MetaKovan, the pseudonymous founder of MetaPurse, is the buyer of the $ 69 million winning bid for a Beeple NFT at Christie’s yesterday. It was the third highest selling price ever for a work by a living artist.
“If you think of high-quality NFTs, it’s going to be hard to beat,” MetaKovan said in a statement released by Christie’s. ‘And that’s why – it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are repeatable and skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can not digitally hack is time. It is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It’s worth $ 1 billion. ”
The $ 69 million NFT represents a collage with 5,000 mostly digital illustrations by Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, which for his Elke Dae series, in which he creates a new work of art every day. Winkelmann’s popularity online and its productive production certainly contributed to the sky-high price, but a major driver was also the growing hype surrounding NFTs.
Earlier in December, MetaKovan spent more than $ 2.2 million to acquire 20 single-issue Beeple works. Although the works were purchased under a variety of names, apparently there was only this single entity behind the acquisitions. The organization, MetaPurse, describes itself as a “crypto-exclusive” fund. The first project involved building the 20 original Beeple works in a digital museum, and effectively selling the museum’s shares as digital tokens so that a multitude of buyers could have a stake in these works.
NFTs are digital files that live on a blockchain and validate the ownership of a related good – in this case the collage. Some artists and collectors see it as the future of digital art by finally providing a way for buyers to purchase works that do not have a physical component. The prices of NFTs from major artists have exploded in recent weeks, with Grimes selling $ 6 million NFTs and Steve Aoki selling a single video for $ 888,888.88.
Winkelmann tells The edge Monday that he expects to work with the buyer to find ways to physically display the collage. ‘Do you want it on a TV in your house? We can do it … do you want to do it at Art Basel? Let’s project it on the side of a fucking building, ”said Winkelmann. “It does not have to be one way. It can be a lot of different ways over time. ‘