Why MetaKovan, the buyer of the $69 million Beeple NFT, thinks the token is actually worth $1 billion

Vignesh "MetaKovan" Sundaresan stunned the world last month by purchasing a non-fungible token (NFT) for $69.3 million at the centuries-old auction house Christie's.

The token is linked to a collection of digital artwork. Titled "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," the collection was created by the digital artist known as Beeple. 

It is the most expensive digital artwork ever sold, and this made Beeple, also known as Mike Winkelmann, the third-most valuable living artist after Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

Who is MetaKovan? And why does he consider this particular piece of digital art to be so enormously valuable? In fact, not only does the young crypto billionaire view the piece as history-making — he thinks its true worth is vastly larger than what he paid for it.

Visions of a crypto billionaire

MetaKovan, the 32-year-old crypto entrepreneur who revealed his identity seven days after the purchase, could afford to pay nearly $70 million for the NFT thanks to his crypto wealth. 

His business partner, Anand "Twobadour" Venkateswaran, told The Block in a recent interview that MetaKovan was even ready to pay "a little more."

MetaKovan first discovered crypto in 2013, when bitcoin was around $100. He has said that at the time, he didn't have money to invest. So he began offering bitcoin escrow services, which then became an exchange called Coins-e. He sold Coins-e in May 2014, and that became his "first leg-up in the space."

He then co-founded BitAccess, a Y-Combinator-backed bitcoin ATM vendor, in Canada. The first bitcoin ATM he sold was to Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Lorio, who urged MetaKovan to invest in Ethereum's initial coin offering or ICO in 2014.

MetaKovan is now believed to be a crypto billionaire. According to Venkateswaran, 99.9% of his business partner's wealth is in crypto. "That's how much he believes in this space. He does not own a house or a car."

The belief that MetaKovan and Venkateswaran have in crypto has extended to crypto-art. And to Beeple. 

Beeple is the "artist of our generation," Venkateswaran said. What makes 5000 Days so valuable is "the idea that you can start something from anywhere, but you do something consistently, and with integrity and discipline, you can get to where you are," he said. 

Venkateswaran added: "It is one person's almost spiritual level of consistency and commitment towards this one task that he set out for himself day in, day out." The NFT is linked to a collage of 5,000 digital art pieces that Beeple created every day, consecutively for over 13-and-a-half years.

According to Venkateswaran, Beeple created a piece even on days when he was feeling sick, and when his wife was in labor. "This represents scrunched up time and basically a person's commitment, and also his journey as an artist."

In a recent media interview, MetaKovan said he thinks the work is significant in art history. The piece reflects a "very important shift" in how art has been perceived for centuries, he said. "And the first piece of such an important movement is going to be quite valuable in the future. That's why we paid so much for the piece."

MetaKovan believes that hundreds and thousands of people will adopt the digital medium of art or NFTs worldwide to monetize their work, and there will be an economy around it. "Sometimes these things take some time for everyone to recognize and realize, but I'm ok with that," he said.

'Virtual museums'

In MetaKovan's vision, the future will also feature a rich virtual world.

MetaKovan, a pseudonym given to Sundaresan by his mother, means King of Metaverse, according to Venkateswaran. Kovan is a Tamil word that means king. The term metaverse, which was coined in the popular science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, refers to a shared virtual space.

MetaKovan has been investing in virtual worlds since 2017 when he bought virtual land in the Ethereum-based Decentraland. MetaPurse, the fund that MetaKovan manages with Venkateswaran, also specializes in NFTs — of which it holds more than 100 NFTs.

The fund was valued at around $190 million as of March, according to NonFungible.com. Besides the Beeple NFT, which represents around a third of the fund's portfolio, the rest of the fund is made up of NFTs (around $46 million) and holdings of a token called B20 ($72 million).

B20 is a token that MetaPurse launched in January of this year. It represents fractionalized ownership of 20 Beeple works that MetaKovan bought last December for $2.2 million. 

MetaPurse pitched the token to investors from "virtual museums" that it built in partnership with blockchain-based virtual worlds Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, and Somnium Space. In fact, MetaPurse spent at least $2.5 million building virtual museums and hosting a "metaverse cultural festival" called Metapalooza, during which the token went live. 

MetaPurse initially sold 1.6 million units of B20 at a price of $0.36 each. It hit a high of around $30 last month. But the price has fallen sharply in recent weeks and is currently trading at around $4, according to CoinGecko. 

A billion for a Beeple

Will MetaPurse also tokenize its new Beeple work? First, it has other plans. 

"We want to build a [virtual] monument for it," Venkateswaran told The Block. "We are scouting for architects. Mainstream architects would be able to give us a design for such a monument to exist."

"I don't know when it might become feasible, but it will be great to have a physical space as well where people can go and view this work of art," said Venkateswaran.

Venkateswaran would not say when or how the piece will be monetized. But MetaKovan recently said during a podcast appearance that the new Beeple NFT could be tokenized and fractionalized.

"Maybe there could be fractionalization that can be done," he said. "Take an NFT, then divide them into, say, 100 million tokens and then sell them, right? Like I'm not planning to do that with this particular piece at least yet, but that's an option I have."

But MetaKovan also recently mentioned in another podcast appearance that he plans to turn MetaPurse into an equity firm this year because tokens are volatile. "From the B20 experience, I feel like when we take art and tokenize it, it's too much volatility," he said. "People don't know what they are holding, and it's really hard. That's one of the lessons from the experience."

"But as an equity company, it might be better to hold these NFTs because I could give exposure to other people, but it's not too much pressure on me to make sure the value is going up," said MetaKovan. In that case, he could turn the Beeple 5000 Days NFT into shares.

In another recent interview, MetaKovan said he believes that bitcoin's price will hit $1 million, which will create many new crypto billionaires during the next decade. Then, "lots of people" will want to buy the NFT, he said.

Whatever approach he settles on, MetaKovan seems convinced he can turn the NFT into a much larger sum than what he bought it for. In a statement to the press at the time of the purchase, he declared: "It is worth $1 billion."