NFT bought for $69 million by a secret metaverse creator

MetaKovan, the pseudonymous founder of MetaPurse, is the buyer behind the $69 million winning bid for a Beeple NFT at Christie’s yesterday. It was the third-highest sale price ever for a work from a living artist.

“When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat,” MetaKovan said in a statement published by Christie’s. “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.”

Metakovan’s real identity is not known, but the investor is the co-founder of the NFT collection called Metapurse, which collects NFTs to display in the metaverse through virtual museums. Metakovan already owns the largest collection of Beeples, and fractionalized the ownership of one collection of Beeples with a special token called the B.20 Coin.

CNBC spoke with Metakovan’s partner in Metapurse, who goes by the name of Twobadour, who said the NFT is “the most valuable work of its generation.”

Twobadour said they don’t know their exact plans for this work, but options include fractionalizing it or offering it as a new token. He said the goal is not to make money, but to decentralize and democratize art so token holders everywhere can share a piece of history and share the wealth.

For example, it’s like if people could go to the Museum of Modern Art and actually own some of the work, he said.

“We made history and we created a god” in Beeple, he said.