$69M Beeple NFT Mystery Buyer 'Metakovan' Reveals His Identity

The person behind the $69 million winning bid for Beeple’s NFT has now revealed his true identity.

What Happened: The buyer, known until now as “Metakovan,” introduced himself as Vignesh Sundaresan in a blog on Metapurse’s website, saying that the pseudonym was never intended to be a mask.

Sundaresan is a software engineer of Indian origin and appears to reside in Singapore. The investor says that he comes from humble beginnings and claims that when he first discovered cryptocurrency in 2013, he had no money.

Why It Matters: Sundaresan describes his “first leg-up” in the space to be the sale of the now-defunct cryptocurrency Coins-e in 2014. Many users were scammed out of their tokens while using the exchange, with most complaints unresolved, online forums have suggested.

Sundaresan then went on to co-found BitAccess, a Y Combinator-backed project, and served as CTO to the Bitcoin ATM operator before participating in the Ethereum ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

“Unlike the startup world where the capital raise process is opaque and confined to a rarefied group, new ideas in crypto are funded by people like you and I. The Ethereum ICO allowed me, an unknown, to invest in it,” he said.

With the wealth generated from his early crypto investments, the investor went on to found Metapurse — a crypto-exclusive fund that invests in early-stage projects across blockchain infrastructure, finance, art and NFTs.

Metapurse offers investments in a bundle of “high-value NFTs,” including 20 single edition Beeple art pieces that it purchased at an open auction for $2.2 million.

Users can invest in this by purchasing B.20 tokens, offered by Metapurse, which represent ownership of this NFT bundle.

As previously reported, the final day of the Christie’s auction saw the value of B.20 tokens rise to $23 implying a 6200% rise in B.20 token value since they were offered for sale on Jan 23.

According to a blog from Metapurse, Sundaresan holds 59% of the token’s total supply, while the artist Beeple owns 2% of it.