MetaKovan, the pseudonym founder of MetaPurse, is the buyer behind the winning $ 69 million offer for a Beeple NFT at Christie’s yesterday. It was the third highest selling price for a work by a living artist.
“When you think about high-value NFTs, it will be very difficult to win,” said MetaKovan in a statement published by Christie’s. “And here’s why – it represents 13 years of daily work. The techniques are replicable and the skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can’t digitally hack is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable work of art of this generation. Worth $ 1 billion. “
The $ 69 million NFT represented a collage containing 5,000 mostly digital illustrations of Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, that were created for his Every day series, in which he creates new art every day. Winkelmann’s online popularity and prolific production certainly contributed to the very high price, but a key factor was also the growing hype around NFTs.
MetaKovan has already spent more than $ 2.2 million to acquire 20 single-issue Beeple works in December. Although the works were purchased under a variety of names, there was apparently only a single entity behind the acquisitions. The organization MetaPurse describes itself as a “cryptoexclusive” fund. His first project involved building these 20 original works by Beeple in a digital museum and then effectively selling shares in that museum as digital tokens so that a crowd of buyers could have a stake in those works.
NFTs are digital files that reside on a blockchain and validate the ownership of a related asset – in this case, the collage. Some artists and collectors see them as the future of digital art, finally offering a way for buyers to purchase works that lack a physical component. The prices of great artists’ NFTs have exploded in recent weeks, with Grimes selling $ 6 million in NFTs and Steve Aoki selling a single video for $ 888,888.88.
Winkelmann said The Verge on Monday, he hopes to work with the buyer to find ways to physically display the collage. “Do you want it on your home TV? We can do this … do you want to do it at Art Basel? We are going to project on the side of a fucking building, ”said Winkelmann. “It doesn’t have to be one-sided. It can be in many different ways over time. “