Metakovan, the mystery Beeple art buyer, and his NFT/DeFi scheme – Amy Castor
▻https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme
ast week, a crypto whale going by the moniker “Metakovan” bought a Beeple artwork via Christie’s auction for $69 million—$60 million in ETH and $9 million in fees, also in ETH*—outbidding a surprised Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, in the last minute.
7/12 I tried to update my bid to $70 MIL at the last 30 secs yet my offer was somehow not accepted by Christie’s system even though there was still 20 secs left.
— Justin Sun🌞 (@justinsuntron) March 12, 2021
After the barest amount of digging, I am going to hazard a guess that the mystery Beeple buyer is Vignesh Sundaresan, a crypto entrepreneur who has been in the crypto landscape for about seven years.
It’s pretty obvious, really. Metakovan has given a few audio interviews. And if you compare those to previous Sundaresan interviews, like this one, it’s the same voice—and the same crypto origin story.
Going back further, Sundaresan launched crypto exchange Coins-e in Ontario in 2013. (Coincidentally, the same year that Gerald Cotten and Michael Patryn launched their failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.)
Coins-e, a defunct Canadian exchange
Several Coins-e users have taken to social media to complain about losing money on Coins-e, calling it a scam and warning others to watch out. (See Reddit—here and here—and BitcoinTalk.)
The posts on r/dogecoin are the most alarming. Coins-e clients report having their dogecoin disappear. Wireguysny described watching 1.3 million DOGE evaporate and the frustration of being unable to reach tech support to get to the bottom of the matter.
Xclusive2 wrote: “I’ve had just about enough of of Coins-e millions of coins missing, no reply from support ever! the reason is because it’s a one man operation. the problem is this joker is stealing and trading everyone’s coins when and how he feels to make himself rich he knows that Doge is worth a lot of BTC in large volumes.”
Sundaresan denies being the guy who allegedly ripped people off. According to him, Coins-e was sold to a company called Casa Crypto in Waterloo. The transfer was overseen by law firm LaBarge Weinstein, he claims.
“Since it was sold, I have not been associated with Coins-E. Allegations of a scam are FUD,” he told me.
I am so far unable to confirm that sale. I can’t find any announcement or press release on the sale. The Coins-e website no longer exists, and an archive of the site’s “About” page from 2016 doesn’t reveal who is behind the operation. I can’t find a company called “Casa Crypto” in Waterloo either.
Sundaresan offered to show me proof of the sale via a video call. I told him I was open to that, but he hasn’t gotten back to me to set up a time. He did not comment on whether he was Metakovan.
Meanwhile, I’ve looked up the domain registration for Coins-e.com. The site was registered in May 2013 and the only update was in May 2020—after customers complained about their coins vanishing.
The site was originally registered to Ramesh Vinayagam—the name of a famous Indian composer, per Reddit user xclusive2. Another alias perhaps? And, according to a Paste from January 2014, the site was registered to the man himself shortly before the registration was made private and Sundaresan entered the Y Combinator program.
The NFT connection
NFTs are the big thing now. They took over as the latest grift when decentralized finance, or DeFi, ran out of steam last year. Fellow nocoiner David Gerard wrote a blog post explaining how NFTs work and why digital ownership of art is utter nonsense.
