A work of art by Beeple that exists only as a digital file and was sold as a “non-fungible token” for an incredible $ 69.3 million in an online auction run by Christie’s on Thursday was purchased by an investor known only to one pseudonym and who paid for it with cryptocurrency, the auction house said on Friday.
“It looks like I won a robbery,” said the buyer, who goes by the alias Metakovan, in a Google Meet interview (without a video) that was organized by Christie’s.
Metakovan, the founder of Metapurse, a fund that collects “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs, said he would pay for Christie’s work and fees in Ether, a cryptocurrency. “While we are talking, I am sending the last transaction,” he said.
The work he bought, “Everydays – The First 5000 Days”, is a collage of all the images that digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, has posted online since 2007. The image was specially created, or “coined”, by artist for the timed online auction of a Christie’s lot as an NFT. These digital collectibles have no physical existence, but receive proof of ownership and authenticity using blockchain technology. “Everydays”, a JPG, was the first digital NFT auctioned by Christie’s.
For the sale of the NFT, the value of which was far from clear at first, Christie’s offered to accept the ether payment for the first time, a move that some saw as reinforcing the currency’s legitimacy. But the auction house has so far not announced its willingness to accept cryptocurrencies for the more traditional works of art it sells.
With bids that started at just $ 100, the two-week auction was extended for about 90 seconds while a flurry of last-minute bids raised the price to the equivalent of $ 69.3 million, and Metakovan, whose real name did not was the winning bidder, according to Christie’s. The result made Beeple, little known in the mainstream art world, the third most expensive live artist at auction, after David Hockney and Jeff Koons.
“I was very anxious at the end,” said Metakovan, who had only bid at a Christie’s auction, recalling the final online bidding frenzy during the 90-second extension to the Beeple sale. “But I’m used to bidding on crypto auctions,” said Metakovan. “I don’t know how I would have done if it were a live sale.”
The underbidder, Justin Sun, the founder of the blockchain network BitTorrent, said earlier Twitter that “he was outbid by another buyer in the last 20 seconds by $ 250,000”.
Metakovan said his fund’s collection, founded in 2016, never sold an acquisition and was acquiring a wide variety of NFTs.
“We see NFTs as a bigger space; there are so many different types, ”said Metakovan, who started his collection in 2016 by buying land in virtual worlds. In 2019, he paid about $ 111,000 in an auction for “1-1-1”, the first digital car in the F1® Delta Time blockchain game. It was the NFT with the highest price sold that year.
Last December, the Metakovan collection also acquired a complete collection of 20 Beeple NFT works on the specialized online market Nifty Gateway.
But paying the equivalent of $ 69.3 million (which were converted to 42,329,453 Ether) for a Beeple, for a work of art that doesn’t physically exist? He said he felt it was a good deal. “This still has a long way to go,” said Metakovan.