Viral meme ‘friendship ended with Mudassir’ sold for $51,000 in NFT auction

‘Friendship ended with Mudassir’, one of the many viral memes created by Pakistanis, was sold at an NFT auction for $51,000, reported BBC Urduon Monday.

The Story

In 2015, Muhammad Asif Raza, a government employee in Gujranwala, announced the end of his friendship with Mudassir in a rather hilarious manner.

Asif Raza posted a picture of himself and a new friend, Salman, on Facebook with “Friendship ended with Mudassir. Now Salman is my best friend,” written on it. Asif could be seen shaking hands with Salman in the picture, while Mudassir’s pictures were crossed out.

The picture featured some rudimentary photo editing and it soon became the iconic meme to redefine friendship breakups and public announcements of such disputes.

The meme went viral on the internet and the picture gathered 47,000 reactions, 56,000 shares, and 27,000 comments. Asif Raza also gained international fame as his meme was recreated by multiple others on YouTube and Twitter.

In an interview, Asif Raza said that he had put up the post as his friend Mudassir had "become selfish" and was not giving him time.

While Asif’s friendship with Mudassir was later restored, he gained international fame for the iconic image.

Meme Auctioned at NFT Platform

The friendship breakup meme was recently auctioned on an NFT platform called Foundation by Asif.

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token and is a special kind of digital certificate that testifies who the real owner of a viral meme, photo, video or any type of online content is.

The meme was brought by Andrew King, co-founder of Mechanism Capital — a cryptocurrency investment company for 20 ethers.

Ether is a type of cryptocurrency and the current value of 20 ethers in Pakistani currency is around Rs8,400,000.

Asif reported that the price of the meme is rather unexpected for him as well. He made the deal through a private company and the money has not been transferred to Asif as of yet. Asif plans on sharing the money with his friends.

He recently posted a video on Facebook with Salman and Mudassir and stated that the three are still friends, 6 years later.

Cryptocurrency has gained much traction in recent years within Pakistan. Cryptocurrency has not entirely been legalised in the country, however, the sale of cryptocurrency is not entirely illegal.