He paid $69.3 million for an NFT so you can download it for free

By Joanna Ossinger

(Bloomberg) — Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as MetaKovan, spent $69.3 million on a nonfungible Beeple token earlier this year, but he isn't very possessive about it.

The beauty of an NFT is that anyone can enjoy it, the Indian cryptocurrency entrepreneur and investor said in an interview with Bloomberg News. In fact, he would be happy if everyone downloaded a copy of “Everydays: the First 5000 Days.”

The blockbuster price he paid helped draw attention to the burgeoning market for NFTs, which has since exploded in popularity. It attracted attention because of the technology's potential, as well as the numerous brands and celebrities jumping on it. But it has also been the subject of questions about trading scandals, valuations, and what buying an NFT actually gets the buyer.

Sundaresan spoke to Bloomberg about his thoughts on NFT ownership and what he's watching next. Below are the highlights of the interview, condensed and made easier to digest.

What do you think about ownership rights on NFTs?

At the end of the day, information wants to be free. People try to put up paywalls and so on. But even these methods of keeping information or data in closed spaces with any kind of security have not proven successful on the Internet.

If someone releases music, it can be pirated. All of these problems seem to be very common on the Internet. Trying to fight against them will not help at all in my opinion.

What NFTs do is they give great value not to that copy of the file, but to something else. The idea that a person supported an artist at some point and this was the memorabilia.

If you have an NFT, I think everyone can enjoy it. But you don't all have to pay for it. There can be a few people who pay for that production, and they get the recognition of having been part of that production. And that's all.

Downloading is fine. I'm happy if anyone downloads Beeple – The 5000 Days – anyone in the world.

Are you involved in well-known series like CryptoPunks?

Personally, I am not active in CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club.

I didn't understand what it was or what it was going to become. Still, it's not for me. I don't want to be part of something very exclusive. In a way, we're trying to do something very inclusive.

I want to find other ways to increase the number of Internet connections we have. These projects need to figure out why they are limited to that number and what impact that has on their capabilities.

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Which tokens do you like?

The most exciting area for me today is parachains, which are part of Polkadot. Polkadot is just a skeleton and there can be so many chains that can attach to the skeleton and scale themselves.

You can participate in the parachain auction, where you lock up your DOT for a couple of years and then you get it back. And for that, you get rewarded with some of these parachain tokens. For me, it's a great way to think about capital allocation right now. I've been in Polkadot for a while now and I don't plan on changing my position.

What do you think about decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)?

I'm watching DAOs very closely that are popping up all over the world right now. Traditionally, there would have been an artist collective where artists would do something together. Now they're trying to be a DAO.

I think Wyoming has led the way here – they've figured out a lot of things that they can offer, and people will figure out how to allow people to host DAOs in their home country. That's going to be the next phase because I think it's going to have a real impact on the world.

What are you working on right now?

It's been fun working with artists and we'll see a lot more come out of it over the next four or five months.

We launched something on Instacart. It's a programmable piece of music, but it's made by artists in India. 40 artists participated in it. They figured out how to make it pay forward – every time a sale is made, the payment gradually flows to everyone. I think it's a great model to see how we connect cultures from all over the world and showcase them in a global marketplace.

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