Tonight I stumbled upon a rather fascinating detail about Elon Musk's history and OpenAI that probably not everyone knows. From the internal notes just released, it turns out that at the beginning of 2018 Musk actually supported a plan to raise about $10 billion through an ICO. Yes, exactly — during the peak of the ICO craze, the founders of OpenAI were seriously considering launching a coin offering to fund the organization.

The interesting part is how it turned out. Musk initially agreed, but by the end of January 2018, he changed his mind. According to legal documents that emerged, he concluded that OpenAI wouldn't be able to raise enough funds through this channel and preferred to focus on AI work at Tesla. So he abandoned the project and shortly afterward completely left OpenAI.

Thinking about it, this episode says a lot about the state of Elon Musk's story and his relationship with cryptocurrencies at the time. 2017-2018 was the golden era of ICOs — startups raised billions by selling tokens directly to the public, regulations were vague, investors were hungry for opportunities. It was a financial wild west. The fact that figures like Musk and the founders of OpenAI were seriously considering this funding model says everything about how the tech sector perceived things at that moment.

Musk's decision to step back and later leave OpenAI essentially shaped what the organization has become — a hybrid structure between a public-benefit company and a nonprofit entity, a model it still maintains today.

Meanwhile, as I reflect on those days of speculative madness, I notice that the crypto market continues to evolve. Projects like Bitmine have transformed from simple mining operations into true digital asset accumulators — the company doubled its shares in six months and now holds nearly 5% of all circulating ether, almost 4.87 million ETH. It’s an interesting paradigm shift compared to the days of wild ICOs. Approaches have become more sophisticated, more strategic. Elon Musk’s story and that 2018 madness remain a crucial moment to understand how the sector has learned from its lessons.