06/05/2022 Elon Musk Twitter profile picture change briefly sends token of Bored Ape NFT project soaring

The Bored Ape NFT collection has garnered a cult-like following since its inception in April 2021.

The Bored Ape NFT collection has garnered a cult-like following since its inception in April 2021.

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Muskon Wednesday changed his profile picture onTwitterto 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 toCoinbasedata. 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 merelyright clicked and savedthe picture to make it his profile image. Twitter has adedicated featurethat 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 recentlyagreed a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion— appeared to poke fun at NFTs in a follow-up tweet.

“I dunno 
 seems kinda fungible,” theTeslaand SpaceX boss posted.

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 ofbitcoinanddogecoin— 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.

This weekend, Yuga Labs minted a collection of deeds to virtual land in anupcoming “metaverse” game called Otherside. Demand for the NFTs, known as Otherdeeds, was so high that it clogged up theEthereumblockchain, which underpins the world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency.

That caused Ethereum’s “gas fees” — costs required to approve transactions — to skyrocket. Some users reported having to pay fees in excess of $4,000. Yuga Labs subsequently apologized over the debacle, and said it would refund users gas fees for any failed transactions.

“We’re sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while,” the company tweeted Saturday. “It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale.”

In a further tweet Sunday, Yuga Labs said it was “still working on refunding all Otherdeed minters with failed transactions their gas.”

Despite the brief boost Wednesday, the ApeCoin token has fallen roughly 17% in the past week. With a market value of $4.4 billion, it ranks among the top 40 digital currencies on CoinGecko.

Arts

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/apecoin-token-surges-after-elon-musk-twitter-profile-change.html

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JosĂ© Delbo sent me his striking pencil sketch and powerful inked work, which I then interpreted in oil on canvas. I wanted to create a very painterly piece with obvious brush marks etc, but I was also aiming for a nostalgic feel, a kind of 1980’s superhero comic book look, the kind I grew up with. My goal with this animation was to try to recreate, in part, the creative process that both artists went through with the visual information I had. I was able to showcase my painting process more accurately as I could take photographs of my progress throughout. Consecutive images could then be layered like brush strokes over José’s drawing to create the impression that this was one continuous artwork from pencil, to ink, to completed painting. The representation of the line sketch at the beginning, then pencil/ink and lastly the paint layers being applied demonstrate both artists’ struggle for the right lines, tone, form, and colour until the work is finally completed. As the oil was still wet with each photograph the glare of my studio lights can be seen in the brush strokes. Eventually, the figure emerges and as it does, our hero comes to life, looking directly at the viewer -- but is he grimacing in approval or disgust? We will never know for sure as just before he can say anything, white paint is brushed across the canvas entirely and the process begins again. Only the bat is quick enough to escape.
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time... a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.
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Fidenza is by far my most versatile algorithm to date. Although the program stays focused on structured curves and blocks, the varieties of scale, organization, texture, and color usage it can employ create a wide array of generative possibilities. Additional project feature(s) => Scale:Large, Turbulence:Med, Colors:Luxe-Derived, Have Margin:Yes, Spiral:No, Soft Shapes:Yes, Super Blocks:No, Collision Check:No Overlap, Outlined:No, Shape Angles:Curved, Density:Medium