Beeple’s $69 Million NFT Art Sold to Founder of Crypto Fund Metapurse

Metakovan is the founder of Metapurse, a crypto-based investment firm. Twobadour said that their fund outbid dozens of rivals over the course of the 15-day online contest to win Beeple’s pixelated amalgamation of irreverent drawings and fantastical landscapes that the artist combined into a single collage called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days.”

Metakovan, who acts as the fund’s financier, paid for it with about 42,329 of the cryptocurrency ether.

The Metapurse founder is relatively unknown in blue-chip art circles, but with the new Beeple purchase he has suddenly joined the rarefied ranks of top collectors. He has also stirred up a frenzy in crypto asset markets by paying a record sum for the artwork that only exists digitally. Its authenticity is verified primarily because it carries an NFT, or digital proof of purchase that is recorded on a digital ledger known as a blockchain. Christie’s said it is the first time the auction house has ever sold an entirely digital work.

NFTs are all the rage now, but Twobadour, who spoke on Metakovan’s behalf as the fund’s steward, said he and his partner have spent the past several years focused on amassing what might be the world’s biggest collection of tokenized collectibles and art, worth nearly $120 million combined, with Beeple serving as its star. Four months ago, the fund paid $2.2 million for a different set of 20 Beeple works on the online marketplace Nifty Gateway.

“Art has become really important to us lately, and Beeple represents creating for the sake of creating,” Twobadour said, adding that the durational element of Beeple’s “Everydays” series was key to the artist’s appeal. The artist, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, is known for completing a new work each day for the past 13 years and counting. “I can’t think of anything I’ve done every day for that long,” Twobadour added.

Metapurse has been able to scoop up Beeple’s works at such high prices because Metakovan was an early investor in cryptocurrencies, starting around 2013, Twobadour said. Money from those and subsequent investments has allowed them to amass a pool for cash to invest in NFTs.

After buying that previous set of 20 Beeple works last December, they bought land in digital gaming spaces and built museums to display the images before minting tokens off the virtual experience they created. An initial 1.6 million tokens of B.20 were sold at 36 cents apiece. By Friday, the cost of one token had risen to $16.35, giving the tokens a collective worth of $163.5 million, according to Coinmarketcap.com.

“You walk into the Museum of Modern Art today, you feel a sense of ownership,” Twobadour said. “All we did was to tokenize that sense of ownership into something real. It’s like owning a share of the Museum of Modern Art.”

Hong Kong-based collector and cryptocurrency investor Jehan Chu said Friday that he is game for the world the collectors are building online. Mr. Chu, who used to work for Sotheby’s, bought some of Metapurse’s B.20 tokens and thinks Beeple will become “emblematic of a new digital-art movement.”

The incoming generation of NFT artists arrive with built-in audiences who already collect their work and are steered by their own tastes, Mr. Chu said. Such collectors also set their own price levels whether or not the traditional art scene joins in—a phenomenon not seen since the advent of street art, he said.

“We’re putting dents into the staid art world,” Mr. Chu said. “The art world thinks of these guys as rejects or punchlines, but I expect the art world to catch up soon.”

Next week, Mr. Chu said top curators including Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries, will join a conversation on the Clubhouse app with himself and Beeple—a perceived christening move for the art cognoscenti that digital art is heading mainstream. The Beeple sale also caught the attention of traditional art collectors who have no ties to finance or crypto, said Stephen Young, an NFT investor and artist based in Cape Town, South Africa.

“We’ve kind of crossed this chasm now,” Mr. Young said. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride, but I think we’re at the start of something that’s going to be a really big growth space over the next 10 years.”

As for Twobadour, he said Metakovan and the fund have no plans to convert his latest purchase into a profit-making venture of its own. “We believe it’s the most important piece of art, and we had to get it,” he said. “Now, we can enjoy it, maybe just look at it for the next 5,000 days.”

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected] and Caitlin Ostroff at [email protected]