Synopsis :
Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as "Metakovan," is a blockchain entrepreneur, programmer, and angel investor headquartered in Singapore.
His cryptocurrency investing company, Metapurse, has established a $500,000 scholarship for "crypto storytellers".
Mumbai : In a Substack blog post on Thursday, Metakovan, the rumored Tamil origin buyer of the landmark NFT art piece by digital artist Beeple, which sold for $69.3 million in a Christie's auction, revealed his identity and announced a $500,000 fellowship for 'crypto storytellers' funded by his crypto investment firm, Metapurse.
While detailing his path into the NFT and crypto world, Vignesh Sundaresan, a Singapore-based blockchain entrepreneur, hacker, and angel investor, identified himself as 'Metakovan,' the buyer behind Beeple's digital art piece 'Everydays: The First 5000 Days.' 'NFTs: The First 5000' is the title of the substack blog. Beeples - How two Tamil Nadu immigrants paid $69 million for a piece of digital art. And what we're going to finance next' .
Sundaresan is a Y-Combinator alum who is currently the CEO of software technology firm Portkey Technologies and the Founder of Lendroid, a blockchain startup.
Between 2013 and 2015, he co-founded BitAcces, a crypto firm that set up 100 Bitcoin ATMs in 18 countries.
The blog also chronicled the career of the investment firm's steward, 'Twobadour,' or Anand Venkateswaran, who is now Lendroid's head of communications.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, turn digital artworks into verifiable, transferable digital assets on the blockchain. Other notable transactions include a video clip of LeBron James that sold for over $200,000 and the decade-old "Nyan Cat" GIF that sold for $600,000.
Sundaresan also announced a crypto fellowship funded by Metapurse, an NFT holding firm whose purpose is to "democratize access to NFTs," in the blog post.
The blog explained that "Metapurse is a crypto-exclusive fund that specializes in finding early-stage companies across blockchain infrastructure, finance, art, unusual collectibles, and virtual estate."
The program will provide $100,000 to five storytellers - authors, producers, and content creators - over the course of 12 months.
"The essence of the NFT renaissance is captured by Metapurse," the blog stated, adding that Metapurse was the "biggest NFT fund in the world," reflecting Metakovan's (Sundaresan's) collection of NFTs and his investments in significant projects in the area.
Art platforms Async.Art and Superrare, blockchains such as Flow, which hosts NBA Top Shots (an online marketplace for officially licensed digital memorabilia from the NBA), and lifestyle NFT platforms such as Grow Your Base were among the investments revealed.
Sundaresan went on to say that Metapurse also alerted him to a high-profile open auction of NFTs, when 20 single-edition art pieces by Beeple were bought for $2.2 million. After that, the NFT bits were grouped together and tokenized into B20 tokens. Beeple received 2% of these tokens as well.