Elon Musk on Wednesday briefly switched his Twitter profile picture to a $24.4 million NFT , before being asked by the co-head of S...
Elon Musk on Wednesday briefly switched his Twitter profile picture to a $24.4 million NFT, before being asked by the co-head of Sotheby's digital art division to take the image down.
Musk, 50, appeared to have taken a screenshot of a collage of an image entitled 'Bored Ape Yacht Club', which sold at auction in September.
The NFT features 107 images of cartoon apes, and was bought by an unknown bidder.
NFTs are bitcoin-like digital tokens that act like a certificate of ownership, and live on a blockchain.
Musk's use of the image was noticed by Michael Bouhanna, the co-head of digital art at Sotheby's.
'@elonmusk, as much I admire your work I'd like you to remove your pfp that I created for our Sotheby's sale,' Bouhanna tweeted.
'Or you credit me.
'Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval.'
Michael Bouhanna, the co-head of digital art at Sotheby's, noticed on Wednesday morning that Musk has screenshotted his work
Half an hour later, Musk appeared to reply to Bouhanna, mocking the NFT community
The image Musk used was sold at auction by Sotheby's in September for $24.4 million
Musk did not reply directly, but instead tweeted half an hour later: 'I dunno … seems kinda fungible.'
Several hours later, the ape image was gone, replaced with a photo of a child playing with a rocket.
Musk was thought by some to be mocking the NFT industry, one day after The Wall Street Journal reported that the market for the digital art had 'collapsed', with sales down 92 percent from its September peak.
By Wednesday afternoon, Musk had switched his profile photo, and instead of the NFT featured a child playing with a rocket
The paper cited data from website NonFungible, which reported that sales fell to a daily average of about 19,000 this week - compared to about 225,000 in September.
The number of active wallets in the NFT market fell 88 percent to about 14,000 last week from a high of 119,000 in November.
There have been significant signs of a drop in interest.
An NFT of the first tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sold in March 2021 for $2.9 million to Sina Estavi, the chief executive of Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle.
Estavi put the NFT up for auction earlier this year, but did not receive any bids above $14,000, so cancelled the sale.
In April, a Snoop Dog curated NFT, titled 'Doggy #4292,' was sold for $32,000 worth of the cryptocurrency ether.
The NFT, an image of a green astronaut standing on what looks like a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, is now up for auction, with an asking price of $25.5 million but the highest current bid is $210.
The rapper - a proud owner of a Bored Ape NFT, which he has as his Twitter profile pic, and which he has worn on a sweatshirt on TV - tweeted his support of Musk's interest in the trades.
'Ay @elonmusk! Let's take our Apes 2 the moon. Higher n higher. LFG!!!' he tweeted.
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