SpaceX founder and chief engineer Elon Musk speaks at the Satellite 2020 Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk withdrew the offer to sell one of his tweets as a non-fungible token (or NFT) on Tuesday, although a bidder offered more than $ 1 million for the digital asset.
Musk said in Monday in a tweet, “I am selling this song on NFTs as an NFT.” The social media post he put on sale included a song with the lyrics: “NFT for your vanity. Computers never sleep. It’s checked. It’s guaranteed.”
The tweet for sale also contained a short video loop, which depicted a trophy labeled “Vanity Trophy” with the term “NFT” at the top and “HODL” at the bottom. HODL is a gift used by cryptocurrency fans and retail investors to encourage their peers to hold coins or shares in a company, rather than selling them.
On Tuesday, Musk changed his tone, saying in a tweet, “Actually, I don’t feel good about selling this. It will pass.”
NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens used to represent digital assets, including images and video clips. They can be bought and sold as physical collection items. NFTs run on a decentralized digital ledger, or blockchain, which means that the transactions, ownership and validity of any asset that an NFT represents can be tracked.
Musk’s tweet, including his caption, video and music, was listed for sale as an NFT on “Valuables”, a platform launched by Cent, the social media network built on blockchain. According to Valuables, the last highest bid on Musk’s tweet was $ 1,121,000, from a Twitter user with the nickname @SinaEstavi.
The experimental CEO became known for his endorsement of digital assets recently, including bitcoin, Dogecoin and now NFTs. In February, Tesla revealed that it bought $ 1.5 billion in bitcoins and may continue to make cryptocurrency purchases.
Musk’s romantic partner, a musician known as Grimes, also sold about $ 6 million in his digital artwork after putting it up for auction in recent weeks.
His buzz-generating NFT offer on Monday helped Musk distract his tens of millions of Twitter followers from news of personnel changes at Tesla’s top echelons and a federal investigation into a Tesla accident that took place in Detroit last week.
On Monday, financial records revealed that former Tesla Automotive president Jerome Guillen would be stepping down from that position to become Tesla’s president of heavy trucks instead. Tesla has yet to announce a successor to Guillen for the position of President of Automotive.
On 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” accident that occurred there on March 11 involving a Tesla sedan and a semi-truck. The investigation is already underway.
In recent months, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has warned investors against buying or selling shares and other assets based on information shared on social media. The financial regulator also warned investors against buying shares in SPACs, or other assets, simply because of the involvement of celebrities in the business.
– CNBC Make It Reporter Taylor Locke contributed to this story.