Elon Musk Smoking Cannabis on Joe Rogan Is Now 69 NFTs

By Jeff Benson

What’s better than 68 paintings of Elon Musk smoking a blunt? Why, 69 paintings of Elon Musk smoking a blunt, of course!

While you’re at it, make it an NFT.

And then put it up for auction on 4/20 all in time for Doge Day.

The Most Famous Artist, a collective of creators, has sold 69 distinct portraits of Elon Musk smoking cannabis on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The iconic image, taken from a September 2018 episode of the podcast, has been reimagined by more than 50 artists for the “Stoned Elon” series. The pieces sold this weekend for around $25,000 in Rally tokens on NFT marketplace OpenSea.

Each piece was priced at 420.69 RLY (≈$357.58), in reference to the unofficial cannabis holiday, which has been co-opted by Dogecoin users as Doge Day; holders are trying to get the token to $1.00, but they’d be pretty happy if the joke coin hit an all-time “high” of $0.69. 

Though The Most Famous Artist doesn’t have any household names, most people are familiar with its work: The Santa Fe-based collective has said it created the 10-foot monoliths that appeared in Utah and California last year and briefly took the globe’s attention off of COVID.

The group isn’t just interested in creating a spectacle but chronicling them.

“Elon smoking a blunt on Joe Rogan became a meme seen around the world,” TMFA leader Matty Monahan told Decrypt via email. “With the combination of that moment, the internet's love for celebrating 4/20, and the current state of NFTs—we thought he would be a perfect fit for our latest community project.”

The collective previously released an NFT portrait collection of digital artist Beeple, whose own NFT, “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS,” sold for $69 million at auction.

NFTs are digital tokens, often packaged as digital collectibles or artwork, that can be bought and traded via blockchain-based marketplaces. It’s become a lucrative business for projects such as NBA Top Shot, which recorded more than $200 million in sales last month, and Foundation, where an Edward Snowden portrait sold for $5.4 million last week.

Musk is himself big business. The Tesla CEO enjoys a cult of personality in the crypto world, due to his admiration for Dogecoin and his company’s decision in January to keep $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin on its books.

Said Monahan, “We like making things that strike a chord in Internet culture, and we think we accomplished that with this project's timing, subject, and approach.