NYT: Anthony Weiner Considering ‘Cashing In’ by Selling 2011 Explicit Tweet and More As NFTs
Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York mayoral frontrunner, is considering selling the tweet that cost him his political career.
In 2011 while serving in Congress, Weiner accidentally posted a sexually explicit image intended to be sent to a 21-year-old female college student on his public Twitter feed. He initially claimed his account had been hacked, but after Breitbart published additional suggestive images of him, Weiner eventually took responsibility and soon after resigned from Congress.
In 2013, Weiner faced another sexting scandal during his mayoral bid, which caused his favorability to plummet. Even after his campaign ended with less than 5% of the vote, Weiner’s scandals continued, and in 2017, he pled guilty to one count of sending obscene material to a 15-year-old girl.
The New York Times report on Sunday revealed he is in a 12-step program for sex addiction and running a Brooklyn company that makes environmentally sustainable countertops. His company, IceStone, offers interviews to formerly incarcerated individuals, and he hopes to turn it into a “worker-run cooperative.”
Weiner’s reputation and registered sex offender status have made it extremely difficult to find any other work. He told the Times he has offered advice to a few campaigns, and though he thinks he would make a good campaign manager, no one wants to be publicly associated with him.
“It’s very narrow — the places that I can work without having The New York Post just make everyone’s life miserable,” Weiner said.
Without a solid prospect of steady employment, Weiner has turned his sights on a different potential source of income: capitalizing on his scandals through non-fungible tokens, or NFTS.
NFTs essentially are digital collectibles, unique pieces of blockchain whose ownership can be sold or transferred. For example, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet in 2006 as an NFT for over $2.9 million, and a video clip of Lebron James dunking sold for $208,000.
According to the Times, Weiner mused about the possibility of making an NFT of the 2011 tweet that began his media troubles, or of the search warrant obtained for his laptop (his email records helped launch the Hillary Clinton email investigation, though there ultimately was no incriminating evidence found on his laptop), or of the email he received from comedian Jon Stewart, apologizes for mocking the former politician, or possibly of a check Donald Trump sent to an early campaign of his.
“Cashing in would be nice,” he said, adding that he might try “to sell my own stuff but also to create a new category that lets people buy and sell political collectibles as a form of political fund-raising and contributing.”
Weiner also brought up the possibility of selling his laptop from the Clinton controversy.
“I’m wondering if I should call up the MyPillow guy and offer to sell him the laptop,” he said, meaning Mike Lindell. He noted that people will still yet at him asking where the laptop is.
Weiner is also considering writing a book about sex addiction and hopes it would help people in similar positions as he was.
