To chart Sundaresan’s rise, Reuters spoke with some 40 people who have worked or invested with him and reviewed documentation including corporate records and a previously unreported whistleblower complaint. His Beeple purchase was proof, he wrote, of how the “equalizing power” of crypto was enabling the rise of the “global south.” In June, he told the Financial Times the $69 million acquisition was “much less” than 10% of his net worth, which he said was almost entirely in crypto. In a blog after the auction, he sketched a rags-to-riches story of emigrating from South India to Canada and finding success in the guise of MetaKovan, which can translate as “King of Meta” in his native Tamil. When Sundaresan shot to fame this year, little was known about him. He has likened owning them to “having an autograph from your favourite artist.” Sundaresan says he buys NFTs chiefly as investments. Vignesh Sundaresan, pictured earlier this month in Manhattan, where he was attending his Dreamverse public digital art experience. The notion that the internet will develop into a metaverse – a parallel universe of virtual spaces – has gathered such momentum that last month Facebook changed its name to “Meta.” While some observers deride NFTs as a speculative asset, devotees see them as the building blocks of a new digital economy and the next evolution in art collecting. The Christie’s sale set off a gold rush that continues today, with celebrities from Lionel Messi to Paris Hilton launching NFTs for people to buy.
In the months before the auction, NFTs exploded in popularity. Sundaresan had become the top spender in the hottest area among crypto investors.įor several years, interest in NFTs simmered on crypto culture’s fringes as fans paid small sums to designers, artists or third parties for cartoon cats and pixelated characters. The purchase shook the art and crypto worlds. It was also the third most expensive artwork ever sold at auction by a living artist. At a sale by Christie’s, he bid $69 million to win another Beeple piece – “Everydays: The First 5000 Days.” It was the first time a major auction house sold a digital artwork in the form of a new crypto asset called a non-fungible token (NFT), a digital certificate of ownership. Two months later he would go further still. It was a spotlight-grabbing move by MetaKovan. Now, he was launching a crypto token giving buyers a stake in the art pieces. Sundaresan had hired architects to build the gallery in an online “metaverse” to display the works.
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MetaKovan – real name Vignesh Sundaresan – was holding the event in the virtual metropolis of Origin City to celebrate his recent $2.2 million purchase of a series of images by the digital artist Beeple. The host, an Indian cryptocurrency investor who goes by the name of MetaKovan, wore a purple crown. Guests’ avatars danced to electronic music, unhindered by gravity. Champagne flowed into glasses that floated above a black disco floor. 23, several hundred partygoers packed into an unusual art gallery.
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