In brief
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk was selling a tweet as a non-fungible token (NFT) crypto collectible.
- However, he tweeted on Tuesday that it didn’t “feel quite right selling this.”
- Tesla recently bought $1.5B in Bitcoin. Musk routinely tweets about crypto.
Elon Musk's foray into the NFT craze is over. At least for now.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has more than 49 million Twitter followers paying attention to his every random thought, and recently Musk's tweets have become increasingly focused on cryptocurrency. Musk likes to rile up the Dogecoin faithful and get in on popular Bitcoin memes. But his latest such tweet focused on the surging field of crypto art non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—and, for a while there, you could buy it.
Actually, doesn’t feel quite right selling this. Will pass.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2021
On Monday, Musk tweeted out an original music video about NFTs, with the video footage highlighting a gold trophy adorned with the glowing words “NFT” as well as “vanity trophy,” “never sleep,” “compute,” and “HODL,” along with images of dogs, “diamond hands,” and the moon. Meanwhile, the thumping electronic track features many of the same terms, including the lyrics, “NFT for your vanity. Computers never sleep. It’s verified. It’s guaranteed.”
“I’m selling this song about NFTs as an NFT,” Musk tweeted alongside the video. And with that, bidding began on Valuables by CENT, the same tweet-as-NFT marketplace that Twitter CEO (and Bitcoin enthusiast) Jack Dorsey is using to auction off his very first tweet for charity.
The top bid on Musk’s tweet reached $1.121 million, but on Tuesday night, Musk tweeted that he had changed his mind on selling it. “Actually, doesn’t feel quite right selling this. Will pass.” The sale page is still live as of this writing and the top bidder is listed as Bridge Oracle CEO Hakan Estavi, who also holds the current top bid on Dorsey’s tweet at $2.5 million. Dorsey’s sale is slated to end on March 21.
Selling tweets as NFTs comes amidst a surge in interest and value around crypto collectibles, with some $342 million in trading volume in February 2021 alone. That includes original artwork, rare crypto game items, and digital collectibles such as those of NBA Top Shot, and the month’s total is more than all of the NFT trading volume from 2020 combined.
February also saw the sale of $6 million worth of NFT artwork from musician Grimes, Elon Musk’s partner. Incidentally, that's the same month that Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin as a reserve asset.
Prior to Musk’s decision to cancel the sale, crypto artist Beeple—who sold a single piece of NFT artwork via Christie’s auction for $69 million last week—tweeted to Musk, “I’ll give you $69M for it.” Musk’s meme-ready response? Simply “420M Doge.”