A digital asset investor who passes by Metakovan and refuses to give his full name, announced he was the buyer of the $ 69.3 million digital work that was sold on Thursday. Christie’s auction house, which was the headquarters of the sale, confirmed his statement and also refused to reveal his legal name.
“I think it’s going to be a billion-dollar piece,” Metakovan says in an interview with Google Hangouts. “I don’t know when.”
The work in question is a mosaic of 5,000 works made over the past 13 years by Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the artist name Beeple.
The mosaic includes images of Abraham Lincoln hitting a baby Donald Trump, a giant rabbit eating children in a playground, and a muscular Tom Hanks hitting an anthropomorphic representation of the coronavirus. The image file is connected to a non-fungible token (NFT), which was “coined” last month, and serves as a certificate of authenticity registered using blockchain technology.
The Everydays Auction: The First 5,000 Days opened to bidding on February 25 and shot between $ 100 million and $ 1 million in minutes. But it wasn’t until the last ten minutes of the sale that the bidding action became especially intense. The number quickly went from $ 14 million to $ 30 million. With a few seconds left, Metakovan made the winning bid.
“It was really exciting,” says a man who works with Metakovan and takes the pseudonym Twobadour and whose unofficial title is “the steward of Metapurse.”
“It’s an unfamiliar experience he offers at Christie’s, it wasn’t very gentle on the nerves,” he continues. Of his role in the effort, he says, “I try to look for really meaningful NFTs. Metakovan is the founder of Metapurse and puts his money where my mouth is.”
“Twenty-two million visitors tuned in to the final minutes of bidding,” says Alex Rotter, Christie’s twentieth-century art president. “There’s a lot of excitement out there, but there’s also a real interest. We had over 200 entrants in this auction who were really serious.”
Metakovan paid with Ethererum, the second largest digital currency in the world; approximately 42,329,453 ETHs in total, according to a Christie representative. Acceptance of cryptocurrency is a novelty for the 254-year-old auction house and a strong assent to the legitimacy of the payment form. At 10:11 a.m. EST on March 11, shortly after the batch hammered, Ether was trading at $ 1,815 per dollar.
Beeple’s ‘Everydays: the First 5,000 Days’ auction opened on February 25 and shot for $ 100 million to $ 1 million in minutes, but it wasn’t until the last ten minutes of the sale that the Bidding action became particularly intense [Christie’s Images Ltd via Reuters]
This is not the first time Metakovan has bought works from Beeple. At a December auction of Beeple’s original art at the Nifty Gateway online marketplace, Metakovan bought 20 images for a total of $ 2.2 million. He later split them up. Currently, these works have a market cap of $ 163.5 million.
In an interview a month before the Christie’s auction, Winkelmann spoke of this sale: “A guy from Singapore did a bunch of username accounts bearing the name of Greek philosophers; he fooled everyone and went buy the 20 works of art, ”Winkelmann explained. “It simply came to our notice then [artworks] using blockchain in another smart contract and then splitting them ”. (Winkelmann did not respond to requests for comment on Christie’s sale, although he did tweet about something that can’t be reprinted).
Twobadour says they currently have no plans to sell fractional shares on Everydays.
“For now, honestly, we just want to enjoy it and try it, because it’s historic,” he says. “This is the third most valuable piece a living artist has ever sold, and it’s almost inconceivable that we’re part of this story, so we’re going to absorb it right now and not think about any kind of monetization of this piece.”
Money in context
Not only is $ 69 million paid for a digital work of art, but only behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney for the auction record of any living artist. However, apart from the context of the art market, this number is even more impressive.
That amount of money could buy you a collection of legitimate palaces in France, Ireland, and Italy, with about $ 30 million in savings; you could only get the coveted Gulfstream G700, though hopefully you have enough money for maintenance and air time; or you can leave the money in a conservative index fund and let it appreciate. Left alone for a decade and assuming a compound annual interest of 7%, your money would double by $ 135.7 million.
However, given the extraordinary gratitude of the NFTs, another of the Beeple parts was bought for $ 67,000 last October and launched four months later for $ 6.6 million.
“We don’t engage in things that look like bubbles to us,” Metakovan says about investing in NFT. “There are so many things that can be out of control. It is not regulated, which is good and bad, so there will be opportunities for people to make money and people to lose money. ”
Metakovan, who says he doesn’t own any houses, has no cars and “just tries to be physically light so I can pack up and move around,” has yet to sit down to admire the piece. “It’s the most expensive purchase I’ve ever made,” he says.