Vignesh Sundaresan - The $92 Million Man

Vignesh Sundaresan, better known as Metakovan, talks art, memes, revolution and that world-beating NFT.

- Weets Goh

“There is so much money being printed right now. Everything is getting inflated, and it’s not like governments can take back the money they’ve put out. If anything, fiat currency is the bubble and crypto is the pin.” It’s a bold statement – and one only a handful of people are qualified to make. Enter Vignesh Sundaresan, better known as Metakovan – the nom de guerre under which he made history by paying US$69 million (S$92 million) for the Ethereumbased, non-fungible token (NFT) of digital artwork, ‘Everyday: The First 5,000 Days’ by American artist Beeple.

It’s the third-highest amount ever paid to a living artist – and a not-insignificant sum that has further raised the recent frenzy around cryptocurrency-based assets. After all, it’s easy to be seduced by the growth of blockchain-based assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, both of which have grown by several orders of magnitude over the past decade. Whether it’s a bubble or not, cryptocurrencies have minted more millionaires than any other piece of technology in history.

“The dotcom boom created a few thousand rich people, but crypto has created hundreds of thousands. There are 2,600 billionaires in the world right now. If or when Bitcoin hits $1 million, the number of billionaires will almost double – there’ll be a massive wealth redistribution and it will be a different world for sure,” says 32-year-old Vignesh.