Beeple Effect III

Christie’s, a major auction house, held an auction for one of Beeple’s “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS.” The auction lasted for two weeks and was exciting the whole way.

The piece really started to gain traction in the final minutes as it jumped from $18 million to the final closing price of $69.3 million in the span of 18 minutes. I don’t think anybody could’ve thought this piece would have gone for this much. This again smashes the record for the most expensive NFT to be sold.

The piece is a collection of stitched pictures of all of his everyday’s from the past 13 years. This whole piece was a 13-year long process that seemed to payout for Beeple. This piece is now the third most expensive piece to be sold for a living artist.

Who fuck paid for this?

Considering the price it was bought for, we at the Gazette thought maybe Elon Musk had bought up the NFT. But it turned out to be even crazier; the buyer was Metakovan, the founder of Metapurse. He was the same person that bought up all of Beeple’s 2020 collection and tokenized it. This makes him one of two people that have 1 of 1s of Beeple’s artwork.

Sidenote: We want to gloat a bit by saying that back in Issue #25, we correctly guessed who was going to buy the NFT. 

METAKOVAN EXPOSED?

According to an article by Amy Castor, Metakovan is Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto entrepreneur who has had several crypto start-ups. Based on his Sundaresan in interviews and similar crypto backstory, Amy was able to figure out the mysterious buyer. It is pretty interesting that this guy made a whole new persona just to get into NFTs. 

Boomers are, of course, confused by this.

Unlike his 2020 drop, every major news outlet covered this one, and the boomers are not happy. I don’t get why they can never support an NFT artist and always have to say their work is worthless because they can just take a screenshot. I thought old people are supposed to be in love with art, considering that’s what they used to call TVs back in their day.

It doesn’t really matter what the old farts think, considering they have a limited time left in the economic ecosystem, but I think Matty puts it best about adopting NFTs. NFTs are the future, and they are here to stay. Now it’s a matter of whether you go along with it.

The NFT market has exploded in recent months. It feels like each week we cover the breaking of the highest NFT sale, but this $69 million mark seems like it's unlikely to break anytime soon. But then again that’s what we said about the previous records so only time will tell. 

Looking at data, the total crypto art volume has skyrocketed, more artists are coming into the space everyday and more people are buying. The most interesting part of the data is the secondary market, it has gone to the moon. The data only is only for Super Rare but this trend is still seen through all other NFT market places.

Primary volume in blue
Secondary volume in red

Beeple has constantly shown the world the possibilities of what can be done with NFTs. This sale, like all sales, is a big moment for the space as it brings new people in and more money into the realm. The only way is up for NFTs. But most importantly of all, it means we need another champagne video.