Elon Musk has changed his Twitter profile picture to a collage of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
“I dunno…seems kinda fungible,” Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, tweeted on Wednesday, poking fun at a major hallmark of the non-fungible token, or NFT concept—that they are unique and cannot be replicated.
It doesn’t appear that Musk owns any of these NFTs but might be poking fun at the Bored Ape community. A common critique is that anyone can just copy or screenshot an NFT online and save it without buying it.
The collage that Musk posted, which seems to have been taken from the Sotheby’s “Ape In!” NFT auction from September 2021, shows one main Bored Ape against a backdrop of several smaller Bored Apes.
Michael Bouhanna, vice president, contemporary art specialist, and cohead of digital art at Sotheby’s, asked Musk on Twitter to remove the profile picture (pfp) or give him credit.
“@Elonmusk as much as 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,” Bouhanna tweeted.
Musk frequently reposts memes of sorts, but some have criticized his reposting, as he often neglects to give the original meme creators credit.
The reactions to Musk’s new Bored Ape collage avatar from Crypto Twitter were mixed. Some found it funny. Others interpreted it as genuine support for the NFT collection, and others were just confused.
“Elon Musk literally made a collage of screenshotted bored apes his profile pic to troll NFT owners,” one Twitter user tweeted.
Musk has appeared to mock NFTs in the past. In December 2021 he tweeted a meme saying, “These ‘NFTs’—are they in the room with us right now?”
In January 2022, Musk called Twitter’s decision to include NFT profile pictures “annoying,” adding, “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”
ApeCoin, the cryptocurrency associated with Bored Apes, has popped slightly today after a rough week following Yuga Labs’ metaverse land sale. ApeCoin is up 2.1% in 24 hours, now trading at $15.51, according to CoinGecko.
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