These are the core obsessions that drive our newsroom—defining topics of seismic importance to the global economy. Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. The video has racked up million views since it was first uploaded in It will now live on YouTube for the masses to continue enjoying as well as memorialized as an NFT on the blockchain.
The buyer who won the NFT at auction goes by the name 3fmusic and appears to be a music studio in Dubai. NFTs—digital copies of artworks minted on the blockchain—have been all the rage in recent months, and many meme makers have, like the Davies-Carr family, decided to cash in on their internet fame in this new way.
Buying an NFT does not give the owner intellectual property rights to the meme, nor does it necessarily diminish the ability of others to view it online. Liu and Fraser see it as a similar scenario to the cryptocurrency bubble of when the hype dies down, the intrinsic value of this market will settle and, hopefully, remain intact.
But the point is to assign clear value and ownership to items that before now have been floating in a formless ether. A painting with a verified signature by Picasso is worth more than a perfectly-replicated fake because the fine art community has agreed that origin matters. The NFT world believes that digital content deserves the same treatment and valuation, and by conducting auctions via blockchain, the authenticity and uniqueness of the NFT is guaranteed. Davies-Carr compares the eyebrow-raising at NFTs today to the quizzical early responses to British graffiti artist Banksy early in his career.
In closed digital economies, like in video games such as World of Warcraft or Fortnite, real money is spent on virtual products. On May 22, there will be a certain satisfaction in seeing the Davies-Carr brothers capitalize on the global joy they spread as toddlers, and, for a moment, reclaim control of it. Charlie and Harry plan to fly to meet the buyer and reenact their viral video in person one more time.
After that? Back to school and, soon, off to college. Some 14 years and million views later, the clip of baby Charlie biting his brother Harry's finger is still one of the internet's most viewed videos.
The boys now say they'll use the money to go to university. Harry, who is now 17, tells Radio 1 Newsbeat he wants to study "some kind of engineering" at either University College London or Imperial College London.
Charlie, now 15, isn't yet sure what he wants to study. But he says the money generated by the video will also cover the uni fees of his two younger brothers, Jasper and Rupert, if they want to go.
It's just an extra part of our life that's quite interesting. An NFT is like a certificate to say that you own something digital.
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