Israel to welcome 11th president with oath of office on NFT

Given nonfungible tokens’ (NFT) ability to digitally represent a wide set of assets, the underlying technology has found itself with numerous use cases including property and digital collectibles.

One of its newest use cases comes from Israel, where the government has decided to welcome President-elect Isaac Herzog with an NFT oath. The NFT is a digital representation of the oath signed by his father and the country’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog.

According to local news agency Ynet, Knesset speaker Mickey Levy presented the NFT to the Israeli president-elect. Levy said, “In addition to the digital file, we have also given him a printed copy to hang in his new office.”

The original oath by Herzog’s father, dated May 5, 1983, pledges his allegiance to “the State of Israel and its laws and fulfilling my role as President of the State of Israel.” 

After the NFT device is delivered to Herzog, it will be handed over to the computing unit at the president’s residence. The NFT is not for sale and will reportedly remain in cold storage until it is returned at the end of Herzog’s term. 

Related: NFT sales top $2.5B in first half of 2021

NFTs have become a hot investment over the last year. Based on a recent report from DappRadar, on-chain NFT sales peaked at over $2.5 billion in the first two quarters of 2021. Compared to their performance of $13.7 million in 2020, NFTs are seeing rising interest among the wider investment community.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently made headlines when he sold his first tweet for about $3 million. This trend has been slowly picking up steam as other entrepreneurs are finding ways to sell their intellectual property via NFTs.