Elon Musk Swaps Twitter Avatar For Many Bored Apes

Elon Musk, fresh from bidding to acquire Twitter, the billionaire investor, CEO, and founder of Tesla, sparked a stir on the social media platform on May 4. Everything went ablaze after Musk changed his profile photo to a collage picture that features many Bored Apes nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

The development has also caused a notable stir in the NFT community, with some of the commentators saying that Elon Musk made a collage of bored apes on his avatar to troll NFT owners.

Musk’s Twitter avatar as of May 4 shows a picture that features a collection of Bored Apes with Ape 5809 stacked right in the middle. The nonfungible tokens are all from various artists, each of them with a unique design and serial number.

Bored Apes are mostly coveted among nonfungible token collectors. It is so popular that, when Yuga Labs, the firm behind the Bored Ape NFT, launched a recent nonfungible token (NFT) project, gas costs on Ethereum (ETH) surged into the thousands of dollars.

Some of the users alleged that Elon Musk made a collage of “screenshotted bored apes his profile picture to troll NFT owners.” Others insist that he is attempting to show his intentions to get into the NFT space.

Seems like @elonmusk entered NFT world 🐵

Do you think he will use @TraitSwap to made his Bored Apes more Fancy? 🤔 https://t.co/G3Xee9SjdD

— Fancy Bears Metaverse (@FancyBearsMeta) May 4, 2022

A contemporary art specialist and co-head of digital art at Sotheby’s, Michael Bouhanna, was also quick to react, sharing a screenshot on Twitter of Musk’s profile. Bouhanna tweeted asking the Tesla boss to delete the avatar he had designed for Sotheby’s sale, insisting that Elon Musk had not acquired these NFTs.

@elonmusk as much 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 🫡 pic.twitter.com/e83ZyxWGH5

— Michael Bouhanna (@michaelbouhanna) May 4, 2022

Since then, Elon Musk has tweeted to his 90.7 million followers:

“I dunno … seems kinda fungible.”

Whatever the case, Apecoin (APE) holders were ecstatic, seeing their tokens increase 20% in value based on data acquired from CoinMarketCap. Since Elon Musk updated his Twitter profile picture, more than 10 Bored Apes have been sold at the time of publication, and the floor price has since surged by 10 ETH.