Here’s why someone is driving a 9-foot bust of Elon Musk around Texas

Drivers around the town of Brownsville, Texas have gotten a bit of a shock over the past few days, as a Cybertruck has been spotted hauling around a nine-foot sculpture of Elon Musk.

Even in the Musk-friendly town (SpaceX is moving its headquarters there and Musk himself owns a small home in the area), that’s a little weird. It gets even weirder, when you hear that the grim looking bust is part of an effort to sell you crypto.

The statue is part of the ElonRWA effort, which focuses on creating “real world assets” (RWA) of the somewhat infamous lopsided sketch of Elon Musk. The drawing went viral after making its debut on Reddit in 2019 and exploded after Musk gave it a shout-out a handful of times on X (formerly Twitter). A group of crypto enthusiasts found the artist and worked with the creator to turn the sketch into a non-fungible token (NFT)/memecoin in 2021.

The memecoin has a real-world value of just $0.000062. In midday trading Monday, it was down 12.5%. Still, there are 19 billion of the coins in circulation, giving it a market capitalization of $1.2 million. (Token holders get to participate in votes about what will happen with the original artwork, from gallery exhibitions to real world assets such as the bust.)

The promotion for the token has been heaviest around Brownsville, though. ElonRWA first put up a three-story tall mural of the drawing in Brownsville and has since added the giant bust to the efforts.

A French tech entrepreneur who goes by Louis XXII (and declines to give his real name in interviews) is behind the RWAs such as the mural and the giant bust—and even he admits it’s a fairly ludicrous endeavor.

“The statue is not linked to the valuation of this [ElonRWA] token,” he told ARTnews. “It’s just a funny way to represent this meme in other ways. . . . We wanted to bring this meme into the real world. How could we have an impact on the real world? We are a bunch of guys on computers active on X, but we wanted to touch more people.”

Creating the bust took about a month. Louis XXII says he found a company in Utah that created it out of foam and fiberglass, then painted it bronze. (So, yes, the Cybertruck hauling it is doing some work, but not nearly as much as it might appear to casual onlookers.)

The stern-looking statue made its debut on August 25, at an event ElonRWA called “Elonday.” Some 250 people gathered at the Pluton Brewery in Brownsville to celebrate Musk and “the meme culture that continues to entertain and influence.”

“This event is a fantastic opportunity for our community to come together and celebrate the meme culture and Elon,” said “Dojo,” one of the founders of ElonRWA in a statement unveiling the event. “Love him or hate him, there’s no denying Elon Musk has had an immense impact on science, technology, markets, and memes. ElonDAY is not just a celebration of his achievements, but also a reflection on his most notable failures.”

NFTs, of course, have not been profitable investments for many beyond the creators—and while the ElonRWA token is largely worthless (you’d need 16,000 or so to have a portfolio worth $1) and it’s unlikely that many people will make the connection between a giant misshapen head and a crypto investment opportunity, the people behind the NFT don’t seem to mind.

“We don’t care about the market, we don’t care about anything,” Louis XXII told ARTnews. “We just want to have fun.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91179188/why-someone-is-driving-9-foot-bust-of-elon-musk-around-texas-crypto?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss