Charlie Bit My Finger stars to use NFT fortune to fund university
2 min readThe brothers who became internet sensations in 2007 after baby Charlie bit three-year old Harry’s finger plan to use the money from the non-fungible token, or NFT, sale of the video to go to university.
Father Howard Davies-Carr uploaded the clip of the pair to YouTube 14 years ago in an attempt to share it with their godparents, little realising it would become one of the internet’s most-watched videos.
The clip, which has been viewed more than 885m times and became one of the internet’s first viral videos, attracted £500,000 when its NFT was auctioned last month.
An NFT is a digital token that provides authenticity to a digital asset, meaning it can be used to demonstrate ownership when attached to an artwork, video, digital drawing, image, song or gif.
The tokens have exploded in popularity in the past six months. Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, made headlines across the world after his NFT artwork Everydays: The First 5,000 Days sold for a staggering $69.3m (£50.5m) – the world’s third-most expensive work sold by a living artist, while other cornerstones of internet culture including Nyan Cat and the “Deal with it” glasses memes have also been auctioned off.
Although the family had offered to delete the famous Charlie Bit My Finger video from YouTube as part of the auction, winning bidder “3fmusic” said they were happy for it to remain online for posterity.
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Harry, now aged 17, said he was planning to use the money from the auction to go to university to study “some kind of engineering” at either University College London or Imperial College London.
Charlie, now 15, is unsure of what he’ll study, but said the money would also cover the fees of their younger brothers Jasper and Rupert, should they choose to follow in Charlie’s footsteps.
“I can’t even remember doing it so making money off it, and having experiences off it, is really cool,” he told the BBC.
“We’ve been to America twice from it, I went round Sky’s studios, and we’ve met a lot of cool people. It’s just an extra part of our life that’s quite interesting.”
