The auction house of Sotheby’s has announced on Thursday, November 18 that they’ll be auctioning off one of 13 rare copies of the United States Constitution. Now, why is it creating quite the buzz, you might ask? There’s a newly formed cryptocurrency collective whose aim is to gather enough funds for them to win the auction.
ConstitutionDAO
Some crypto folks have recently banded together in forming what is called ConstitutionDAO (decentralized autonomous organization). As mentioned, they aim to raise funds hoping that they could win the auction and be proud owners of a first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Reports suggest that ConstitutionDAO has already amassed $5.5 million (as of writing) of its $20 million targets. Further, it was learned that albeit the fact that contributors of such an endeavor won’t be receiving fractional ownership of the copy of the Constitution, these people will instead be given a so-called governance token that authorizes the owner to offer as to where the said piece of U.S. history should be put on display.
Preservation for the people
One of the architects of the said project – Graham Novak – revealed over on Discord that they intend to preserve the copy of the U.S. Constitution “for the people.” He also stated that in the spirit of Web3, they are planning to buy the document and look for a suitable home for it.
If the copy of the Constitution was awarded to them, it is said that the document will stay within DAO’s vicinity. According to them, they’ll be the ones to fractionalize it and later on “mem-ify” and “NFT-ify” it in the manner they usually do.
Where it came from
The copy of the Constitution that is scheduled to be auctioned off originated from a real estate developer – S. Howard Goldman – who bought it for $165,000 way back in 1988. It is currently owned by his widow, Dorothy Tapper Goldman as the foundation named after her – the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation will greatly benefit from it.
In October of this year, another DAO group dubbed PleasrDAO bought a rare Wu-Tang Clan CD for four million dollars. It was learned that it got seized by the United States Department of Justice following being forfeited by Martin Shkreli, a hedge fund manager who got convicted.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.