As many of us know, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has an interesting relationship with the blockchain industry. Last year, he famously threw his weight behind Dogecoin, including during his SNL appearance. This partially led to several spikes in the value of the token.
Musk has also publicly shown interest in other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are some of the most famous products of blockchain. With how famous NFTs have gotten in the last few years, it comes as no surprise that Musk has weighed in on them.
Unlike with Dogecoin, however, Musk doesn’t seem all that fond of NFTs and apparently threw jabs at them in his recent Twitter activity.
Shade From Musk?
The apparent jab from Elon Musk came via him changing his Twitter profile picture to a collage of NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Shortly after this was done, Musk sent out a tweet that alluded to them.
“I dunno…seems kinda fungible,” he tweeted.
This can be interpreted as Musk claiming that NFTs are not truly ‘fungible’ i.e that they can be replicated fairly easily and are thus, not worth the money paid for them. It is also notable that he used a collage of NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most valuable NFT collection in the world, to drive home his point.
The specific collage Musk posted was from the “Ape In!” NFT auction from September 2021 that was held by the auction house Sotheby’s. As soon as the profile picture was changed and the tweet made, Twitter was abuzz with different opinions.
Fans of Musk praised his actions and some responded with memes of their own, while others defended NFTs. One interesting response came from Michael Bouhanna, the vice president and co-head of digital art at Sotheby’s, who playfully asked Elon Musk for credit for the work.
“@Elonmusk as much as I admire your work I’d like you to remove your pfp that I created for our Sotheby’s sale. Or you credit me 😂. Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval,” Bouhanna tweeted.
While all this has been in good fun, it has, once again, brought about the discussion of the value of NFTs, especially of digital artwork. As many NFT fans pointed out, Musk could use the image of a Bored Ape as his profile picture but he still did not ‘own’ the NFT or had rights to it.
Speculative NFTs
If history is any indication, this will probably not be the last time that we hear from Elon Musk regarding NFTs. Whether his apparent dislike of them will have any effect on the market as his endorsement of Dogecoin did, however, is left to be decided.
Regardless, having one of the richest and most famous people talk about NFTs on such a public platform only serves to shine more of a light on the NFT industry. And as they say, no publicity is bad publicity.
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