Who bought the most expensive NFT? Revealed!

The most expensive NFT known as “The First 5000 Days” by artist Beeple was bought by Vignesh Sundaresan aka MetaKovan for $69.3 million.

Who is Vignesh Sundaresan aka Metakovan?

The person behind the alias “Metakovan” who bought the most expensive NFT describes himself on his website vigneshsundaresan.com as an entrepreneur, coder, and angel investor in blockchain technology.

The buyer that created big headlines with the purchase of the most expensive NFT is also a co-founder of Bitaccess, which has sent more than 1,600 bitcoin ATMs everywhere on the globe. People who just read about the most expensive NFT purchase very likely didn’t know that it wasn’t his first NFT purchase. He actually already bought multiple pieces of NFT from Beeple worth over $2 million in December 2020 and is an NFT collector. Given his résumé and his involvement in many projects that are built on blockchain technology, it’s fair to assume that he is definitely not new to the industry.

In an interview with CNBC he stated

“I think this is a significant piece in art history and I’m very interested in supporting artists with diverse backgrounds from around the world”

The Straits Times reports that the reason why he revealed himself as the buyer was that India was thinking of banning crypto and his story could inspire them to change their opinion on it.

“I would be happy to reveal myself for that.”

For someone who bought the most expensive NFT he grew up in the “lower middle class”, he still vividly remembers when his family had financial problems. But it was his curiosity about how to earn money and his persistence that made him discover cryptocurrency in 2013. His mother who lives in eastern India was against crypto at first and thought it was a fantasy stock market. But as soon as he was making money she was no longer against it. It was the moment when he explained to her the idea of the Metaverse, virtual currencies and how NFTs work when she gave him the nickname “Metakovan” (Tamil for “king of meta”). That was the reason why he also chose the nickname as his Twitter handle “Metakovan“

When asked about his net worth he simply explains that it varies on the daily basis and that most of his assets are not in NFTs but are in crypto. For someone who is able to spend $69.3 million on the artwork, he has to be one of the so-called crypto whales that made a fortune with cryptocurrencies.

Beeple-The-First-500-Days-NFT-Digital-Art-com — *Everydays: the First 5000 Days*
by Beeple

Vignesh is currently based in Singapore, where he is the CEO of his consulting company “Portkey Technologies”. As if all of that was not already enough as accomplishments and endeavors, he is also part of Metapurse (a fund that not only acquired other NFTs of the artist “Beeple” but also virtual museums and combined them into a bundle).

The latest and most expensive NFT seems to be fitting right into that package. What “Metapurse” is offering is the possibility to invest in this package with its B20 token. That is the business and investment side of “Metapurse”. On the other side is the creation of a virtual museum filled with digital artwork that can be viewed as a virtual exhibition. Have you ever been to a virtual museum? Maybe… but a virtual museum that displays NFTs as digital art? I haven’t but I’m excited to do so.