Crypto collective raises $ 26 million to bid on a copy of the US Constitution

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Suppose you want to buy a first impression of the Constitution of the United States, but you only have a few dollars. Normally you’re out of luck, but maybe not today: Over the past week, a collective has formed to raise enough money to buy a rare first impression of the Constitution at auction, collecting money from anyone who wants to participate online.

The document is expected to sell at Sothebys for up to $ 20 million, which seems like an insurmountable price for a crowdfunding initiative. And yet, one way or another, the collective has raised $ 27 million to date. And they still have over 24 hours left.

There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll just break it down piece by piece:

The purchased document is one of 13 remaining copies of the official edition of the Constitution, a final draft created for the Continental Congress, according to Sothebys. The group that raises funds to buy the copy is called ConstitutionDAO. DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Many of these have popped up in the crypto space in recent times, usually with specific purposes, like selling products or… buying a copy of the US Constitution. DAOs are basically worker co-ops for crypto nerds. It is a kind of decentralized society with all the rules written into smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, so that all sensitive business functions take place in a decentralized and automatic manner. In practice, this is a way to raise a lot of money very quickly for some sort of capital intensive collective effort, like buying a copy of the Constitution. Separately, we’ve seen more and more examples of people collectively pooling their finances online in a way that has real impact but is also fundamentally silly: seeing the whole GameStonk thing. ConstitutionDAO had picked up speed the past few days, but it really exploded this afternoon after being featured in The New York Times, raising over $ 10 million today alone. Because it’s a DAO, all the money is collected in Ether. Then, to find out who has a say in the organization, contributors will receive governance tokens, giving them the opportunity to vote on the fate of the document (if they successfully purchase it). If ConstitutionDAO wins the auction, they intend to find a partner organization that will display it publicly, ideally free to visitors. If they lose, the money will be returned to backers, net of fees.

The auction will take place Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET. Good luck to anyone bidding against the collective will of the Internet.

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