Elon Musk has changed his Twitter profile picture to a montage of the Bored Ape non-fungible token collection — sending the value of its related cryptocurrency soaring.
ApeCoin, the cryptocurrency that was started by Yuga Labs who are the creators of the Bored Ape NFT, was up nearly 20% as of 8 am on Tuesday. At the time, it was trading at $17.64 per token.
Later in the day, ApeCoin lost some of those gains. It was up 3% as of noon on Tuesday, when it was trading at $15.15.
The image that Musk posted on his Twitter profile was created for the Sotheby’s sale of the NFT, according to Michael Bouhanna, an executive at the auction house.
“As much as I admire your work I’d like you to remove your pfp that I created for our Sotheby’s sale,” Bouhannah tweeted on Tuesday.
“Or you credit me,” he wrote, adding a laughing emoji. “Happy to send you the original file minted with the buyer approval.”
Musk did not reply to Bouhanna, though he did write about NFTs, tweeting: “I dunno … seems kinda fungible.”
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), which is one of the most popular NFT collections on the market, features 10,000 apes on the Ethereum blockchain.
Yuga Labs, the Miami-based startup backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, sold 10,000 BoredApe NFTs last week, netting it $285 million.
Musk’s past tweets about cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and dogecoin, have led to wild fluctuations in their value.
