Who is collector Justin Sun and why he created an NFT of a work by Pablo Picasso
His goal is to create a fund of artworks registered as NFT: the first is by Picasso.
Let’s find out who is Justin Sun, the collector who for 20 seconds failed to win the record Beeple work at Christie’s auction.
The challenge to win “Everydays: the first 5000 days” by digital artist Beeple was fierce until the last minute, or rather second!
On one side is Chinese tech entrepreneur Justin Sun, and on the other side is Indian collector Vignesh Sundaresan, aka Metakovan, a programmer and angel investor in blockchain technology.
By a mere 20 seconds, Justin Sun was bested by Metakovan during an auction at Christie’s in which the coveted first NFT work ever to be hammered in an institutional auction house was contested.
In a lengthy chain of 12 tweets Justin Sun stated, “I attended Christie’s auction to purchase the NFT work “Everydays: the first 5000 days”. My final effective bid was $60M (plus Buyer’s Premium for a total of $69M). However, in the last 20 seconds it was outbid by $250,000 by another buyer. The difference was less than 0.3% of the total price.”
But who is actually Justin Sun?
Sun is a cryptocurrency investor and founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron.
After Beeple’s blown deal, Sun recently fought back by purchasing a Picasso painting, “Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérese)” from 1932 for a price of $20 million from Christie’s in London.
In addition to Picasso’s work, Justin Sun also purchased Andy Warhol’s “Three Self Portraits” (1986) for $2 million.
Christie’s confirmed that Sun has purchased the works for its “JUST NFT Fund” which aims to register major artworks by major artists in NFT on the blockchain.
The fund will only accept works by blue chip artists valued at more than $1 million.
In a recent open letter posted on its Tron Foundation website, Sun noted that the total value of NFTs traded last year tripled to $250 million, while total NFT sales in the last month alone exceeded $220 million.
If until a few weeks ago Sun was planning to tokenize the recently purchased Picasso and Warhol works in its possession by minting NFTs, here it is just a few moments ago announcing that it has done so.
The JUST NFT fund has created the world’s first Picasso NFT: the property is mapped to the TRON chain via the TRC-721 blockchain standard. As such it will be “permanently stored on the TRON public chain and BTFS, marking the first solo show in the history of Picasso works on the blockchain.
Justin Sun’s comment was not long in coming: “I firmly believe that in the next ten years, 50% of the world’s top 100 artists and artworks will be NFTed. The JUST NFT Fund will embrace and strengthen this trend. ” – commented Justin Sun.
