• The collage was created by auction house Sotheby’s for sale last year
Elon Musk on Wednesday changed his Twitter profile picture to a collage of Bored Apes from a non-fungible token (NFT) collection. This action sent the price of the project’s cryptocurrency soaring.
ApeCoin, a digital token launched by Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs, surged 19% around 8 a.m. ET to $17.64 following Musk’s profile picture change, since lost its gains and was last trading at about $16.
Although it was initially unclear whether Musk bought the Bored Ape NFT, Michael Bouhanna, an executive at auction house Sotheby’s, said the image was “created for our Sotheby’s sale. Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval,” suggesting that the billionaire may have merely saved the picture to make it his profile image.
Twitter has a dedicated feature that allows users to set their NFT. However, the feature will turn the display picture share to a hexagonal shape, but Musk’s avatar is showing in the circle.
Musk poking fun
Musk — who recently agreed on a deal to buy the microblogging platform for $44 billion — appeared to crack a joke at NFTs and tweeted, “I dunno … seems kinda fungible.”
NFTs are designed to not act as a fungible thing— in other words, they can’t be exchanged interchangeably.
It’s not the first time Musk’s activity on Twitter has led to wild movements in the prices of digital assets.
Numerous tweets by the Tesla boss have earlier caused the prices of Bitcoin and Dogecoin to fluctuate dramatically.
Picture Credit: CNBC
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