The author | Dawei
Cosmic Internet celebrity Musk has once again hyped up the NFT.
Unlike the previous dogecoin shout, this time, he ridiculed the NFT "non-homogenization" - replaced by a copy-paste "boring ape" avatar, which seems nothing special.
However, Musk's move was immediately bombarded by people in the NFT community: "I am about to sue you, this is not a joke", "using the artist's work, suspected of copyright infringement", "My avatar art, I have to spend millions of yuan to see it once".
Perhaps frightened, Musk immediately put on a new avatar: a little boy holding a rocket. On the one hand, he maintains his human design of yearning for space, and on the other hand, he also shows that he has no malice.
The day trip of Musk's NFT avatar may be popularized to the public, the boundaries of copyright awareness in NFTs, and how we should look at this new internet art with new eyes.
Musk changed his avatar and played with NFTs
On May 4, Musk played another NFT (Non-Fungible Token) on Twitter.
The world influencer replaced the avatar with a collection of avatars from the Boring Ape series, including 101 boring ape avatars, with BYAC number 5809 in the middle.
At the same time, he also sent a tweet mocking "non-homogenization", saying: "I don't know... This seems a bit fungible."
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is currently the hottest NFT project in the world, with floor prices (the lowest price) exceeding 98ETH (about $245,800) on May 9. That is to say, the price of each boring ape NFT work has exceeded one million yuan.
Apparently, Musk, who just reached a Twitter acquisition deal, doesn't know enough about NFTs. Shortly after his avatar was replaced, Michael Bouhanna, a contemporary art expert at Sotheby's, tweeted for him to remove the avatar.
Bouhanna said the image was inspired by the "101 boring apes (including Ape 5809) auctioned by Sotheby's for $24 million in September 2021", and that the unlicensed Musk is suspected of infringing on the rights of the NFT producer and collector.
In fact, the NFT circle does not welcome musk's flirtation.
Another protester said: "My brother-in-law is a Texas state police officer, and if someone uses my NFT in any way without my permission, please be prepared to contact Texas, it is no joke." ”
Another owner of the suspected boring ape NFT said: "It must cost millions to see my artwork." ”
There are also people, because Musk helped publicize the boring ape, and its token APE soared, giving a thumbs up and expressing gratitude.
After Musk changed his profile picture, ApeCoin, launched by Bored Ape founder Yuuga Labs, soared 19 percent in 1 hour to a daily high of $17.64, according to Coinbase data. Since then, it has given back gains, the latest at $11.24.
The ApeCoin token has fallen by about 34% in the past week. With a market capitalization of $3.2 billion, it ranks 35th on CoinGecko's digital currency market capitalization list.
Shortly after Michael Buhana's tweet was posted, Musk liked the tweet and replaced his Twitter avatar with a little boy with a rocket and yearning for the universe.
In fact, Musk's criticism and questioning of the NFT has never stopped, and in the combing of his past remarks, we may be able to see Musk's attitude to the NFT.
Musk does not accept NFTs
Musk has long been critical of NFTs, and on January 22 of this year, Twitter announced that it would launch a feature on its subscription service Twitter Blue that would let iOS users use NFTs as their avatars. Musk immediately expressed his displeasure, criticizing it for wasting resources, "which is so annoying," and incidentally criticizing the cryptocurrency-related spam problem.
Musk hasn't always rejected NFTs, either. On March 16 last year, he tweeted about electronic music and claimed to sell it in NFT form to test the waters of NFT.
The article reached a maximum of 625.64 ETH on the v.cent.co of the NFT auction platform website.
Soon after, however, Musk said "it didn't feel right" and that it would all pass.
In the tweet that followed, Musk described a hypothetical party scene in which a man in a party hat stood in a corner watching other spectators.
A sentence right next to him was: "They don't know I have the irreplaceable mark of this song." ”
This may mean that Musk is more focused on the private irreplaceable experience than the NFT, which is the main gimmick of investment.
In fact, in addition to NFTs, this cosmic Internet celebrity also touches the water from time to time digital currency.
Musk likes to change his Twitter avatar to show his attitude, after his replacement of Bitcoin and Dogecoin-related avatars caused related price fluctuations.
Musk may personally be unimpressed with NFTs, but his upcoming Twitter is one of the first social media to test the waters of NFTs.
One of the main promotional selling points of Twitter Blue recently promoted is the NFT avatar.
Twitter has a feature dedicated to setting NFT avatars that allows users to set their NFTs to display pictures in hexagons, 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, the capital behind Musk's acquisition of Twitter is not lacking in Web 3.0 giants.
Elon Musk filed a revised 13-D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to take Twitter, which disclosed a list of privatization acquisition consortiums, including Binance, the world's largest crypto trading platform, AH Capital Management, L.L.C., (a16z) and other crypto giants.
After Musk completes the private acquisition of Twitter, will Twitter become a stronghold for the development of cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0?
Not long ago, Musk proposed a series of reforms to Twitter Blue's premium subscription service, including drastic price cuts, a ban on advertising and an option to pay with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
According to people familiar with the matter, Musk announced 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 a return on investment of 5 to 10 times.
In recent years, however, Twitter has failed to address the conundrum of stagnant user growth and ad dependence.
Perhaps, cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0 will become important engines for Musk to reinvigorate Twitter's performance growth.
On May 9, an Orlando Police Pension Fund, a Florida pension fund, recently filed a lawsuit against Musk and Twitter, saying that Twitter's board of directors' decision to allow the deal to pass violated its fiduciary duties. They believe that because Musk holds a stake in Twitter, legally speaking, the acquisition will not be completed until 2025 at the earliest.
Perhaps Twitter's Web 3.0 transformation road will not be so smooth.
Even as Twitter becomes a privatized company, what it does is still regulated by federal law. Copyright awareness in NFTs (especially avatar NFTs) will become increasingly important, and what will define this?
Web3, also under the control of reality
What determines whether an NFT avatar constitutes infringement?
Last September, Curry replaced his Twitter avatar with a boring ape image that he bought for 55 Ethers (about $180,000).
At that time, some people said that these hundreds of thousands of dollars of heads could be occupied by copying. Musk's practical experience now says it's impossible, at least not in the United States.
Behind the contest between Sotheby's and Musk reveals the true source of NFT rights: real-world law.
"Blockchain only plays a role in depositing and circulating, and if you really want to protect your rights, you still have to rely on the real-world legal machine." An industry insider said.
Under the introduction of NFT functions on a number of social platforms, the supervision of digital currencies is also about to be announced.
In March, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order outlining the U.S. government's strategy on cryptocurrencies. According to CNBC, the 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 evaluates and studies investor scams and strengthens regulation of systemic financial risks posed by digital assets.
Project parties and investment institutions of NFTs may be subject to additional compliance reviews.
In this view, although Musk does not accept NFTs, he will also do the copyright popularization of NFTs, which can be called a reverse call, or is it intentional?
The NFT hype has passed, and the breaking circle has opened
All indications are that the NFT hype period has passed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the NFT market has underperformed, down 92 percent from its September high last year, when the market had about 225,000 sales. The number of active wallets for the NFT also fell by about 88 percent, with last week's figure being 14,000 instead of the November high of 119,000.
In March, blockchain analytics firm Nansen analyzed 19.3 million NFTs and found that one in every three NFT projects had almost no trading activity, and the other third of the transaction amount was already below the cost of the issuer's token minting.
In March 2021, the NFT of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's first Tweet was auctioned off by Malaysians for 1630 ETH ($2.91 million at the time).
On April 6, the buyer announced that he was preparing to resell the NFT through the Opensea platform for 14,969 ETH, equivalent to $48 million, and the auction lasted for a week. After the auction, 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 dividend period, and the alpha era has passed." Web follower Xu Surf said that the probability of the figure dog is zero, and there will generally be liquidity supplementary tools at this stage. Recently, the emergence of pledge loan arbitrage indicates that the NFT has reached a bottleneck period.
Originally, some 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 insiders believe that the recent decline in NFT data is a sign of a cooling of hype sentiment, rather than a bursting bubble. NFTs will still be used in everything from video games to business.
On the one hand, the NFT market is falling into a bear market, and on the other hand, the NFT avatar will usher in popularity.
In addition, not only Twitter, Meta but also 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, allowing users to display their NFTs in their profiles as well as the creators of NFTs. Instagram said it won't charge users to upload and show NFTs.
In addition, Telegram launched NFTs on Disintar.
In the past business history, popularization meant that marginal costs decreased, commodity prices became lower, and NFTs evolved from the speculation of a few people, diverging into popular cultural goods and luxury works of art.
In fact, NFTs are no longer limited to speculative investments on Opensea and are increasingly accepted by the mainstream world.
Not long ago, Coinbase planned to make an animated movie with a boring ape NFT theme, and it must also seek consent and pay royalties from the selected characters.
In April, China's Li Ning also held a boring ape pop-up event in Sanlitun, Beijing.
(China's Li Ning held a boring ape-related event in Sanlitun, Beijing in April this year)
NFTs naturally carry cultural attributes, making them favorable conditions for dissemination, and now, Musk's reverse shouting, supervision is more and more perfect, the public will see more and more NFT products on Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. This may indicate that NFTs are about to cross the early era of recklessness and gradually move into the sun.
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