From the slums of Shaolin, Wu-Tang Clan strikes again. An exclusive album made by the legendary hip-hop group is back in the news with the latest anonymous buyer of the album being revealed earlier this week.
What Happened: The album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was released as a two-disc, 31 track album limited to one copy.
The original buyer of the album was Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Retrophin Inc, now known as Travere Therapeutics Inc TVTX. Shkreli paid $2 million for the album in 2015.
As he faced a lengthy legal battle, Shkreli attempted to sell the album on eBay Inc EBAY for $1 million. The listing was canceled when Shkreli was sentenced to prison for securities fraud.
Earlier this year, the album was sold by the U.S. Justice Department to an anonymous bidder. The purchaser was disclosed this week and is a company well known in the cryptocurrency and NFT world.
Related Link: Exclusive: GmoneyNFT Talks CryptoPunks, NFTs And Investing In The Doge Meme
The Purchase: PleasrDAO bought the album for $4 million in July and officially acquired the album in September, the New York Times reports.
“This album at its inception was a kind of protest against rent-seeking middlemen, people who are taking a cut away from the artist,” PleasrDAO’s Jamis Johnson told the New York Times.
The group called the purchase part of its attempt to collect digital creations.
PleasrDAO plans to make the album widely available if Wu-Tang Clan will allow it. The original conditions of the album sale were no public wide release until 2103.
“We believe that we can do something with this piece, to enable it to be shared and ideally owned in part by fans and anyone in the world.”
Johnson told Rolling Stone that PleasrDAO would love to “bring the album back to the people” via listening parties around the world.
“They’re (Wu-Tang Clan) kind of the OG DAO. They bonded together to form a collective more powerful than any individual had on their own.”
About PleasrDAO: A decentralized autonomous organization of 74 collectors and artists, PleasrDAO has made several big purchases of NFTs.
PleasrDAO member GmoneyNFT told Benzinga that there is a huge opportunity for fractionalized versions of expensive NFTs like CryptoPunks.
“We bought the Dogecoin meme, the actual pic, the Shiba,” GmoneyNFT said.
The group bought the original Doge meme for 1,696.9 Ethereum ETH/USD earlier this year, a purchase of around $4.06 billion at the time. This gave the group the rights to the meme that inspired Dogecoin DOGE/USD, based on the shiba inu dog, Kaboshu.
PleasrDAO fractionized the meme into a coin called $DOG, an ERC-20 token, and significantly. increased the value of the meme.
The group also owns an Edward Snowden NFT, bought for $5.4 million in April.
GmoneyNFT said natural human behavior is wanting to show off to friends which increases the opportunity in higher priced NFTs such as CryptoPunks and large pieces like the Doge meme.
The same could likely be said for being able to say you own a piece of the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album.
Showing off value to other people isn't anything new and as Wu-Tang clan would say, “Cash rules everything around me.”
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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