Proton Mail Auctioning Rare 'X' Username for Charity, Current Bid as of Posting is $50,000,000USD
2023 Proton Fundraiser Auction: X on eBid Europe | 220298374
Looking through the history looks a bit suspicious. Even if the questionable bids were removed, it’s still likely to be 100k+ for the username!
Edit: Closer to $15k right now lol.
if you’re wondering who this charity is supporting like I was, they, apparently, haven’t decided yet. but here’s their short list of nominees:
Qubes! Holy hell, that's a blast from my past. I didn't contribute or anything, to be clear, but I did use it and enjoy it while I did. It's a really interesting way to handle security.
Women Who Code might not be a good choice... https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5v53w/girls-who-code-team-up-with-tomahawk-missile-maker-raytheon
But I'm definitely excited to see Tor and Fight for the Future on the list!
Women Who Code and Girls Who Code are different nonprofit organizations.
They’re run by different people and have distinct goals (WWCode: supporting and empowering women who are in the tech industry; GWC is focused on getting more women into tech by providing opportunities to learn programming to girls).
Girlbossing a thirld world school with a tomahawk
How is that bad? The girls get a foot into Raytheon that they probably wouldn't anyway, because the industry is sexist. And Raytheon gets to pad their diversity numbers and still have high quality employees.
I love at least half of those, haven't heard of the rest. Hopefully they donate to a few of them.
It's up to $100m. No shot those bids are legit.
EDIT: Looks like they cleaned up the fraudulent bids. Down to $15k which seems much more... possible.
Could be the guy that has been the early adopter of everything, but was not fast enough for ProtonMail. CompuServe, AOL, Xanga—first to ‘x’. Now that he has made his $100,000,350, he can finally afford to get x@pm.me. Or it’s fake. It’s probably fake, but I choose to believe.
From their q&a:
gitspamdum is a bot, I just created a fake account and bid for 999 trillions, no verification were requested in the whole process and 1 nanosecond later gitspamdum bid after me, I tried this twice, my only purpose was to expose the absurdity of the whole thing, if Proton really take this thing seriously please just cancel all auctions and place them in a serious website
Jesus, I received the mail just this morning, and I thought "who would bid for that? Lol". I'm actually impressed.
Personal email domains > generic email domains.
I know right. I can go into Proton now and create an x@mydomain.com alias if I want...for free
Elon is bidding on it against his own alt accounts. There's no way anyone else gets it.
Even if I had enough money to buy this email, I wouldn't. Too many people would try to hack, steal, or buy the account from me. It would be a cool email tho.
Nah, just think of the spam you'd need to wade through.
Y?
Z.
Lmmfao! That's brilliant.
I bid 5
Best I can do is $3.50.
It was about that time...
Look at that. An email address that will be instantly added to every spammers list. And they know the owner has money too.
Yikes! I hadn’t thought about that!
Not after spending 50 mil on it
Anyone willing to spend $50m on an email address probably has more money than sense.