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A piece of art by Beeple, which only exists as a digital file and was sold as a “non-fungible token” for $ 69.3 million in an online auction run by Christie’s Thursday, was bought by an investor known only under a pseudonym and who paid for it with cryptocurrency, the auction house announced Friday.
“I feel like I got a robbery,” the buyer, who goes by Metakovan, said in a Google Meet interview (without video) hosted by Christie’s.
Metakovan, the founder of Metapurse, a fund that collects “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs, said he would pay for Christie’s labor and fees in Ether, a cryptocurrency. “As we speak, I am sending the latest transaction,” he said.
The artwork he purchased, “Everydays – The First 5000 Days”, is a collage of all the images that digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, has uploaded since 2007. The image was specially created, or “struck”, by the artist for the timed online auction of a Christie’s lot as NFT. These digital collectibles do not have a physical existence, but are given proof of ownership and authenticity using blockchain technology. “Everydays”, a JPG, was the first digital NFT only auctioned by Christie’s.
For the sale of the NFT, the value of which was far from clear to begin with, Christie’s had offered to accept payment in Ether for the first time, a move that some saw as strengthening the currency’s legitimacy. But the auction house has so far not announced its willingness to accept cryptocurrencies for the more traditional artwork it sells.
With bids that had started at just $ 100, the two-week timed auction was extended by around 90 seconds as a deluge of last-minute bids pushed the price up to the equivalent of 69, 3 million from the successful bidder, according to Christie’s. The result made Beeple, who is little known in the mainstream art world, the third most expensive living artist at auction, after David Hockney and Jeff Koons.
“I was pretty anxious at the end,” said Metakovan, who had previously only bid on one Christie’s auction, recalling the final online auction frenzy during the Beeple’s 90-second extension. . “But I am used to bidding at crypto auctions,” Metakovan said. “I don’t know how I would have played if it had been a live sale.”
The sub-bidder, Justin Sun, the founder of the BitTorrent blockchain network, said earlier Twitter “It was outbid by another buyer in the last 20 seconds by $ 250,000.”
Metakovan said his fund’s collection, founded in 2016, had never sold an acquisition and purchased a wide variety of NFTs.
“We see NFTs as a bigger space; there are so many different types of it, ”said Metakovan, who started his collection in 2016 by purchasing lands in virtual worlds. In 2019, he paid around $ 111,000 at an auction for “1-1-1,” the first digital car in the F1® Delta Time blockchain game. It was the most expensive NFT sold that year.
Last December, the Metakovan Collection also acquired a complete collection of 20 Beeple NFT works from the specialist online marketplace Nifty Gateway.
But pay the equivalent of $ 69.3 million (converted to 42329.453 Ether) for a Beeple, for a work of art that does not physically exist? He said he thought it was a good deal. “It still has a long way to go,” said Metakovan.
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