 If you look at art, it's not changed so much until that Christie's auction when there was a purely digital art that was going to auction and it shook the traditional world because they could not understand why someone will pay so much for something they cannot touch. Hey folks, I'm Adam B. Levine and this is Speaking of Bitcoin. Today we've got a special episode for you so we'll get right into it. As always, I'm joined by the other host of the show, Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos. Hello, Jonathan Mohan is out today. On this episode of Speaking of Bitcoin, we're joined by Vignesh Sundaresan, a past guest of the show and the real-life personality behind Metapurse, and the MetaCovin, let's call it, Avatar. For those of you who haven't been following closely, Metapurse is the earlier this month won the Christie's auction for the Beeple first 5,000 piece. So he's got the dual distinction of outbidding Tron's Justin Son and also of having spent the third largest amount of money ever on a piece of art from a living artist. MetaCovin, thank you very much for joining us today and welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So as I mentioned during the intro, you're actually a repeat guest and you recently revealed your identity, but you were on, I can't remember the exact episode number, but I was listening to it the other day. About a year and a half ago, we were talking about the kind of perspective bands of crypto in India. We had done an episode and you reached out to us and said, you know, I can provide some kind of additional commentary kind of around that idea. And so you've actually already been on the show. So I kind of want to start this conversation from a pseudonymity perspective. Can you kind of talk about the decision to take on the persona of MetaCovin as opposed to just using your traditional identity? Like what was kind of the thinking there? So I've been in the NFT space for three years now. So I started in 2017. And when NFTs really came out, especially with the whole virtual worlds being created on top of Ethereum, what thesis just went into my head was that, you know, this might be a new form of medium. So even a distribution medium, right? Like content distribution has been quite centralized. So I thought, okay, let's think about this new medium of virtual worlds and see how we can try to even be the first mover, right? Like if it's possible to be the first mover in a completely new distribution medium, that will be awesome. So that was what was going on in my head. So I had just participated in some of these, you know, land sales, etc. But I didn't have an identity around it. But by 2018, when things were getting more serious in this world, where we were thinking about banning crypto in various parts of the world, what really was running in my head was now I could express myself just on crypto and even build visual things on crypto that cannot be censored, and that can just stay there without being confiscated by someone. And maybe I should do that through an avatar, right? Like and not just be myself because it takes away the judgment. It takes away the person behind what he wants to say, right? Like and just conveys the message even more easily. Because like whatever said and done, it's not been very easy for Vignesh to do much in this industry, even though, you know, we are quite an open industry, but it is still hard to be a founder where I'm from because I don't have the same kind of network. But being an avatar gave me a completely new life and like it had no judgments to it. And it gave me a clean slate to get started. And I could form my own community over the last couple of years. And most of the people have not even spoken to me, right? They just met me online. And we used to just build stuff together. And that was very interesting to me. And I think there is so much future for the same kind of avatar and avatar life and suranaminti on the crypto world. I was thinking were you inspired by Satoshi to sort of do the pseudonymity thing? Obviously Satoshi is an inspiration because Satoshi having done what he had done and just being able to disappear totally and successfully is still very interesting. And I think that is definitely not easy, right? Like being an avatar, a pseudonym, there are a lot of other issues, other political issues, other issues that creep up. And I didn't have this problem until Christie's happened. But as we got closer to Christie's and after Christie's especially, it was not just easy to remind pseudonymous. If I really have to remind pseudonymous, I should even more have expressed lesser and lesser, maybe no voice, etc, right? So it is not easy. And if people start knowing my background, it's easy to connect and stuff like that. So I'm still impressed by what Satoshi has done, right? Because it's not easy. Yeah. So tell us the story about how you became involved with the Christie's auction and what problems have you experienced as a result. I'm curious about that too. Sure. So this Christie's auction is not an isolated event where, you know, like I just saw something and I wanted to buy it or something. But I feel like we have a very interesting movement that's going on right here, a very cultural movement back in 2012-13. When I got started with Bitcoin, you know, that feeling of welcoming people and this whole community being one was really what inspired me to be part of the industry, right? And everyone was so passionate and everyone wanted everyone else also to do something, make sure that they also earn money, etc, etc. So that kind of emotion, I felt like after like the upside movement of Bitcoin and all these exponential growth of number of cryptocurrencies, I think we've become more skeptical about this whole movement in general. And it does not have the same kind of ethos today. There is a lot of infighting, you know, like there is a lot of politics, even within crypto. But when NFTs came out, I felt very young again, because it was a new medium, a visual medium. And for the first time, we had artists natively being able to participate in something without being too technical. And that means that for a while, we've had certain type of people being able to participate in this decentralized movement. But now we could bring an artist, an artist, like increasing the attention towards this movement. Also, they're going to be the voice of this movement, right? So like in 2013, the 2012 where, you know, a $5,000 investment could become a billion dollars. That's the exponential possibility here, the asymmetric upside here. That same kind of potential is what I see again, but to a different set of people who might not be technical, who might not understand like economics fully, but they're all talented, and they have the spirit to get philosophy and connect people, etc., right? So artists are very important for any movement historically. And I've also heard this from a lot of people say that tech really missed that. So instead of thinking about crypto as part of tech, now I feel more like it's tech versus crypto, because crypto also is a movement that's against big tech. And tech totally missed the art movement. And so we are now taking it over. So for the last 100 years, if you look at art, it's not changed so much until that Christie's auction, when there was a purely digital art that was going to auction, and it shook the traditional world because they could not understand why someone will pay so much for something they cannot touch. The same feeling people had when people started buying Bitcoin, which they could not, right? So that is repeating again, is what I feel like. And so during this auction, all I wanted, as I've been part of this NFT industry, I've also collected various other culturally important, culturally time significant artworks also. So in that way, I've been supporting all these new artists who've been in the industry for the last couple of years. And then when Christie's happened, I thought it'll be a nice way to tell the world of what's happening within this industry, and that a decentralized class was rising, right? And we are a totally new class of people, if you think about it from a political standpoint, because we didn't just decentralized money, we have effectively decentralized capital. And this Christie's auction is one small result of that, right? It's not from the traditional person, but from a person who started in crypto with no money, I started in crypto with $0 and being able to buy that piece, it's a story about crypto, more of a story about crypto than a story about me. Hey folks, are you interested in the lightning network, but not sure where to get started? For the last few weeks, I've been playing around with a really neat lightning application called Sphinx Chat. It's a podcast listening and private chat app built entirely with lightning that lets you stream Satoshis as you listen to the show. One of the really interesting things is that because it's lightning, you need an always on node to use it. For me, that'd be just a bit too much trouble, but the Sphinx Chat folks rent nodes for just a few dollars a month, and assuming they have nodes available is remarkably easy and undeniably cool. We have no deal with Sphinx Chat, they are not a sponsor, but I think the project is important enough that I'd like to encourage some of our more adventurous listeners to try it out and let us know what you think. Our group, which Sphinx Chat calls our tribe, is called Speaking of Bitcoin, and we'd love to see you there. You can find the direct link in the show notes for this episode, and let me know what you think, either via email, Adam at speakingofbitcoin.show, or better yet, attach a few Satoshis on Sphinx Chat. Thanks for listening, and now, back to the show. So, there's a lot to dig into there, and I want to talk about kind of a little bit more of your backstory, but let's stay on the Christie's auction for just a second. You kind of referred to it as a signal, right? A signal to the outside world. And on this show, as a long-time listener, you know that we don't think that the price is important in an absolute sense, but in a signaling sense, historically, it's been very important for people who have dismissed the asset class for Bitcoin just generally, and the price goes up, and then suddenly, they have to kind of reconsider. And we've seen this over and over and over again with the latest one that really jumped out at me was Kevin O'Leary, one of the hosts of Shark Tank, starting to now invest into mining and being concerned about his billionaire buddies bullying him, right? Because his Bitcoin aren't green enough. So, I mean, it's a story we've seen a lot, and you just kind of talked about it in the context of this Christie auction. So, how much about the Christie auction was the purpose to send that signal, right? How much was it about the peace and how much was it about the message? So, before the auction itself, the idea of I able to participate in the Christie's auction, I just felt lucky that I could be here at this moment in history, right? So, that's it. But while participating in the auction, I was not thinking about all that was going to happen after it, because I had no idea, right? Like, this I didn't know would go for this amount of money myself also. Like, I was ready. That's a different reason. But I did not really think it'll be this huge. But when I participated or when I wanted to participate in this auction, all I was thinking in my head was, you know, this is a very significant moment in history. In history as an art history also, right? Because when mediums change, it totally changes who can participate in it, like the invention of, say, the personal computers or the internet, which, you know, allowed participation of people from all over the world. A change in medium of how you can make money with art would mean participation from Vietnam, participation from Philippines, participation from India. And that was all in my head. And because for the past couple of years also, thinking about crypto and not being able to, you know, like go to a country like India and be like by crypto. And I cannot even talk about it in the same way. But now I like this metaphor. If you think about Bitcoin as math standing against a violent army, you can think about NFTs as math plus art standing against the same army. So it's like a shield and it has a rose in front of it, right? And that's the image that I had of NFTs, because now if countries want to ban something, are they going to ban art also, right? So that was what I was thinking. And the price came after the auction. I'd be frank, like I did not expect this kind of attention on me, but I've tried to, you know, not shy away from it and see if that attention can be used in a positive way. In your words, could you describe to our audience what it is exactly that you bought? What do you think you own with this? Yes. So to understand what I have bought, I also have to explain context, right? So with this change of everything becoming digital, even crypto, so I became a crypto native very long ago. So 2013, since then, I've really not had any physical assets. A lot of people ask me why, but one of the reasons is like it's hard for me. Like I'm an Indian citizen. It's not like I have a stable place which I can totally trust where I can have physical assets. So for me, it's not a choice. And everything that's physical, I know is at best very temporary, even if I own them, right? So that being the case, this is not just me. This is not one person going through this out of people in the world yet. That's because they also have the same kind of issue, right? And all these people put together, I think there will be this need for having everything that's digital or digital form of the same thing. Now NFTs are just the medium, right? Like it's just the blank slate of what it wants to represent. So literally the NFT is not the art or it's not something. It's actually a bill of sale and it says that I own something and that's it. So if NFT is just that more consistent, more reliable, unconfisticatable piece of sale, which I have now in my wallet, which I feel more confident about than a land I would be able to buy in another part of the world, right? So that is what I've bought in this auction too, where it's a piece of unconfisticatable piece of history and the art itself is 440 million pixels of digital art. I think it's a phenomenal piece of digital art because when it comes to physical art, there is this physical restriction on how huge it could be. But this piece itself is 440 million pixels and was very appropriate to have been the first digital art to be sold in Christie's. And it could be quite a unique piece for a while because of the work that went into it and because of the kind of relationship that piece would have with the current generation. And also, if you look at that piece, the art itself, from the top left to the bottom right, you will see in 5000 days how much a person can grow in any skill, right? And that's very inspiring to me. So like all the story is what I think I've purchased. There is no physicality to it, but all the story is what has gone into this NFT and that's what I feel like I hold. So to summarize, I feel like this NFT is this capsule of a story. So even if anyone else can enjoy this piece of digital art, no one else can say I was the first to appreciate the story and the moment and put my stamp on history. Yeah. And I think like if I have to compare this to say Bitcoin and try to come up with similarities, I would say Bitcoin itself is also a story, right? Like that unique story. And that story has been divided into 21 million pieces. And a lot of people can have part of the same story. And we are all buying into the story, the meme, which is what is digitally native because we can only buy the story, nothing else. And in that same way, everyone should enjoy this specific NFT. Yes, it's open to everyone. And everyone can enjoy it just like a copy of Mona Lisa. So anyone can see it. And as more people see it, it's only better because it increases the value of that story. But you know, that NFT kind of captures where the value is accrued when the story gets more important or in a way more relevant and more famous in this world. Yeah, after hearing you talk about this MetaCovin, which I really enjoyed, I can see why it would now make sense to come out as you are the person behind this avatar. Because that just solidifies that, yeah, this was me, no one can take that away from me. I'm proud of it. And now I have security that I never had before because of not having a safe place to put physical assets. Yeah, that's a succinct way of putting it, right? That's why I've been also telling it's very important to understand context, right? And in a way, a lot of people talk about physical items and compare it to Bitcoin and be like, yeah, physical items are just better because you can touch them. But yeah, like someone else also can touch them, right? Now, how do you take away this NFT from someone? It's not possible. And that idea came to me because I've been a crypto native because I've been in Bitcoin for a while. And I had this relationship between crypto and NFTs. And that's how I could also come up with this specific thesis. Do you see part of the value here, the possibility of future resale of the NFT? Or is that not even a consideration? Was it primarily the first moment of ownership that matters? And even if you are never able to sell it, or if its future price is not the same as what you bought it for, does that make any difference? I don't think the resale will look traditional, first of all. So that whole concept of the physical piece going back to Christie's, being valued by them and being offered to a specific set artist, that is all gone. So this piece, by buying it from Christie's, I wanted to bring it back into the crypto world and it's now part of the metaverse. So what I would do with it is not just want to resell it, that would be very short-sighted of me. I want to build a monument for it, a monument that a famous architect in the real world could build. And with the attention that piece has, that monument could also become quite important and could bring some more attention to the metaverse. And I could make money in a thousand ways here. The monument could be built somewhere and I could just sell the land around it. And so there are so many possibilities here. There's the piece that we've been talking about and I keep hearing you talk about this signaling thing, right? So first we're talking about kind of signaling about NFTs and about collectibles and kind of the real world. And now you're saying that one of the things that you want to do with it is you want to draw attention to the metaverse. Is there a specific metaverse in particular or is it the concept generally? And what about the metaverse? I guess location-independent presence, right? The story that you've told us so far, it does make sense to put emphasis on that. And yet it is still a virtual world. I've spent a decent amount of time in Decentraland. Again, we've been following that project since it was pixels that you would mine in one of the very early projects. And you have to be looking pretty far ahead to be looking at what's there right now and thinking, this is going to be something that everybody is going to do and where the values that are perhaps what people are asking for today to own land there are actually justified by kind of what you get from it. So talk to us about how you think about kind of metaverses generally or any of them in a particular specific way. Again, I don't have a bet on which specific virtual world is going to win or something. So I'm just talking about the metaverse as a general idea. But again, I have my pick, right? Like I think Decentraland is a very interesting place to be crypto-oxels too because of its very easy to access nature and very low graphics, which makes it accessible from a phone also. So I'm not looking at this as a short term thing. So it's not a one year two year thing. And that's why even this piece does not really fit into a short term thesis, right? NFTs again are composable pretty much like anything on top of Ethereum. So the possibilities are infinite. On the metaverse itself, what's happening now is that we are basically decentralizing a distribution medium. We have talked about Twitter being decentralized or Facebook being decentralized. The decentralized form of social media might not look the same way we enjoy social media today. And also, if you look at something like Netflix today, which most of the people in the world are now beginning to be part of and watch every day or at least once a week or something, we are giving all our attention to Netflix and everyone is clicking on that banner that Netflix displays. That is the most valuable real estate in the whole internet, even though there are millions of websites. Now in the same way, again, this is my thesis, right? So what I feel like it's going to happen is that there is going to be this metaverse because very young people, they'll enjoy gaming, right? And there is this nativity for them. When they grow up playing a game on say Roblox or something is not weird to them. They just create something, play mini games, etc. Now when they discover decentralized and they discover a museum of say something that this talks to them, where traditionally, why do we go to a museum? The same reason why you would go to a museum in the virtual worlds too. For example, with Beeple, we built a monument in Jan and launched it in Jan with 20 pieces of his art. So today, if someone asks me, where should I go in the metaverse? Is there anything there? I can confidently tell you that there is a museum with these 20 pieces of art history. And so there is going to be more and more of this coming up. And why metaverse becomes important is because two things. One, the artist will be able to connect to their audience directly and their land, which is kind of their real estate, right? Like where they cannot be kicked off or pushed away or kind of what we are missing in social media to an extent. So that becomes the address for an artist, right? And in the same way for people who want to speak to people historically, you would speak in narratives and one of the best ways to do it would be building a gallery or building a museum. But this was all confined to a very small group of people because of the investment and the clout required that goes into building a museum or a gallery. So now I feel like that whole area has been exploded. So totally decentralized where anyone can now become a collector. Just that idea is huge to me and anyone can become a gallerist too. So you can create a gallery, you can display what you want to tell the world. And there is going to be a lot of people who are going to visit these museums because even in the simplest sense I will say because of the curiosity, right? Why do we want to travel the same reason? Why do I want to go to Rome? Why do I want to go to Thailand? There will be the same reason why I would want to go to Decentraland because it's not a boring medium of code, right? It's very visual. It's very artistic. And today it has also become the underground of art where very interesting artists are coming together and putting out a lot of stuff. So it's kind of the Berlin being built, right? So all these things over a couple of years or within this decade as the technology of these metaverse also gets better to support these people, it might not be as big as Twitter or Facebook also. And it might not be the only thing. But even if it becomes one of the things that say a 14-year-old or 16-year-old would want to check out, I think we have this huge potential to talk to them directly and tell them about this movement, right? And that's why I find metaverse very interesting. Well, folks, that's a wrap on another episode of Speaking of Bitcoin. This is the end of this episode, but not the end of our discussion with Metacobin. Join us again next week as we continue the conversation with one of the most important voices in token collectibles today. Today's episode featured Metacobin, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy and myself found in Beetleveen. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens with editing by Jonas. If you enjoyed this episode, send us an email at adamatspeakingabitcoin.show. And to all of you listening, we really can't thank you enough. In an increasingly strange world, it's really important to find your tribe, but especially those of you who have been listening since the early days, thank you.