The co-founder of an Elon Musk-themed memecoin and a FeistyDAO member have teamed to create the unusual: an IRL nine-foot bust of the SpaceX founder that is currently roaming the streets of Brownsville, Texas.
The bronze-painted statue is based on a drawing of Musk that circulated on Reddit six years ago. It was so bad that it became a meme, with Musk himself saying at the time, “It’s like looking in a mirror.” FeistyDAO member lil_dojo owns the drawing and its associated non-fungible token. They teamed up with Louis XXII, the pseudonymous co-founder of ElonRWA and its same-named memecoin, who commissioned the statue.
Louis XXII, in an interview with ARTnews, said “We wanted to bring this meme into the real world.” They considered the question, “How can we have an impact on the real world?,” with the idea that they wanted to touch more people. The statue became the answer to that question.
The statue is made of fiberglass and foam, painted bronze. In line with the theme, a black matte Tesla Cybertruck, an ode to Musk’s other popular company, pulls the statue. Brownsville has been the site of other renditions of the drawing as well. Earlier in the year, local artist Carlos Manuel Guerrero created a mural of the infamous meme in the city. Louis XXII and his artist collective commissioned that rendering of the drawing as well.
Although NFTs have struggled of late, Louis XXII said that they are not concerned about the market. ElonRWA just “wants to have fun” and “do positive stuff.” In the long run, it always pays back to work with the right people, to build projects of real value.
ElonRWA launched its memecoin based on the drawing 158 days ago. There are 100,000,000,000 tokens total with a market capitalization of $1.2 million. In the past 14 days, the memecoin is up 31%. Perhaps the unconventional marketing methods are paying off.
Elon Musk: A Degen in Disguise?
Elon Musk has a long history of poking fun at Web3, but also of participating. Through his account on X, he has posted about Dogecoin and NFTs, often inspiring great swoops of price action. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve covered two of these instances, both involving our favorite topic: non-fungible tokens.
First, eight months ago, Musk posted about an NFT he minted back in 2021. A music non-fungible token, it has a looping techno soundtrack with the lyrics “NFT for your vanity/Computers never sleep/It’s verified/It’s guaranteed.” In his post, Musk wrote, “Whatever happened to …,” with an embedded video of the NFT.
Lastly, one year ago, Musk sent the NFT world into a frenzy when he used artwork from the collection Milady Maker in a meme posted to X. The meme featured the Chibu-style figure with the words “There is no meme. I love you.” The floor price of Milady Maker rose $6,300 in a matter of hours, before settling around 4.7 ETH.
As these stories show, Musk has a habit of both poking fun and participating in Web3. Even though he is generally silent about the tech and its possibilities for the future of finance, he seems to know (and enjoy) the culture. Maybe it’s little wonder that crypto has taken to the richest man in the world. Rarity Sniper will keep an eye out for future developments in the story.