The shadowy blockchain tech angel investor going by the pseudonym "Metakovan," has been identified as the person that paid a record of $60.25 million for a painting that exists only as a digital file on a computer, might be Chinese.
Auction house Christie's confirmed Metakovan is the buyer of "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days," created by the graphic artist Mike Winkelman going by the pseudonym "Beeple." The work is a collage of 5,000 individual digital images, which were stitched together, one-per-day, over more than 13 years, or since May 2007.
The auction for the piece held a few days ago was also the first time a major auction house offered a digital-only artwork with a Non-Fungible Token as a guarantee of its authenticity. An NFT is authenticated by blockchain, which certifies its originality and ownership.
It's the first time cryptocurrency has been used to pay for an artwork at auction. In addition, the amount paid by Metakovan is the third-largest amount paid by anyone for a work by a living artist. Christie's, which auctioned off Winkelman's work, made $9 million from the deal, bringing the artwork's total value to $69.25 million.
Christie's identified Metakovan as "the founder and financer of @Metapurse, the largest NFT fund in the world." It also quoted Metakovan as saying he believes Winkelman's artwork "is worth $1 billion."
On the Metapurse website, Metakovan described himself as an "Entrepreneur, coder, and angel investor in blockchain technology since 2013. Y-Combinator alumnus, DeFi OG, blockchain native, digital nomad. Funds Metapurse."
Apart from these cryptic clues, what's definitely known about Metakovan is he's based in Singapore, which means he's likely Chinese. In a previous interview, Metakovan also said, "it's not that hard to find out who I am IRL."
In 2019, Metakovan paid $100,000 on a race car add-on for a blockchain video game. Crypto experts said this sale was a watershed moment for NFTs, which have now become a popular medium for digital art.
Big-name artists like Grimes and Kings of Leon have sold NFTs for millions of dollars over the past few weeks.
Bloomberg claimed the buyer of Everydays is crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who also denied being Metakovan. Sun tweeted he was outbid on the artwork at the final lap.
He said his final bid was $60 million and was dismayed he was "outbid by another buyer in the last 20 secs by $250k." Sun said he had been leading the bidding throughout most of the last 20 minutes of the auction.
