India-born entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan is mystery buyer of Beeple's $69 mn artwork

A piece of digital-only artwork by renowned artist Beeple grabbed global eyeballs after it sold in form of an NFT for a whopping $69 million on a digital auction. While the auction house Christie's kept the name of the buyer secret initially, he was later identified as MetaKovan leading to the growing curiosity around his origin and life. Now the mystery buyer, who bought purchased the most expensive digital artwork ever sold, has revealed his identity. 

Popularly known as Metkovan, the mystery buyer is an India-born blockchain entrepreneur who is based in Singapore and his real name is Vignesh Sundaresan. Sundaresan fueled curiosity after he was heard speaking in Tamil when he joined a Clubhouse chat with the Good Time Show host Sriram Krishnan. He had also revealed that his pseudonym MetaKovan in Tamil means “King of Meta”.

Who is Vignesh Sundaresan aka MetaKovan?

Vignesh Sundaresan is Singapore-based blockchain entrepreneur, coder and angel investor who earned fame with his pseudonym MetaKovan after he won the bid for Beeple's stunning artwork titled ‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’. The artwork is a virtual collage of 5,000 images created over a period of 13 years. Sundaresan detailed his journey in a substack blog titled 'NFTs: The First 5000 Beeples - How two immigrants from Tamil Nadu bought a piece of digital art for $69M. And what we’re funding next.' 

In the blog, Sundaresan said the idea was "to show Indians and people of color that they too could be patrons, that crypto was an equalizing power between the West and the Rest, and that the global south was rising."

Sundaresan is a Y-Combinator alum and is CEO at software technology firm, Portkey Technologies and is the founder of a blockchain startup titled Lendroid. He also co-founded a crypto startup called BitAcces which set up 100 Bitcoin ATMs in 18 countries between 2013-2015. In the blog, he revealed that he developed an interest in crypto in 2013. Sundaresan also announced a $500,000 fellowship for 'crypto storytellers' funded by his crypto investment firm, Metapurse.

After winning the bid, Sundaresan aka MetaKovan had explained the historical importance of this acquisition: “When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat. And here's why - it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable, 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.”

‘Everydays: The First 5000 Days’

The digital-only artwork by Beeple now ranks third among the most valuable artworks ever sold by a living artist, following works by Jeff Koons and David Hockney. While talking about the making of the artwork the auction house said, "In EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, the artist has stitched together recurring themes and colour schemes into an aesthetic whole. The individual pieces are organised in loose chronological order: zooming in reveals pictures by turn abstract, fantastical, grotesque or absurd, deeply personal or representative of current events. Recurring themes include society’s obsession with and fear of technology; the desire for and resentment of wealth; and America’s recent political turbulence,”

Christie's wrote about the artwork." In a subsequent tweet, Christie’s said that with the sale of this artwork, Beeple has now positioned himself amongst the “top three most valuable living artists”.