Musk reversely called for a single NFT to cross the wild period

Cosmic Internet celebrity Musk , once again made NFT popular.

Unlike the previous call for Dogecoin, this time, he ridiculed the "non-homogeneity" of NFT-changed to copy and paste the "boring ape" avatar, which seems nothing special.

However, Musk's move was immediately bombarded by people in the NFT industry: "I am about to sue you, this is not a joke", "Using the artist's work is suspected of copyright infringement", "My avatar art costs a million yuan to see once ".

Perhaps frightened, Musk immediately put on a new profile picture: a little boy holding a rocket. On the one hand, he maintains his character design of longing for space, on the other hand, he also expresses that he has no malicious intentions.

The one-day tour of Musk’s NFT avatar may have popularized to the public, the boundaries of NFT’s copyright awareness, and how we should look at this new type of Internet art from a new perspective.

Musk changed his avatar and played with NFT

On May 4, Musk played with NFT (Non-Fungible Token, non-fungible token) on Twitter again.

The world Internet celebrity changed his avatar to a collection of avatars from the Boring Ape series, including 101 Boring Apes, with BYAC number 5809 in the middle.

At the same time, he also sent a tweet, mocking "non-homogeneity", saying: "I don't know... this seems a bit fungible".

"Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC for short) is currently the most popular NFT project in the world. The floor price (lowest price) on May 9 exceeded 98 ETH (about 245,800 US dollars). In other words, the price of each Boring Ape NFT work has exceeded one million yuan.

Obviously, Musk, who has just reached a Twitter acquisition agreement, does not know enough about NFT. Shortly after the change, Sotheby's contemporary art specialist Michael Bouhanna called on him to remove it on Twitter.

Bouhanna said that the picture was an NFT inspired by the event of "101 Boring Apes (including Ape 5809) sold by Sotheby's for $24 million in September 2021". Musk, who has not been authorized, is suspected of infringing on the NFT Rights of Makers and Collectors.

In fact, the NFT circle does not welcome such molesting by Musk.

Another protester said: "My brother-in-law is a state trooper in Texas, if anyone uses my NFT in any way without my permission, please be ready to contact the state of Texas, this is not a joke .”

Another owner of a suspected boring ape NFT said: "It must cost a few million to see my artwork."

Some people, because Musk helped to promote Boring Ape, and its token APE soared, gave a thumbs up to express their gratitude.

According to Coinbase data, after Musk changed his avatar, ApeCoin, launched by Bored Ape founder Yuga Labs, soared 19% in an hour to a daily high of $17.64. It has since pared gains and was last at $11.24.

The ApeCoin token is down about 34% over the past week. With a market capitalization of $3.2 billion, it ranks 35th on the CoinGecko digital currency market capitalization list.

Shortly after Michael Buhana’s above-mentioned tweet was released, Musk liked the tweet and changed his Twitter avatar to a little boy holding a rocket and yearning for the universe.

In fact, Musk’s criticism and questioning of NFT has never stopped. In the combing of his past remarks, we may be able to see Musk’s attitude towards NFT.

Musk does not accept NFT

Musk has long criticized NFT. On January 22 this year, Twitter announced that it would launch a feature on its subscription service Twitter Blue that would allow iOS users to use NFT as their avatar. Musk immediately expressed his dissatisfaction, criticizing it for wasting resources, "This is so annoying", and by the way criticized the spam problem related to cryptocurrencies.

Musk has not always rejected NFT. On March 16 last year, he posted a tweet about electronic music and claimed to sell it in the form of NFT, testing the waters of NFT.

This tweet reached a maximum of 625.64ETH on the NFT auction platform website v.cent.co.

Shortly after, however, Musk said that "it just doesn't feel right" and that this will pass.

In a tweet that followed, Musk described a hypothetical party scene in which a man in a party hat stood in a corner watching the rest of the audience.

The line next to him reads: "They don't know I have an irreplaceable mark on this song."

This may indicate that compared to NFT, which uses investment as the main gimmick, Musk values private irreplaceable experiences more.

In fact, in addition to NFT, this cosmic Internet celebrity also touches digital currency from time to time.

Musk likes to change his Twitter avatar to show his attitude. Previously, his replacement of Bitcoin and Dogecoin-related avatars caused related price fluctuations.

Musk may not be interested in NFT personally, but Twitter, which he is about to take over, is one of the first social media to test NFT.

One of the main promotional selling points of Twitter Blue, which Twitter recently promoted, is the NFT avatar.

Twitter has a dedicated NFT avatar function that allows users to set their NFTs to display pictures in a hexagon, but Musk's avatar is just a standard circular picture.

Currently, Twitter only supports static image NFTs (JPEG, PNG) minted on the Ethereum blockchain (e.g. ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens).

In addition, there are many Web3.0 giants behind the capital that Musk used to acquire Twitter.

Elon Musk submitted a revised 13-D document for the acquisition of Twitter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which disclosed the list of privatization acquisition consortia, including the world's largest encryption trading platform Field investment institutions AH Capital Management, LLC (a16z) and other related crypto giants.

After Musk completes the privatization acquisition of Twitter, will Twitter become the base camp for the development of cryptocurrency and Web3.0?

Not long ago, Musk proposed a series of reforms to the Twitter Blue premium subscription service, including substantial price cuts, ad bans and the option to pay with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

According to people familiar with the matter, Musk declared to investors that if investors support his acquisition of Twitter, he will be very confident that they will get 2 to 3 times the return on investment; if all goes well, it is possible to get 5 to 10 times the investment return.

However, in recent years, Twitter has failed to solve the problems of stagnant user growth and advertising dependence.

Perhaps, cryptocurrencies and Web3.0 will become an important engine for Musk to revive Twitter's performance growth.

On May 9, Orlando Police Pension Fund, a pension fund in Florida, recently filed a lawsuit against Musk and Twitter, alleging that the decision of Twitter’s board of directors to allow the transaction to go through violated its fiduciary duty. They believe that because Musk holds shares in Twitter, legally speaking, the acquisition will not be completed until 2025 at the earliest.

Perhaps Twitter's Web3.0 transformation road will not be so smooth.

Even as Twitter becomes a privatized company, what it does is still governed by federal law. The copyright awareness of NFT (especially avatar NFT) will become more and more important, and what will define it?

Web3, back to reality

What determines whether an NFT avatar constitutes an infringement?

Last September, Curry replaced his Twitter profile picture with a bored ape, which he bought for 55 ethereums, or roughly $180,000.

Someone said at the time that these hundreds of thousands of dollars of avatars could be taken by copying. Now Musk’s practical experience shows that this is impossible, at least not in the United States.

Behind the contest between Sotheby's and Musk, the real source of NFT rights is revealed: real world law.

"Blockchain only plays the role of depositing and transferring evidence. If you really want to protect your rights, you still have to rely on the legal machine in the real world." An industry insider said.

As many social platforms have launched NFT functions, the regulation of digital currency is also on the verge of coming out.

In March, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order outlining the U.S. government’s strategy on cryptocurrencies. According to CNBC, the specific approach will focus on six key areas: consumer and investor protection, financial stability, illegal activities, U.S. competitiveness in global markets, financial inclusion, and responsible innovation.

In terms of consumer protection, the Biden administration will conduct assessments and research on investor scams, and strengthen supervision of systemic financial risks brought about by digital assets.

NFT project parties and investment institutions may undergo more compliance inspections.

From this point of view, although Musk does not accept NFT, he will also popularize the copyright of NFT to the public. Can it be called a reverse order, or is it intentional?

The NFT hype is over, and the circle is broken

There are various signs that the NFT hype period has passed.

According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the NFT market is underperforming, down 92% from its high in September last year, when there were about 225,000 sales in the market. The number of active wallets for NFTs has also dropped by about 88%, with 14,000 last week, instead of the November high of 119,000.

In March of this year, after analyzing 19.3 million NFTs, the blockchain analysis company Nansen found that one out of every three NFT projects had almost no transaction activity, and the transaction amount of the other third was already lower than the issuer’s minted tokens. the cost of.

In March 2021, the NFT of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet was sold by Malaysians for 1630 ETH (current price: 2.91 million US dollars).

On April 6, the buyer announced that he was going to resell the NFT through the Opensea platform, with a price tag of 14,969 ETH, equivalent to $48 million, and the auction lasted for a week. After the auction ended, a total of 7 bidders bid, ranging from 0.0019 ETH ($6) to 0.09 ETH ($277). The investor lost more than 99%.

"Almost all NFT projects have entered the beta bonus period, and the alpha era has passed." Xu Surf, a web follower, said that Tugou has a high probability of returning to zero, and liquidity supplementary tools will generally appear at this stage. The recent emergence of the pledge loan arbitrage method shows that NFT has reached a bottleneck period.

However, some original blue-chip NFT projects, such as the works of artists such as Cai Guoqiang and Fang Lijun, are expected to lose 90% of their money.

Some industry insiders believe that the recent decline in NFT data is a sign of cooling hype, rather than a bubble burst. NFTs will still be used for everything from video games to commerce.

On the one hand, the NFT market is falling into a bear market, on the other hand, NFT avatars will usher in popularization.

In addition, not only Twitter, but Meta and Telegram have also launched NFT-related functions.

In addition to Twitter, on May 8, Meta's social media Instagram is planning to integrate NFTs of Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Flow, and will first conduct pilot work for some people.

It is reported that Instagram will plan to support Web3 wallets such as MetaMask , and support users to display their NFT and NFT creators in their profiles. Instagram said it will not charge users to upload and display NFTs.

Additionally, Telegram launched NFTs on Disintar.

In the past business history, popularization means diminishing marginal costs and lower commodity prices. NFT will evolve from the speculation of a few people and differentiate into popular cultural commodities and luxury artworks.

In fact, NFT is no longer limited to speculative investment products on Opensea, and is increasingly accepted by the mainstream world.

Not long ago, Coinbase planned to make a bored ape NFT-themed animated film, and had to seek consent and pay copyright fees from the selected characters.

And in April this year, China's Lining also held a flash mob event of Boring Ape in Sanlitun, Beijing.

(China Li-Ning held a boring ape-related event in Sanlitun, Beijing in April this year)

NFT naturally has cultural attributes, which make it favorable for dissemination. Now, with Musk’s reverse order and more perfect supervision, the public will see more and more NFT products on Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram. This may indicate that NFT is about to cross the early wild era and gradually come into the sun.