Fresh from bidding to Purchase Twitter, Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO and founder of Tesla, sparked a stir on the social media this morning when he changed his profile photo to a collage picture featuring multiple Bored Apes nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
Musk’s Twitter avatar as of Wednesday shows a picture featuring a collection of Bored Apes with Ape 5809 stacked in the middle. The NFTs are all from different artists, each with a unique design and serial number.
Bored Apes. Source: Sothebys.
Bored Apes are highly coveted among NFT collectors. So popular that when Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape NFT, launched its recent NFT project, gas costs on Ethereum soared into the thousands of dollars.
The announcement caused a stir in the NFT community, with some saying Elon Musk made a collage of “screenshotted bored apes his profile picture to troll NFT owners.” Others believe Musk is trying to signal his intention to get into the NFT space.
Seems like @elonmusk entered NFT world
Do you think he will use @TraitSwap to made his Bored Apes more Fancy? https://t.co/G3Xee9SjdD
— Fancy Bears Metaverse (@FancyBearsMeta) May 4, 2022
Michael Bouhanna, a contemporary art specialist and co-head of digital art at Sotheby’s, was likewise quick to react, sharing a screenshot on Twitter of Musk’s profile. Bouhanna tweeted asking the Tesla CEO to delete the avatar he had designed for Sotheby’s sale, suggesting that Musk had not acquired the NFTs.
@elonmusk as much 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 pic.twitter.com/e83ZyxWGH5
— Michael Bouhanna (@michaelbouhanna) May 4, 2022
Elon Musk has since tweeted, “I dunno … seems kinda fungible,” to his 90.7 million followers.
Whatever the case, Apecoin (APE) holders were ecstatic, with their tokens increasing 20% in value, according to Cointelegraph Markets Pro data. Since the Tesla CEO updated his Twitter profile photo, over 10 Bored Apes have been sold at the time of the article, and the floor price has since risen by 10 Ether (ETH).
