- Profits from the auction will go towards Liliesleaf Museum Heritage Site.
- It could help keep history alive as museums suffered badly by lack of tourism due to COVID.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT also sold for $310,000 at the auction.
A non-fungible token copy of the original arrest warrant of late president Nelson Mandela was sold for 1.9 million South African Rand ($130,000) in an auction.
Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist, went to prison in 1962 for plotting to overthrow the White-minority government. He then became South Africa’s first Black president 27 years after he came out of prison.
In 2004, Liliesleaf Museum Heritage Site received the original document as a donation. Ahren Posthumu, CEO of Momint — the NFT marketplace that sold Mandela’s item, said the profits from the auction will go towards the museum. Recently, the museum has also received an estimated amount of $50,000 after an auction of a NFT of a pen gun owned by fellow freedom fighter Oliver Tambo.
Posthumus stated in an interview:
“This helps the museum sites stay afloat. They have suffered so much by the lack of tourism due to COVID. So this is a way to revitalize their flow and keep history alive.”
Mandela, while leading South Africa’s fight for freedom, stood trial four times and suffered arrest on several occasions. He went out of prison in 1990 and after four years, he participated in the first multiracial election. Mandela died in December 2013 at the age of 95.
Posthumus stated that the person who bought the NFT will have exclusive access to the original document at Liliesleaf Museum. “The ink is visible through the paper of the high-definition scan,” he added.
In the previous months, NFTs skyrocketed in popularity. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is a distinctive digital asset that represents ownership of real-world items like art, video clips, music, and more. Posthumus also indicated that Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, one of the most popular NFTs in the space, also sold at the auction at $310,000.
