Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, has made a provocative post criticizing investors in the NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) market. In his post, Musk placed a rotating golden monument, accompanied by loud music, as a symbol of his criticism.
The acronym “NFT” is depicted at the top of the monument, surrounded by a gold ball with a “Vanity Trophy”. Below is the word ‘HODL’ – a popular term in the world of cryptocurrencies that encourages holding investments even in times of market decline – above the inscription ‘Never Sleep Computers’.
Musk suggests that the NFT market is declining and points to the loss of value of key assets. He questions the effectiveness of the HODL strategy, indicating that if it were truly efficient, frequent declines in the value of NFTs would become less common, thus strengthening the market.
Furthermore, the mention of “Never Sleep Computers” could be critical of operational flaws in some blockchain protocols, despite no major outages recently.
Whatever happened to…
pic.twitter.com/B4EZLlesPx— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 27, 2023
In another post, Musk reinforced his views on NFTs, arguing that such assets aren’t even on the blockchain.
“You should at least encrypt the JPEG on the blockchain. If the company where the statue is located goes bankrupt, you no longer have the statue.”
Yes, at least encode the jpeg on the blockchain!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 27, 2023
As recently as November, Musk spoke about the subject in one of the most listened to podcasts in the world, by presenter Joe Rogan. In the episode, Musk ridiculed a technical point about NFTs that bothers many critics of digital assets: the way they are stored.
According to Musk, NFTs are just a link to an image, which could 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.”
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.
