Every week something happens with the crypto lot that somehow upstages the previous week's absurdity. It's actually rather impressive. This time around we've got an interesting situation to talk about wherein a bunch of people got together to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
The copy itself was on sale at Sotheby's, an auction house that specialises in auctioning off things that cost an awful lot of money. The company has 80 locations in 40 different countries, but the headquarters is in New York City. They had a copy of the U.S. Constitution up, so a bunch of crypto folk tried to buy it.
No Constitution for you
As reported by Gizmodo, 17,437 people got together and donated a median of $206.26 to try and purchase the item, but didn't manage to do so. The value apparently "broke records for the most money crowdfunded in less than 72 hours," but still wasn't enough to make this dream come true. The good news though, is that group that did the crowdfunding, ConstitutionDAO, has said that they'll be offering refunds "minus gas fees."
This is the first story in a while where it hasn't been a complete scam, so we're happy for those involved. The Gizmodo report asks if this could be a good example of the blockchains ability to equalize things out a bit. That's because of what DAOs are. Decentralized autonomous organizations are, in essence, groups that pool funds from people with a common aim, which in this case was to buy the copy of the U.S. Constitution and then figure out what to do with it. You can buy tokens to gain more voting power, and then the group as a whole votes on what they want to buy.
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Is the blockchain equal?
In terms of how equal it is, this doesn't seem like it's really as equal as they'd like to think. If someone get's more votes because they've got more tokens, then that inherently means that they've also probably got more money. This means that the way these things work are hardly any different to stocks and shares, with the person who has the most shares also getting the most votes.
We're not really sure if this is the decentralized revolution that crypto people really believe in. If people who have lots of money can dictate everything, then it's actually just a new marketplace for rich people to play around in, which really isn't all that different to anything else in the world, is it?
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