Elon Musk Is Selling an NFT-themed techno – as an NFT
The Tesla CEO’s girlfriend, Grimes, recently sold several pieces of crypto art for nearly $6 million.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long been known for his bullishness on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Now he says he’s diving into the latest fad in crypto: non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
Musk on Monday tweeted that he is “selling this song about NFTs as an NFT.” The tweet is accompanied by a roughly two-minute video featuring an NFT-themed electronic dance music track. To which the artist Beeple retweeted saying “I’ll give you $69M for it” toying with the same price his recent artwork was sold at recent Christies auction.
One verse of the song is: “NFT/For your vanity/Computers never sleep/It’s verified/It’s guaranteed/NFT.”
The music plays as a digital NFT-themed trophy, which features loads of nods to cryptocurrency and the memes surrounding it, revolves in space. Atop the trophy is a moon, a reference to the common crypto meme that a given currency will go “to the moon,” or surge indefinitely.
The trophy features the acronym “HODL,” a common shorthand in the crypto community that stands for “hold on for dear life.” There are also several golden dog figurines, which may be a reference to the crypto token Dogecoin, which Musk has used his Twitter account to promote numerous times.
Musk’s apparent foray into NFTs comes as the frenzy surrounding the blockchain-based tokens intensifies. NFTs are essentially digital deeds that grant a buyer ownership of a particular file — such as a song, photo, or video — and one sold on Thursday for more than $69 million. The artist behind the work, known online as Beeple, replied to Musk’s tweet offering to buy his NFT for $69 million.
The Tesla CEO’s interest in NFTs doesn’t come as a huge surprise, given he is already a major supporter of bitcoin. Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency in February, and announced them that it will accept bitcoin as a form of payment in the future. Musk’s girlfriend, Grimes, sold several pieces of NFT art earlier in March for nearly $6 million.
It’s unclear whether Musk is serious about selling the song or the video accompanying it, nor is it known which NFT marketplace he may list it on.
It’s also not clear whether Musk made the song himself. But the billionaire did publish his own electronic music to SoundCloud in early 2020, and the song — “Don’t Doubt ur Vibe” — made it to the platform’s top 10.
