Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Vignesh Sundaresan paid $69.3 mn for an NFT so you can download it for free

 Indian cryptocurrency entrepreneur and investor says technology 'can bridge cultures from all over the world'.


Vignesh Sundaresan, also known as MetaKovan, spent $69.3 million on a Beeple non-fungible token earlier this year, but he’s not very possessive about it.

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

The blockbuster price he paid helped bring attention to the burgeoning market for NFTs, which has exploded in popularity since then. It’s gotten attention for the potential of the technology as well as the numerous brands and celebrities piling in. Yet, it’s also been the subject of questions about trading scandals, valuations and what an NFT purchase actually gives the buyer.

Sundaresan spoke with Bloomberg about his thoughts on NFT property rights and what he’s watching next. Below are highlights from the interview, edited for length and clarity.

What do you think about property rights on NFTs?

At the end of the day, information wants to be free. You try to have paywalls, you try to do so many things. But even those methods of having information or data inside walled gardens of any kind of security, they’ve not done very well on the internet.

If someone is releasing music, maybe it gets pirated. All these issues seem to be very naive to the internet. If you try to fight that, I don’t think it’ll be useful at all.

What NFTs do, instead of giving importance to that copy of the file, kind of gives importance to something else big. The idea was that some person supported an artist at some time and this was memorabilia.

If you have an NFT, I believe everyone gets to enjoy it. But you don’t need everyone to pay for it. There can be a few people who pay for this production, and they get credit to have been part of this production. And that’s it.

It’s fine to download. I’m happy if someone were to download Beeple -- The 5000 Days -- everyone in the world.

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