by Tesla CEO Elon Musk has seemingly given the cold shoulder to a $600,000 memorial of him in the form of a goat — created as part of a bizarre crypto marketing stunt.
The 30-foot-long, 12,000-pound metal statue of Elon Musk was delivered to Tesla’s Austin headquarters on November 26 and was part of a publicity stunt by the co-founders of the memecoin Elon Goat Token (EGT).
The statue features the head of Elon Musk on the body of a goat riding a rocket. The statue also features Musk wearing a dog collar with a Dogecoin (DOGE) token attached.
We are very proud of our achievements and our commitment to #EGT
We’ve always had a long-term vision for $EGT and will continue to build the brand and utility.
We believe our hard work can result in Elon making claims #ElonGOAT and we will work towards this goal! Maybe a little fun too! pic.twitter.com/Rk2Gdn5PpE
— Elon Goat Token (@ElonGoatToken) November 27, 2022
According to the EGT white paper, the entire project was designed to be roadworthy and mounted on a 50-foot semi-trailer for transport. The concept design was drawn and rendered in Los Angeles.
The founders of EGT, who describe themselves as “Elon superfans,” said in the project description on their website that they were trying “to do something that no other crypto project has dared to do” to come up with an acknowledgment and Gaining legitimacy for their project from Musk.
Unfortunately for EGT, however, the $600,000 memorial hasn’t received any public recognition from Musk himself, at least not on Twitter.
Despite this, it still received a lot of mainstream media coverage, including from The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and The Washington Post.
Lots of musky tokens
There isn’t much information about EGT and its purpose, other than that it was launched on the BNB Smart Chain in January 2022 and according to its own white paper, has been criticized for its musky-centric marketing plan and lack of utility at launch.
The token is also one of many Elon Musk tokens trying to exploit the entrepreneur’s fame to market his token. Other Musk tokens are Dogelon Mars (ELON) and spaceTwitterDoge and elonDogeTwit.
At the time of writing, EGT has 18,400 followers on Twitter, while CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap both list EGT, but neither has data on their market cap. The price appeared to have spiked briefly before falling to monthly lows following the statue’s delivery.
According to its white paper, EGT claims to now be working towards having real utility in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space after migrating smart contracts from BNB Smart Chain to the Ethereum blockchain.
Related: It’s time crypto fans stop supporting cults of personality
Over-the-top publicity stunts have been a popular technique for crypto projects over the years.
In 2018, Ukrainian social network ASKfm launched an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) by leaving a wallet containing 500,000 tokens at the top of Mount Everest, the highest mountain above sea level in the world.
At the time, ASKfm calculated the tokens in the wallet at $50,000, a sum calculated by estimating their value after the pre-sale and ICO launch.
In another 2018 stunt, Epoch cryptocurrency website owner Wong Ching-kit dropped stacks of cash from a rooftop in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong, to promote a contest where contestants could reportedly win big cash prizes.
Most recently, Ripple’s APAC Policy Director, Rahul Advani, argued that crypto needs to move away from “hype cycles” and toward “real utility building.”
He explained that the fall of FTX will prompt regulators and governments to scrutinize crypto regulations much more closely.
