US$69m digital art buyer shines light on ‘NFT’ boom
SINGAPORE: The blockchain entrepreneur who paid a record US$69.3 million for a digital artwork looks, at first glance, nothing like a wealthy collector.
The 32-year-old is casually dressed in a t-shirt and chinos, lives in a regular Singapore apartment, and does not own any property or a car, with most of his investments in the virtual world.
“My prize possession would be my computer. And maybe my watch,” Indian-born Vignesh Sundaresan, also known by his pseudonym MetaKovan, said from his sparsely decorated flat.
His unpretentious demeanour offers no clue that he is a multimillionaire investor financing a fund focused on “non-fungible tokens” (NFTs) that use blockchain technology to turn anything from art to Internet memes into virtual collector’s items.
Last month, the programmer bought the world’s most expensive NFT — US artist Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” — highlighting how virtual work is establishing itself as a new creative genre.
With NFTs, many see an opportunity to monetise digital art of all kinds, offering collectors the bragging rights to ownership, even if the work can be endlessly copied.
Vignesh defended the price he paid for the collage of 5,000 pieces of art created on consecutive days, which transformed its creator, real name Mike Winkelmann, into the third-most valuable living artist.
“I thought this piece was that important. As a piece itself, it’s awesome. But there is this signalling and symbolic intention also to show the world that... there’s this whole thing that’s going on underground,” he said.
The popularity of NFTs has been slowly growing, but only really hit the headlines with the sale of Beeple’s latest work.
Vignesh’s Metapurse fund bought 20 more Beeple works in December and sold partial ownership of the collection as “tokens”, originally priced at US$0.36 per token and now worth about US$5.
But he said buying “The First 5,000 Days” was emotionally draining — the sale at Christie’s auctioneers lasted two weeks, with the price starting at just US$100 and 22 million people logging on to watch the final dramatic moments.
“I did not think it will be this competitive. Even for me to spend that much money, it’s quite hard.”
He plans to display his digital art in a virtual gallery and plans to hire an architect to design it.
He said he felt a personal connection to “The First 5,000 Days” as his own story mirrored Beeple’s — both men started as relative amateurs in their field but found success after years of hard work.
Beeple began “The First 5,000 Days” in 2007, when he was a bored web designer, and created a work of art each day.
“He has grown every day. He has worked 13 years now to get to this point. I felt this soul connection with him,” Vignesh said.