The buyer of a digital artwork sold for $69 million was named as a crypto asset investor known by the pseudonym “Metakovan,” auction house Christie’s confirmed on Friday.
“Everydays: The First 5000 Days” — the first virtual Non-Fungible Token (NFT) artwork to be sold at a major auction house — closed at $69,346,250 during an online auction on Thursday.
On Friday, Christie’s announced that Metakovan, founder and funder of Metapurse, the largest NFT fund in the world, was behind the astronomical purchase.
Chinese cryptocurrency creator Justin Sun revealed on Twitter that he was outbid on the artwork, having put down a final effective bid of $60 million, only to be “outbid by another buyer in the last 20 secs by $250k.”
Sun said he had been leading the bidding throughout most of the last 20 minutes of the auction — but his attempt to update his bid failed during the last 30 seconds.
The record-breaking sale catapults the artwork’s creator, Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple, near the summit of the most expensive living artists to date, placing him just below David Hockney and Jeff Koons. Hockney’s painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold for $90.3 million in 2018, while Koons’ stainless steel sculpture “Rabbit” topped the list at $91.1 million in 2019.
