A detail made from a collage “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS”, made by a digital artist BEEPLE, auctioned at Christie’s, unknown location, in this undated document obtained by Reuters.
Beeple | Christie’s Images Ltd. | through Reuters
The buyer of the $ 69 million Beeple non-fungible token was a cryptocurrency investor named Metakovan.
Metakovan’s real identity is unknown, but the investor is the co-founder of the NFT collection called Metapurse, which collects NFTs to be displayed in metavers through virtual museums. Metakovan already owns the largest collection of Beeples and has split ownership over a collection of Beeples with a special symbol called the B.20 Coin.
CNBC spoke with Metapurse partner Metakovan, who is named Twobadour, who said NFT is “the most valuable work of its generation.”
Twobadour said they do not know their exact plans for this work, but options include splitting it or offering it as a new symbol. He said the goal is not to make money, but to decentralize and democratize art so that chip holders everywhere can share a piece of history and share wealth.
For example, it’s as if people could go to the Museum of Modern Art and actually own part of the work, he said.
“We made history and created a god,” in Beeple, he said.
The announcement only partially solves the biggest mystery behind the most dramatic transaction in the art world since Leonardo DaVinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold for $ 450 million in 2017. The NFT market – which can be any digital asset of whose property is registered on a blockchain – has exploded in recent weeks to over $ 400 million, as a vast new army of young collectors pay record prices for everything from NBA highlights to cat memes and art.
For $ 69 million, Metakovan will receive “essentially a long string of numbers and letters,” according to Noah Davis, an art specialist at Christie’s. “It’s a code that exists on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a chain block that will be thrown into their Ethereum wallet.” The buyer also receives “a giant JPEG,” Davis said.
The sale has capped a two-week frantic online auction and opens a new era for collectors, in which prices for blockchain-based digital imagery now compete with prices paid for Picassos and Monets. While the future of NFT prices and their long-term role in the art world remains an open question and many see it as a speculative fashion, the eight-figure price for Beeple has made the art world suddenly realize.
Shortly after the auction, Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, wrote on Twitter: “holy f —” On Thursday night, he posted on Twitter a picture of a digitized “Mona Lisa” with the caption: ” NEXT CHAPTER ”.
The record work, called “The First 5,000 Days”, was the first ever to be sold at a major auction house.
In 2007, Winkelmann set out to post a new work of digital art every day for the rest of his life and never missed a day. The first 5,000 of those works, which he calls “Every Day,” were compiled to form “The First 5,000 Days.”