After 'Charlie Bit My Finger' Sells, a Surprise Change

Buyer of viral video-NFT, who paid $760K, says the clip will remain on YouTube
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 28, 2021 6:24 AM CDT
Updated May 30, 2021 2:00 PM CDT

Good news to kick off the weekend: The world gets to keep watching Charlie Davies-Carr use his big brother Harry as a teething ring after all. The siblings are the stars of "Charlie Bit My Finger," one of YouTube's most viral videos ever, which was auctioned off as a non-fungible token, or NFT, on Sunday for more than $760,000, reports CNN. The terms of the deal noted that the new owner would retain sole rights to the video, which has racked up more than 885 million views, and that it would be yanked from YouTube for good. Now, Kim Lyons writes for the Verge that "Charlie bit us all"—meaning that the new owner of the 55-second clip has decided it should stay on the video platform. "The buyer felt that the video is an important part of popular culture and shouldn't be taken down," Howard Davies-Carr, father of the two boys, tells Quartz.

He adds: "It will now live on YouTube for the masses to continue enjoying, as well as memorialized as an NFT on the blockchain." That buyer, by the way, is so far known only by the handle 3fmusic and is believed to be a music studio in Dubai. Davis-Carr says the windfall from the auction will go toward the boys' college fund and to charities that offset the "carbon-intensive process of adding cryptocurrency transactions to the public ledger." While YouTube viewers are celebrating, Lyons, for one, isn't thrilled about the move, saying that it changed the rules of the NFT game and deceived the other bidders in the auction. "I'm fairly certain this last-minute switcheroo will just encourage ever more ridiculous stunts for people to get coverage and buyers for their NFTs," she writes. (More non-fungible token stories.)

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