally, Chris Torres, the artist who first created Nyan Cat, sold a Gif of the famous meme for more than $470,000.
You can purchase the video or learn more about the auction, which will run for just 24 hours, at charliebitme.com.
