Few voices are as influential as Elon Musk in the world of cryptocurrencies, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who, true to his style, is not afraid to express his opinion. This time he gave his opinion on the NFTs — Non-fungible tokens, a kind of digital certificates that prove you are the owner of a photo, video or any type of art on the Internet.
Musk spoke about the topic in one of the most listened to podcasts in the world, the host’s Joe Rogan. Musk appears in the episode that aired last Tuesday, October 31 Made fun of a technical point about NFTs that bothers many critics of digital assets: the way they are stored.
According to Elon Musk it is NFTs are just a link to an image, which can be a problem. He said: “The funny thing is that the NFT isn’t even on the blockchain – it’s just a URL to a JPEG.”
In other words, this means that if the website where this image is stored goes offline, the NFT owner could be left with nothing.
Musk then suggested that the solution would be to store the image or video itself within the blockchain, the technology that makes everything work and is known for its security. He emphasized that this change would help better protect people’s assets.
“You should at least store the JPEG on the blockchain. If the company where the statue is located goes bankrupt, you no longer have the statue.”
🔥Elon Musk is making fun #NFTs:
“The funny thing is that the NFT isn’t even on the blockchain – it’s just a URL to a JPEG.”
Certainly, #Bitcoin fix this. pic.twitter.com/X3NCC8Wlpm
— Livecoins (@livecoinsBR) November 2, 2023
Musk’s comments make sense, but they don’t apply to all NFT projects.
For example, Larva Labs moved its Cryptopunks to the IPFS decentralized network in August 2021, meaning images won’t go down if a website goes down because the file is stored on multiple servers in a distributed network.
Bitcoin NFTs
In the cryptocurrency community, experts responded to Elon Musk’s comments, pointing out that the billionaire was essentially explaining the use case for NFTs stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Analyst Will Clemente was among those who praised Musk’s comments, noting that there are currently 38 million ordinal numbers that will last forever on the Bitcoin blockchain.
“Elon Musk, you just laid out the use case for ordinal numbers in Bitcoin – image/text inscriptions directly into the most secure open source monetary network in the world. There are currently 38 million such inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain.”he said.
.@Elon Musk you’ve just laid out the case for Bitcoin ordinal numbers – image/text inscriptions directly on the most secure open source monetary network in the world. There are currently 38 million of these inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. pic.twitter.com/WASj1qpkz8
— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) November 1, 2023
Meanwhile, Metagood, the team behind the OnChainMonkeys collection, announced in September that it would migrate its NFTs to the Bitcoin network.
While the company’s CEO Danny Yang did not directly address the JPEG dilemma, he explained that NFTs “Bitcoin will win” because it is a more secure network to work with:
“The Bitcoin Ordinal protocol is better designed for decentralization and security than the Ethereum protocol. High-value NFTs will win against Bitcoin.”
Finally, Musk’s criticism of NFTs is not new. In December 2021, he mocked digital assets after posting a meme of a patient lying on a therapist’s couch talking about NFTs.
The episode can be viewed in its entirety on Twitter (X).
Podcast with the great and powerful @Elon Musk #advertisement The full episode is 2 hours and 41 minutes, the first 2 hours are available here at https://t.co/AIkGSaxVMA pic.twitter.com/DQh0GGNyaO
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) October 31, 2023
Source: Live Coins
Barry Siefert is an accomplished journalist and author at The Nation View. He is known for his expertise in the field of cryptocurrency, and has written extensively on the topic. With a background in finance and economics, Barry has a deep understanding of the underlying technology and market forces that drive the crypto industry.
