This week, a mysterious purchaser of the most expensive car ever sold has been introduced. Last May, he purchased the car for more than $110,000 at a public auction, as a playable item in a blockchain-based video game named F1 Delta Time.
The extravagant purchase was a big deal in the niche world of crypto gaming and collectibles, and people in this community were asking who would spend that much on a virtual car. The question was answered when the buyer finally decided to come out, under a name: “Metakovan.”
Metakovan is a significant investor in NFTs or non-fungible tokens. These are items on the blockchain that cannot be reproduced, and so their value as collectibles. Unlike Bitcoin, these tokens are one-of-one.
“Think about it,” he stated. “This car is the first of its kind, and indestructible. There’s something special about that ‘first’ car. Like being able to own the first-ever Ford Model A.” In other words, for the mysterious NFT investor, it’s like owning a piece of history.”
“The difference here is,” Metakovan said “we’re talking about the first in-game, official F1 car. I believe that this is one of the best collectibles ever. The kind that would pay for itself over and again.”
When asked if he anticipated the value of the car to escalate over time, Metakovan said that “you need to look at it as art in the real world,” in that there’s an intrinsic value for the collector that goes beyond the question of money:
“For a very long time, I don’t intend to give it away. I will hold on to it for as long as I can. However, this is a non-fungible token, which means it, or more importantly, its story, can’t be replicated.”
But the car isn’t “just a showpiece,” he said. It has the prospective to earn money in F1 Delta Time races on the blockchain, for the top racers on the game’s leaderboard are awarded a definite amount of ETH every week. In an interview, Metakovan acknowledged that he hadn’t used the car yet—but when he does decide to start racing it, the car will give him a head start: “So either way, the value of the car will grow over time.”
Metakovan linked this to the science fiction worlds that envisioned in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, or Ready Player One, a Spielberg film.
“There is already virtual real estate in our daily lives. How valuable is the banner on Netflix’s home page, or the top third of a google search? In Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, or Sandbox, you are literally filling those spots in three dimensions.”
Metakovan also revealed that while $111,111 is the most that he’s paid for an NFT at publication, he is paid “much more” for another one, thru private sale. “I don’t believe there is really an upper limit to how much one would pay,” he noted in an email.
“I would not pay too much for a story I don’t find interesting, for an NFT that is not very unique. But I believe there will be someone who creates a very unique NFT, something that captures the imagination. I’ll be there for that auction.”
Decentraland has over 20,000 users; the more people get on board, the closer investor like Metakovan will come to the big payoffs that they are envisioning.
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