A close-up of a collage “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS”, by digital artist BEEPLE, being auctioned at Christie’s, unknown location, in this undated handout obtained by Reuters.
Beeple | Christie’s Images Ltd. | via Reuters
The purchaser of Beeple’s $ 69 million non-replaceable token was a crypto investor using the pseudonym Metakovan.
The real identity of Metakovan is not known, but the investor is the co-founder of the NFT collection called Metapurse, which collects NFTs to display in the metaverse through virtual museums. Metakovan already owns the largest collection of Beeples and has fractionated possession of one collection of Beeples with a special token called the B.20 coin.
CNBC spoke to Metakovan’s partner in Metapurse, named Twobadour, who said the NFT is “the most valuable work of its generation.”
Twobadour said they don’t know their exact plans for this work, but options include fractionalizing it or offering it as a new token. He said the goal is not to make money, but to decentralize and democratize art so that token holders everywhere can share a piece of history and share the wealth.
For instance, it’s as if people could go to the Museum of Modern Art and actually own some of the work, he said.
“We have made history and we have made a god” in Beeple, he said.
The announcement only partially solves the biggest mystery behind the art world’s most dramatic transaction since Leonardo DaVinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold for $ 450 million in 2017. The market for NFTs – which can be any digital asset owned by a blockchain – has exploded to over $ 400 million in recent weeks as a massive new army of young collectors pays record prices for everything from NBA videos featuring highlights to cat memes and art.
For his $ 69 million, Metakovan “essentially gets a long string of numbers and letters,” said Noah Davis, an art specialist at Christie’s. “It’s code that exists on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s a block in the chain that gets dropped into their Ethereum wallets.” The buyer also gets “a giant JPEG,” Davis said.
The sale ended two weeks of insane online bidding and ushered in a new era for collectibles, where prices for blockchain-based digital images now compete with the prices paid for Picassos and Monets. While the future of NFT pricing and their longer-term role in the art world remains an open question, and many see it as a speculative fad, the eight-figure price for the Beeple has suddenly caught the art world.
Shortly after the auction result, Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, tweeted, “Holy f —“. On Thursday night, he also tweeted an image of a digitized “Mona Lisa” with the caption, “THE NEXT CHAPTER.”
The record-breaking work, entitled “The First 5,000 Days,” was the first to ever be sold at a major auction house.
In 2007, Winkelmann wanted to post a new work of digital art every day for the rest of his life and he hasn’t missed a single day. The first 5,000 of those works, which he calls “Everydays”, were put together to form “The First 5,000 Days.”