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‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ sold as an NFT, could vanish from YouTube forever
Collector 3F Music spent $761,000 to possibly ruin a slice of internet history.
"Charlie Bit My Finger," which was once the most-viewed video on YouTube, could be leaving the platform for good. Collector 3F Music snapped up an NFT (non-fungible token) of the 56-second video, which shows an infant biting his brother's finger and giggling, for $760,999.
Origin Protocol, which ran the auction, said in a statement the plan was to remove the original video from YouTube and then for it to be "memorialized on the blockchain." At the time of writing, the original "Charlie Bit My Finger" is still on YouTube, but it's unlisted. It has more than 883 million views. If the clip does get taken down, you might be able to watch it elsewhere if you really feel the need to re-live that experience.
3F Music, which also owns NFTs for the Disaster Girl and Overly Attached Girlfriend memes, will have the chance to create a parody of the 2007 video with the two brothers, Harry and Charlie Davies-Carr. According to the auction website, the auction winner could "recreate a hilarious modern-day rendition of the classic clip" with boys who are now aged 15 and 17.
By 2010, "Charlie Bit My Finger" had made the Davies-Carr family enough money to buy a new house. In a video to mark the viral hit's tenth anniversary, the boys' father, Howard Davies-Carr, said he'd been told that "£1 million ($1.4 million) would be a reasonable expectation of how much the video would make us."
The figure might be higher than that now after selling it as an NFT. But, depending on what 3F Music plans to do with the video, a slice of internet history could vanish as a result.
