Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX, speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC.
McNamee wins | Getty Images
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, on Tuesday withdrew the offer to sell one of the tweets as a non-fungible token (or NFT), even though a bidder offered more than $ 1 million for the digital asset.
Musk continued Monday in a tweet, “I’m selling this song about NFTs as NFT.” The social media post he put up for sale included a song with the lyrics: “NFT for your vanity. Computers never sleep. It’s checked. It’s guaranteed.”
The tweet for sale also contained a short video loop, which featured a trophy labeled “Vanity Trophy” with the term “NFT” at the top and “HODL” at the bottom. HODL is a joy used by cryptocurrency fans and retail investors to encourage colleagues to own a coin or stock in a company, rather than sell.
On Tuesday, Musk changed his tone, saying in a tweet: “It doesn’t really feel good to sell this. Will pass”.
NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens used to represent digital assets, including images and videos. They can be bought and sold as physical collectibles. NFTs run on a decentralized digital register or blockchain, which means that the transactions, ownership and validity of any asset that an NFT represents can be tracked.
Musk’s tweet, including his caption, video and song, was listed for sale as NFT on “Valuables”, a platform launched by Cent, the social network built on the blockchain. According to Valuables, the last biggest offer on Musk’s tweet was $ 1,121,000 from a Twitter user with the @SinaEstavi handle.
The experimental CEO has been known to support digital assets lately, including bitcoin, Dogecoin and now NFTs. In February, Tesla revealed that it had purchased $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and could continue to make cryptocurrency purchases.
Musk’s romantic partner, a musician known as Grimes, has also sold about $ 6 million worth of his digital works after putting them up for auction in recent weeks.
His buzzing NFT offer has helped Musk distract tens of millions of followers on Twitter from news of Tesla’s senior staff changes and a federal investigation into a Tesla crash that occurred at Detroit at the end of last week.
On Monday, financial documents revealed that former Tesla Automotive President Jerome Guillen will step down to become Tesla’s president for heavy trucks. Tesla has not yet announced a successor to Guillen for the role of president of Automotive.
On the same day, the federal vehicle safety authority, NHTSA, said it would send a team to Detroit to investigate the underlying causes of a “violent” accident that occurred there on March 11, involving a Tesla sedan and a semi -truck. The investigation is now ongoing.
In recent months, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has warned investors against buying or selling shares and other assets based on information shared on social networks. The financial regulator also warned investors against buying shares in SPACs or other assets, simply because of the involvement of celebrities in the transaction.
– CNBC Reporter Make It Taylor Locke contributed to this story.