Family auction ‘Charlie bit my finger’ video before deleting from web

With more than 881 million views, it was one of the clips that launched the concept of the viral video and is instantly recognisable from the title Charlie Bit Me. 

Now the family behind the ‘Charlie bit my finger’ video, featuring Charlie Davies-Carr, now 14, and Harry, now 17, from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, plan to auction the video file as an NFT before deleting it from the internet forever.

An NFT is a non-fungible token, which acts as a certificate of authenticity for digital assets like art and sports memorabilia. 

The auction of the clip – the most-viewed viral video of all time – is set for Saturday 22 May and will mark the 14th anniversary of the day the video was uploaded to YouTube in 2007.   

Currently, the 55-second clip of the brothers, who were one and three at the time, has more than 2.2 million likes on the platform.

In the clip, Harry is seen happily sitting with his baby brother Charlie on his lap – until the younger of the two makes a playful nip at one of his older sibling’s digits.

Harry sees the funny side, and gently scolds his sibling, before giving him the opportunity to try it again by placing his finger in his mouth.

This time, Charlie clamps down prompting a howl of protest from Harry who says ‘Ouch Charlie, that really hurt’, while his younger brother giggles unrepentant. 

The auction will take place on CharlieBitMe.com, which reports that the buyer ‘will have the opportunity to own it in its new form as a 1/1 NFT, memorializing them in internet history forever’.

The family added: ‘Harry and Charlie, now 17 and 15, are soon entering adulthood and embarking on the next chapter of their lives, the perfect opportunity to embrace the next iteration of the internet.’ 

Charlie said: ‘NFTs is the new thing. When we posted, YouTube was the new thing, but now NFTs is the exciting new thing.’ 

‘We were one of the first to embrace YouTube and we’re being one of the first to embrace NFT’s and cryptos,’ said Howard Davies-Carr, the boys’ father, who recorded and posted the original video.

Ownership of NFTs are recorded on a blockchain network, which supports cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether.

The ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ video will be recorded and sold over the Ethereum blockchain. 

Howard added that the family will travel to meet whoever wins the auction and they will be able to ‘reenact’ the clip. 

He also said the family have ‘no expectation’ for the sum the video might go for, and they ‘don’t know what’s going to happen’. 

Speaking about the video on Newsround in 2015, the brother’s said that the video was originally filmed for the family to send to their godfather who lives in America. 

Harry told the children’s TV show that he now finds watching the video funny, saying: ‘It makes me laugh.’ 

Charlie said he didn’t find it embarrassing but said: ‘I think it’s a bit odd that loads of people have watched it.’

Their father only ever uploaded the video, which has had more views than Taylor Swift, One Direction and even Adele, because it was too big to send over email. 

But after it was featured on a U.S. TV show it become an internet phenomenon.

As of 2012, the family had made £100,000 from the clip, which they used to pay for their children’s education.  

Their parents have since made thousands of pounds more from advertising and sponsorship deals off the back of the clip. 

Howard said at the time: ‘The clip only went up as I wanted to share it with the boys’ godfather. I was naive about the whole YouTube thing. 

‘It became viral and once that happened there was nothing I could do. People have sent lovely comments and messages and I now upload a new video of the boys every six weeks.’

The boys continued to make YouTube videos for their channel Charlie Bit Me, which has 387,000 subscribers.