• A legal settlement confirms Vignesh Sundaresan alone purchased Beeple’s $69.3 million NFT, ending years of confusion.
• Former independent contractor Anand Venkateswaran admitted he had no role in the purchase.
• The case closes a chapter on the NFT boom, as the market has since sharply declined.

In March 2021, Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold at Christie’s for $69.3 million, sending an earthquake through the art world. But who on earth had bought the thing? That question has been at the heart of a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York in 2023 that has now reached a settlement. In late January, Vignesh Sundaresan and his company Portkey Technologies compelled its former independent contractor, Anand Venkateswaran, to concede he was in no way responsible for the Beeple purchase.

Shortly after the Christie’s sale, a pseudonymous duo emerged to take credit: Metakovan and Twobadour, who explained they had acquired the NFT through MetaPurse, a crypto-native investment fund. In time, they revealed themselves to be Sundaresan and Venkateswaran.

A great deal of high-minded boosterism invariably followed. They promised to revolutionize how the world engaged with art and that they were part of a movement “equalizing power between the West and the Rest.” Eighteen months later, in 2022, the two split. At first, the break seemed amicable, with Venkateswaran saying he was stepping down to write a memoir, one Sundaresan said he looked forward to reading.

Vignesh Sundaresan (AKA Metakovan) showing off Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days (2021) in his home in Singapore, 2021. Photo: Roslan Rahman / AFP via Getty Images.

Then, in June 2023, Sundaresan and Portkey Technologies sued Venkateswaran for trademark infringement and false claims of having been closely involved in the purchase of the Beeple artwork. In essence, Sundaresan was aggrieved that Venkateswaran had spent the better part of a year promoting his own NFT businesses and appearing on podcasts and conference panels by leveraging his connection to MetaPurse and the Beeple purchase. The trademarks for Metakovan, Twobadour, and MetaPurse all belonged to Portkey, the suit claimed, and Venkateswaran had been nothing more than an independent contractor who dealt with marketing and communications.

The settlement puts the question of who bought the extremely expensive JPEG firmly to bed. A statement released by Venkateswaran as part of the settlement notes that “Mr. Sundaresan exclusively purchased the ‘Beeple (b. 1981), EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS‘ NFT,” and that “Mr. Sundaresan made all decisions regarding the purchase of this and any other NFT for Portkey or Metapurse, and Mr. Venkateswaran did not have any decision-making or management authority over those purchases.”

In addition to making an undisclosed settlement payment, Venkateswaran is forbidden from claiming he was the founder, co-founder, creator, co-creator, christener, co-christener, steward, or co-steward—among other descriptors—of Twobadour, Metapurse, or Metakovan.

Venkateswaran is also required to post a statement to his social media accounts clarifying his previous role at Portkey and reach out to third-party websites and ask them to amend such descriptions. This spans nearly 50 third-parties including film festivals, blockchain events, YouTube channels, and online publications. Many of the third parties appear to have complied by pulling down the offending pages.

When the lawsuit was filed in 2023, it barely made a ripple and its conclusion now seems perfunctory, a weird echo from some other era. The NFT market has dropped roughly 90 percent from its 2023 sugar high, Beeple is off making photo defecating robot dogs, and even Sundaresan is onto new projects having opened an experimental art and technology space in Singapore late last year. Still, its first offering was a VR experience by Olafur Eliasson that was minted as an NFT.