CNBC's 'Haines Bottom' NFT just sold at auction for over $61,000
A charity auction that included CNBC's first NFT closed Wednesday, raising $98,210 in honor of the late newsman Mark Haines.
The main item on sale was a nonfungible token of Haines correctly declaring on CNBC the bottom of the stock market crash at 9:47 a.m. ET on March 10, 2009, at the depths of the Great Recession.
The winning bid for that NFT was $61,210.60 from Landry's Chairman and CEO Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the Houston Rockets. Mintable.app, the firm that ran the auction, also sold 37 $1,000 tokens.
The proceeds will be split between Autism Speaks, a favorite charity of the Haines family, and the Council for Economic Education which supports financial literacy.
The NFT focused on the "Haines Bottom." Haines made his famous market call when the markets were in complete chaos. The S&P 500 had just hit its low of 666. A year later, the index was up 73%. On Wednesday, it was at about 4,200.
The charity auction began on Monday, the 10th anniversary of the unexpected death of Haines at age 65. Haines started at CNBC in 1989, the year the business news network began. We miss him very much.
Go to Mintable (mintable.app/CNBC) to view the now-closed auction. We would like to add that CNBC worked with a firm called Aerial to make sure that anything we do in the NFT space is carbon neutral.