What is hidden behind the sky-high price of 69 million NFT works?
According to Christie’s first NFT, the NFT, which sold 69 million artist Beeple’s works "every day: the first 5000 days", sold a sky-high price of US$69 million through Christie’s auction, making the NFT complete its “out of the circle”. However, this is probably not the case. According to an investigation by a reporter, Amy Castor, this auction is just a game of left-handed and right-handed.
- Who is the buyer of the work?
According to the investigation, the real name of the buyer of this work, that is, the Twitter user @Metakovan, is Vignesh Sundaresan. Judging from this name or the photos on his personal website, this person is of Indian descent. Vignesh is from Canada. He is not a collector of traditional art, but a person in the coin industry. He has been in this industry for seven or eight years. He not only issued coins "cut the leeks", but was also suspected of founding Exchange runaway incident.
In 2013, Vignesh founded the virtual currency exchange coins-e.com in Canada. Now this website no longer exists, but on cryptocurrency forums such as reddit or bitcointalk, many users can still find complaints about its running away. There are many users who have been swept away by it worth millions of digital currencies.
In 2014, Vignesh founded BitAccess, a Bitcoin ATM company, and received venture capital from Y Combinator, a well-known American investment institution. In the 1C0 boom of 2017-2018, Vignesh also issued a coin called LST, which sold 50,000 ETH within two days in January 2018. The price of LST is now close to zero.
In 2021, the digital currency will usher in another bull market, and Vignesh will issue coins again. This time the coin name he issued is B20. - The secret behind the auction
The vision of the B20 coin is to "make art and collections more democratic." Since most retail investors do not have the ability to appreciate art, and art is expensive and very affordable, the issuer of B20 is Will buy valuable artworks on the market, holding B20 is equivalent to indirectly owning artworks. It sounds like an ETF of art. However, Vignesh's series of actions inevitably make people wonder if this auction will be another act of cutting leeks.
First of all, this is not the first time Vignesh has bought Beeple’s works. In December last year, he had already bought 20 works created by Beeple (The Beeple 20 Collection) for $2.2 million. The token was named B20. Know if it is a coincidence.
Secondly, Beeple itself holds 2% of the total B20. Beeple is the only artist who directly obtained tokens at the beginning of B20 issuance. 8% of the total amount of B20 tokens is used for private placement and 16% is used for public placement. It can be seen that the 2% directly obtained by Beeple is not small, and it is highly related to Vignesh. square.
Obviously, it is the consensus of artist Beeple and buyer Vignesh to sell Beeple's artworks at sky-high prices. Through this auction, Beeple can become famous and become one of the most valuable living artists. According to CoinMarketCap, after the Christie’s auction, the B20 with a public offering price of US$0.36 once rose to US$25, and now it has fallen back to around US$15. Vignesh holds 5.9 million B20s, and the value is still Far more than the price he paid for the work. What's more, if he and the artist collude, he may not need to pay the full price. - What kind of NFT will continue to circulate
Even if there is no NFT, the water of the artwork is deep enough. Because the price of the artwork is high and there are few players, it is often used by the rich for tax avoidance and other purposes. Therefore, in the long run, retail investors may not participate in the tide of art NFT hype, but there is a kind of NFT that is slowly becoming popular, that is, those NFTs that already have a fan base and are endorsed by big brands.
Currently, the most active NFT transaction is NBA Top Shot. Nowadays, the NFT that buys the wonderful moments of star players has become the latest way for fans to support idols. So sports stars in other fields are also joining in. Football star Ronaldo’s NFT sold 29 Million dollars, the NFT of Rob Gronkowski, a star of the American Professional Baseball League, sold a high price of 1.6 million dollars.
Not only in the sports world, the DC Comics company that produces Batman and Superman will soon issue NFTs. For the majority of buyers, the NFTs provided by NBA or DC Comics brands are compared to those issued by anonymous individuals on the Internet. It is much more trustworthy.
Since entering the digital age, the way people support stars has also changed a lot. From buying physical albums in the past to buying digital albums now, it is hard to say that NFT will not become the next direction and become the latest way for fans to support their idols. But for speculators, the liquidity of most NFTs is relatively poor. If you want to profit from speculation, you still have to control the risk.
