Elon Musk loves memes, many already know. It was thanks to him that this old meme was sold for almost USD 20 thousand.
That meme Elon Musk reposted on his Twitter account @elonmusk which has 61 million followers. Well, the artist who has benefited from Elon Musk's repost of his meme is Eva Beylin, who turns out to be a big fan of the SpaceX founder.
"The great gift of memeology is the ultimate 'memme lord' using your meme," 28-year-old Beylin told CNBC Make It.
Beylin's meme, which she named 'Love in The Time of Web3' depicts a cartoon couple admiring the prices of Bitcoin and Etherium, which are USD 69k and USD 4,200 respectively.
As director of The Graph Foundation, which supports The Graph's blockchain data protocol, Beylin is passionate about Web3, which is a decentralized iteration of the internet that supports blockchain-based applications such as NFT.
NFTs are digital assets as diverse as tangible and intangible goods that are considered unique. NFT allows anyone to buy and sell ownership of digital goods and track who owns it using the blockchain.
'Love in The Time of Web3' gets a lot of attention after Musk's tweet. That night, Beylin listed it as an NFT, or non-exchangeable token, on the Zora marketplace, and two days later, it sold for USD 19,800.
"This really happened," said Beylin.
Beylin was inspired to create the meme after seeing another Twitter user's post editing cryptocurrency prices and tweeting it as a joke. But he didn't make the cartoons.
To compensate the creators, known as @shegenerates, Beylin gave him 20% of the proceeds from NFT sales. @Shegenerates admits he doesn't mind that.
"Personally, I've blocked (Musk) on Twitter, so I only saw him after Eva (Beylin) posted about him uploading it," said @Shegenerates.
Beylin doesn't know the creator of the picture depicting the cartoon couple. And because of the legal gray area that NFT is in, it's not clear whether the use of these images violates potential copyright laws.
However, part of the sale, Beylin already plans to reinvest in other artists by buying their NFT.
Buyers of 'Love in The Time of Web3' have re-registered the meme for USD 275,000. Despite being less than the buyer's asking price, one bidder already offered around USD 27,500, for the meme. If resold, Beylin will get 15% royalty.