$69 million digital art buyer shines light on ‘NFT’ boom

$69 million digital art buyer shines light on ‘NFT’ boom

The blockchain entrepreneur who paid a record $69.3 million for a digital artwork looks, at first glance, nothing like a wealthy collector. The 32-year-old is casually dressed in a t-shirt and chinos, lives in a regular Singapore apartment, and does not own any property or a car-with most of his investments in the virtual world. "My prize possession would be my computer. And maybe my watch,“ Indian-born Vignesh Sundaresan, also known by his pseudonym MetaKovan, told AFP from his sparsely decorated flat.

His unpretentious demeanor offers no clue that he is a multimillionaire investor financing a fund focused on "non-fungible tokens“ (NFTs), which use blockchain technology to turn anything from art to internet memes into virtual collector's items. Last month the programmer bought the world's most expensive NFT-US artist Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5,000 Days“-highlighting how virtual work is establishing itself as a new creative genre. With NFTs, many see an opportunity to monetize digital art of all kinds, offering collectors the bragging rights to ultimate ownership, even if the work can be endlessly copied.

Sundaresan defended the price he paid for the collage of 5,000 pieces of art created on consecutive days, which has transformed its creator, real name Mike Winkelmann,