After refuting the concept of metaversity and web3.0, Musk has targeted NFTs this time.
According to foreign media reports, social media Twitter recently announced that it will launch a plan on its subscription service Twitter Blue to allow iOS users to use NFTs as their new avatars. Tesla CEO Elon Musk then expressed his displeasure.
Musk posted a screenshot on Twitter saying "it's so annoying." In addition, Musk also angrily criticized the problem of cryptocurrency-related scam emails, "Twitter has spent a lot of engineering resources on this matter, and cryptocurrency scammers have a spam blocking party in almost every post!? ”
According to market tracker DappRadar, NFT sales reached around $25 billion in 2021. This has also attracted a group of companies such as Twitter to step up the use of NFTs to make money. Twitter displayed the NFT profile picture as a hexagon to distinguish the standard circle shape for non-NFT users.
The popularity of the NFT is obvious to all, from foreign NBA star Curry to domestic singers Jay Chou, Lin Junjie and other celebrities are entering the game. NFT, or Non-Fungible Token (non-homogeneous token), is regarded as an entry in the blockchain, is a unique asset in the digital world, and NFT is also considered to be one of the basic technologies necessary for the confirmation of the rights of virtual items in the future metaverse.
Speaking of NFTs, Musk is not completely without contact. On March 15 last year, Musk posted an animation on Twitter saying that he was selling the NFT song in NFT form, which reached 625.64 ETH at one point v.cent.co the NFT auction platform website. Just a day later, Musk posted, "I don't think it's very appropriate to sell this thing," with the caption specifically writing, "They didn't know I owned the NFT of the song."
On the contrary, foreign netizens could not hold back and first made an NFT for Musk: some netizens made Musk's avatar into an NFT series, entered the cryptocurrency field and was sold at a high price; there were also good people based on Musk Shiba Inu "Santa Floki", creating the NFT of the same name to get the price soared.
Even Musk's mother, Meyer Musk, is eager to give it a try, saying in an interview that the concept of collectible NFTs is creating a whole new market that will be very interesting as it grows. But Musk was clearly unmoved.
In the face of several popular concepts, when a number of entrepreneurs are shouting for it, Musk has become an alternative representative of them who do not chase the wind.
In addition to the NFT, earlier, Musk had also angrily criticized the metaverse. On December 20, 2021, Musk said on social media that the metaverse now looks more like a popular "marketing term" than a reality.
The metacosm is indeed an advanced "concept" that cannot be realized for a long time to come. Musk said in an interview that he has not seen any noteworthy metaverse VR applications in the market, and he does not think that metacosm can become a new trend in the near future.
Musk also believes that the consumer experience of the metaverse is disappointing. For Zuckerberg's VR, Musk is also completely faceless: "Of course, you can put the TV on your nose, but I don't think it's called 'entering the metaverse'. "I don't think anybody would really tie a screen to their face all day long, it's very uncomfortable." Even if the device could be designed to be very light and lightweight, I still don't think anyone would want to wear it all day. ”
In addition to the metacosm, Musk is not optimistic about web 3.0. Web 3.0 is based on the concept of digital assets and decentralization, and is also considered to be the only way for the development of the metaverse.
Last September, Musk replied on Twitter to Sam Altman, president of U.S. startup incubator Y Combinator, saying that "Web3 sounds like nonsense." At this point, he reached a certain consensus with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who believes that Web3 will not promote the democratization of society, but will only take the power to decide users away from existing Internet giants such as Facebook.
Since last year, the metaverse, web3.0, NFT and other dazzling novel concepts have continued to emerge, but Musk has always acted like a conservative - let the outside world be hyped up, and I will not move.
Looking back at Musk's entrepreneurial experience, he is a person who is highly sensitive to future trends, and every venture has run ahead of the wind.
Musk began teaching himself programming at the age of 10, dropped out of Stanford in 1995 to start Zip, and when asked why he dropped out, he replied, "I can't stand the internet age, but I stay out of it." ”
In 1998, Musk focused on the problem of Internet transactions, took the lead in founding a technology financial company X.com, so that buyers and sellers of transaction money first temporarily stored in the third-party payment platform, and then after confirming the receipt of goods, the money was called to the seller, and later sold to PayPal, a few years later, China has an Alipay that imitates PayPal.
However, Musk's most long-term entrepreneurial vision is Tesla, which has invested in the market. After Musk joined Tesla for 18 years, Tesla has finally grown into a hegemon in the electric vehicle industry, with a total market value exceeding the total market value of all traditional car companies combined.
Looking at the current new energy outlet, Musk has obviously chosen a track that can be called long slope and thick snow. But just four years ago, Musk and Tesla were often sung down by various media, shorted by major institutions, and even once moved the idea of selling the company to Apple.
In addition to preemptively laying out new energy vehicles, Musk at that time was eyeing another track that was not optimistic about most people - space exploration. Musk was thinking, "One day the earth is destroyed, where should humanity go?" The answer he found was Mars. In order to prepare for the future landing of humans on Mars, Musk founded Space X and began to build his own rockets.
At that time, the adjectives of the outside world for him were "the most terrible crazy man on the earth", "Silicon Valley crazy maniac" and "technology madman", because every time musk proposed an entrepreneurial idea, people had difficulty keeping up with Musk's brain hole, thinking that what he did was unreliable and not an outlet.
From Zip, X.com, to Tesla, Space X, Bored Company, and Brain-Computer Interface Company Neuralink, Musk is not in the limelight.
Anticipate the opportunity to act in advance, and time will prove it. On September 27, 2021, Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man again with a net worth of $203.4 billion, and the price of Tesla stock he held continued to soar, soaring by $58.6 billion in just over a decade from October 15 to October 26 last year.
Musk, who came from a programming background, can always use the rationality of technical otaku to see opportunities worth investing in a big step ahead of others. Perhaps it is precisely because his thinking is extremely advanced, and the outlet that is now being studied by the giants will be repeatedly criticized by Musk.
Musk has always had his own set of advanced ideas, and he once mentioned in an interview that he particularly admired the "first principles" thinking method.
The logic of the first principle is that looking at the world from a physical point of view, will not be swayed by existing experience, look at the essence from the appearance, and then go up from the essence layer by layer, which is also the underlying methodology of Musk's imagination to create various companies.
For example, when Musk thinks about the most critical battery of electric vehicles, he starts from the "first principle", when the cost of the battery is high, Musk decided to buy raw materials to assemble himself, so that Tesla can assemble cheaper batteries, thereby reducing the overall cost of electric vehicles.
Musk also copied First Principles into the rocket space. Since cars and ships can repeat the voyage, why can't the rocket repeat the liftoff? So Musk broke the norm, reduced the launch cost of the rocket to 1/5 of the industry, and also achieved mass production through Space X.
At that time, Musk found that Los Angeles was stuck in traffic every day, delaying his schedule to take a rocket to Mars, so Musk decided to start an underground tunnel transportation company to alleviate the traffic pressure on the ground by digging underground tunnels.
Musk's explanation of the first principles also clarifies why he does not follow the wind, "We always tend to compare in life, and we follow the trend of what others have done or are doing." The result of such development can only produce small iterative developments. ”
After all, compared to Musk, who is one step ahead of everything, most people always chase the wind after the wind comes.
Resources:
"Twitter introduces NFT avatar function, Musk criticizes it as "annoying"", Sina Technology;
What is the "first principle" that Musk advocates? CEIBS Business Review;
Iron Man of Silicon Valley: Elon Musk's Adventurous Life;
Musk: I Don't Think Web 3.0 Is Real, Bullet Finance;
Controversial Web 3.0: Is It the Cornerstone of the Metaverse? The Economic Observer;
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