If you hoped that the revelation of the buyer of Beeple’s $69 million (42329.453 ETH) Everyday: The First 5,000 Days would help you understand the mind-boggling sale at Christie’s or the value of NFTs, you had no luck today. The auction house announced this afternoon that the buyer uses the pseudonym Metakovan and is the proprietor of an NFT investment fund called Metapurse.
Twobadour, whose position is described as “Steward of Metapurse,” describes Metapurse as a collection of “iconic or culturally significant NFTs.” Metakovan, who was a “Bitcoin OG,” according to the Twobadour. He invested in cryptocurrency from the “early to middling days” around 2013 when Bitcoin cost $13 (it trades around $57,500 today.)
Metakovan and Metapurse have been been funding acquiring NFTs since late 2016. “We haven’t sold a single NFT,” the Steward of Metapurse adds. “There isn’t a business model as such because there are no customers or investors apart for Metakovan who just funds it.” Though Twobadour’s own statement is somewhat contradicted by his recounting of “more creative ways to summon liquidity around digital assets rather than trying to flip them.”
Earlier in the year, Twobadour says, the fund acquired 20 single-edition pieces by Beeple on Nifty Gateway paying $2.2 million for the group. “We built monuments for them in virtual worlds,” he says. “We bundled them and fractionalized them into tokens called B 20s. So now the market supply of those tokens exceeds $19 or $20 milllion dollars.
Metapurse hasn’t thought of any ways to create liquidity around Everyday: The First 5,000 Days but the duo believe Beeple’s work is unique because it represents 13 years of the artist’s time. “Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable,” Twobadour says, “but the only thing you can’t hack digitally is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It is worth $1 billion.”