ConstitutionDAO raised $47M to try to buy the US Constitution through crypto crowdfunding

Your move, Nicolas Cage… Why steal the Constitution when you can buy it? Yesterday, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called ConstitutionDAO bid on one of the 13 remaining copies of the US Constitution in a Sotheby’s auction. DAOs (rhymes with “cows”) are blockchain-based communities that are collectively owned by their members — read: no central leadership. ConstitutionDAO launched eight days ago as a 10-person Twitter convo, and has since attracted thousands of people on Discord:

• ConstitutionDAO crowdsourced $47M worth of Ether from 7K+ online contributors in an attempt to buy the 234-year-old document, which Sotheby’s sold last night for a record $47.4M. Drumroll...
• ConsitutionDAO lost the bid, and said it'll provide contributors the option for a refund. FYI: Contributors wouldn't have owned a piece of the Constitution anyway — but they would've been able to vote on where to put it (think: a museum).

From James Madison to the Wu-Tang Clan… Crypto enthusiasts have used DAOs to raise millions since 2016, when an org called The DAO (capital T) raised $150M and lost much of it to hackers. Despite valid security and practicality concerns, DAOs boomed this year: PleasrDAO bought a Snowden NFT for $5.4M and a Wu-Tang Clan album for $4M. Wyoming became the first US state to recognize DAOs as legal corporate structures in June, and experts expect legal recognition to expand.