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 his tweets as a non-consumable witness (or NFT), even though a bidder had bid more than $ 1 million for the asset. digital.
Musk said Monday in a tweet“I’m selling this song about NFT as NFT.” The social media post he sold included a song with the lyrics: “NFT for your vanity. Computers never sleep. It’s verified. It’s guaranteed.”
The tweet for sale also contained a short video loop, depicting a trophy called the “Vanity Trophy” with the term “NFT” at the top and “HODL” at the bottom. HODL is a joy used by cryptocurrency enthusiasts and retail investors to encourage peers to hold a currency or stock in a company, rather than sell it.
On Tuesday, Musk changed his tune and said in a tweet, “It doesn’t really feel right to sell this. It will happen.”
NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that are used to represent digital assets, including images and video clips. They can be bought and sold as physical collectibles. NFTs work with a decentralized digital ledger or blockchain, which means that transactions, ownership, and validity of any asset representing an NFT can be tracked.
Musk’s tweet, including the title, video and song, went on sale as NFT on “Valuables,” a platform posted by Cent, the blockchain-built social networking network. According to Valuables, the latest highest bid on Musk’s tweet was $ 1,121,000, from a Twitter user with manager @SinaEstavi.
The experimental CEO has recently been known for his support of digital assets, including Bitcoin, Dogecoin and now NFT. In February, Tesla revealed that it bought $ 1.5 billion in bitcoins and could continue to acquire cryptocurrencies.
Musk’s romantic partner, a musician known as Grimes, also sold about $ 6 million of his digital work after putting it up for auction in recent weeks.
His news-generating NFT offering on Monday helped Musk distract his tens of millions of followers on Twitter from news of personnel changes in the front rows of Tesla and a federal investigation into a Tesla crash that took place in Detroit last week.
On Monday, financial files revealed that former Tesla Automotive president Jerome Guillen would leave that role to become Tesla’s president of Heavy Trucking. Tesla has not yet announced a successor to Guillen for the role of president of Automotive.
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” crash that occurred there on March 11 with a Tesla sedan and a semi-truck. The investigation is already underway.
In recent months, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has warned investors to buy or sell shares and other assets based on information shared on social media. The financial regulator has also warned investors against buying shares in SPAC or other assets, simply because of celebrity involvement in the deal.
– CNBC Reporter Make It Taylor Locke contributed to this story.