ApeCoin token surges after Elon Musk Changed Twitter Profile Picture to Bored Ape NFTs

Elon Musk on Wednesday changed his profile picture on Twitter to an image featuring various avatars from the Bored Ape non-fungible token collection, sending the price of the project’s digital token soaring..

ApeCoin, the token launched by Bored Ape creators Yuga Labs, surged 19% in an hour at around 8 a.m. ET to a daily high of $17.64 following Musk’s profile picture change, according to Coinbase data. It’s since pared back its gains and was last trading at about $15.43.

It’s not clear whether Musk actually bought a Bored Ape NFT. The billionaire liked a tweet from Michael Bouhanna, an executive at auction house Sotheby’s, who said the image was “created for our Sotheby’s sale.”

“Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval,” Bouhanna wrote in the tweet.

It suggests Musk may have merely right clicked and saved the picture to make it his profile image. Twitter has a dedicated feature that allows users to set their NFT as a hexagonal display picture, but Musk’s avatar is just a standard profile image.

NFTs are meant to authenticate ownership of everything from digital art to sports memorabilia on the blockchain. But they’ve attracted ridicule from skeptics, given it’s easy to continue replicating and distributing the associated content online without buying a token.

Musk — who recently agreed a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion — appeared to poke fun at NFTs in a follow-up tweet.

“I dunno … seems kinda fungible,” the Tesla and SpaceX boss posted

I dunno … seems kinda fungible

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 4, 2022

NFTs are designed to not be fungible — in other words, they can’t be exchanged interchangeably.

It’s not the first time Musk’s activity on Twitter has led to wild movements in asset prices. Numerous tweets by the Tesla and SpaceX boss have caused the price of bitcoin and dogecoin — a “meme” cryptocurrency favored by Musk — to rise or fall dramatically.

The Bored Ape NFT collection has garnered a cult-like following since its inception a year ago, with everyone from diehard crypto investors to celebrities like Jimmy Fallon buying up the buzzy ape icons.

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