Between Bitcoin-themed superspreader events and cringey branded NFT’s, those within the crypto community have set a high bar for devising the worst ways to hawk their currency of choice. But this week, the creators of an Elon Musk-themed cryptocurrency dubbed the “Elon Goat Token” (yes, that’s actually what it’s called) came up with a promotional campaign that might have just blown those other ideas out of the water. It’s a statue featuring Elon Musk’s expressionless face on a goat’s body, and it looks… exactly like you’d think it would.
“At every crucial point in human history, a magnum opus, or masterpiece, has captured the essence of that period. Think of the Great Pyramids of Giza. The Statue of David. Picasso’s Guernica,” reads a 12-page whitepaper explaining the conception of the new currency.
“The world now stands upon the brink of the greatest transfer of wealth in its entire history,” the manifesto continued. “What better way to enshrine the beginning of this new blazing era, than to do so by celebrating the degenerates involved, alongside the most innovative man of the 21st Century, Elon Musk?” Behold:
Regardless of your feelings on Elon Musk, goats, or the word “innovation,” you can’t deny that the statue is unsettling, to say the least. Maybe it’s the goat horns. Maybe it’s the fact he’s riding a rocket that seems to be actively electrocuting him. Maybe it’s because—as the brief describes—the Elon Goat team has plans to hook up the over 30-foot long statue to a Tesla and drive the thing to the automaker’s HQ in Austin, Texas, “for Musk and the globe to admire.” You can watch the promo clip below and come to your own conclusions:
A Motherboard interview with one of the crypto’s developers, Ashley Sansalone, revealed that the idea for this horrific human-goat hybrid actually came during a consulting call at 3:30 in the morning, which, yeah, might explain a few things. The guy on the other end of the line apparently pitched the idea for an NFT series featuring a goat-ified Musk. Sansalone, to his credit, told the outlet that he didn’t want to waste time pumping out thousands of NFT’s that would be “meaningless to [him], personally.”
Apparently, making “a huge goat” (his words) just made more sense. And after researching logistics, Sansalone came to the conclusion that the easiest way to build that huge goat would be indoors, and on a trailer—a tactic that would let his team skirt the regulations and zoning laws he’d need to comply with otherwise. This, in turn, sparked the idea to hitch that huge goat to the back of a Tesla, take it on a tour around the country, and drop it on Elon Musk’s doorstep where he’ll, presumably… tweet about it, since that’s kind of his specialty.
Sansalone noted in the interview that he’s already dropped a solid $20,000 on an outside designer to start work on the project, and that designer, in turn, has been chronicling his goatventures on Instagram. Sansalone said he expected the statue to be complete in “under four months,” and will cost him about $500,000 after all’s said and done. But if this debacle somehow lands Elon Goat on its namesake’s Twitter feed—which has been seen singlehandedly spiking the prices of other cryptos in the past—then maybe that price is worth it.
