According to data from tracker CoinMarketCap, $EGT hasn’t seen much growth over the past year, but its founders hoped the Musk statue would inspire the entrepreneur to tweet about the company and bring new influences to the token.
Elon GOAT Token’s efforts to deliver the statue put the company on Twitter’s trending page in the US. Musk bought the social network last month, sparking turmoil with mass layoffs, the departure of advertisers and potential changes to the process of getting the Twitter Blue tick.
Worth just $600,000 according to the Elon GOAT Token, the Musk statue is a nod to the billionaire’s fame — a rocket representing SpaceX, the space shuttle company Musk founded; and the literal goat, a word also used as shorthand for “The Greatest of All Time.”
Despite its exponential growth in recent years, cryptocurrency has had a rough year in 2022. Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which was estimated to be worth $32 billion in January, collapsed this month. Its CEO resigned and the company filed for bankruptcy, prompting an investigation into how the business was wound down.
Last year, millions of dollars in cryptocurrency were stolen in scams targeting users of the exchange operator Coinbase.
Although “the timing wasn’t good” for Elon’s GOAT Token, co-founder Ashley Sansalone said in a Twitter audio stream on Saturday that the company has committed enough money to complete the statue project.
“We believe that Elon’s acceptance of this biblically-sized gift can focus $EGT and accelerate its various initiatives,” the company said on its website.
Elon GOAT Token did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment on Saturday.
After months of construction and traveling across the country, the statue has arrived at the Austin building, Elon GOAT Token confirmed in a tweet Saturday after the live broadcast of the event. Musk, who has 119 million Twitter followers, had not publicly acknowledged the project until Saturday evening. Tesla did not respond to The Post’s request for comment on Saturday.
Canada-based sculptor Kevin Stone said he received a call about the project last year from its designer, Danny Wang, who did not disclose who commissioned the sculpture until the contract was signed.
At first, Stone thought the mystery customer was Musk himself. He didn’t think anyone else would order such a “crazy project”.
The sculptor began work on the head in January and finished it about six months later, after about 600 hours of work. The statue of Musk’s head itself was six feet tall and four feet wide, weighing 250 pounds.
For Stone, known for his bird and dragon sculptures, the project was a chance to do something he had never done before.
“It was so crazy I couldn’t turn it down,” he said. “I just wanted to be a part of it because it was a unique opportunity to do something really, really different.”
Spectacle, a US design and manufacturing company, designed the goat and rockets on the statue.
On Saturday evening, Sansalone began a Twitter audio stream, saying that he and those accompanying him for the trip were seated about 150 feet from the Gigafactory, where he asked them to move for safety reasons.
Sansalone said the Elon GOAT Token statue is always “fun,” meant to make Musk laugh, and that he’s trying to do the same with the Tesla CEO, even though the crypto company is “relatively small.”
As the sun began to set in Austin on Saturday, it was unclear whether Musk would allow the statue to remain.
“We’re not breaking up,” Sansalone said near the end of the stream. “We will see how it goes. We will wait here.”
In the background of the Twitter audio stream, people could be heard shouting: “Elon Musk, let’s go! Elon Musk, let’s go!”