Crypto enthusiasts want to buy an NBA team, after failing to buy the US Constitution

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Thousands of cryptocurrency investors recently raised over $ 40 million and were almost unsuccessful in purchasing a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Now, a distinct group of crypto fans is gaining momentum with another acquisition target: an NBA franchise.

In both cases, crypto enthusiasts have organized themselves under what is known as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO, which is an online group with a collective bank account and a mission statement.

Calling itself Krause House DAO, a reference to the late Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, the group of some 2,000 members raised the equivalent of US $ 4 million in Ethereum cryptocurrency in six days. The crowdfunding ended Thursday morning.

The idea isn’t exactly a slam dunk yet.

For one thing, there’s nowhere in the universe what the group would need to place a credible bid on even the least valuable NBA team (The Memphis Grizzlies, estimated at around $ 1.3 billion. dollars).

Second, convincing the NBA to be open to collectively controlled crypto investing may not be the simplest selling point.

The organizers of Krause House DAO are asking the public to refrain from laughing.

“We understand that the reader’s first instinct may be to laugh at this and say the owners will never let this happen,” the group’s flightpaper read, a nod to the research report more traditional of the white paper.

“It’s important to understand that not too long ago the players were in the same place on the totem pole as the fans today,” he says. “There is no reason that fans cannot do the same if they are organized properly.”

A Krause House DAO co-creator, speaking to NPR only under his pseudonym on social media Discord, said the money raised so far will be invested in future plans to someday become a serious contender for the NBA team. The exact plan for all the new money is light, however.

Group members will vote on where the money is going. The ultimate goal, however, is to be able to prove to franchise owners that a DAO can be an effective way to run a professional basketball team.

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In its Discord community, the organizers sign updates on the group with “WAGBAT”, which means: “We are going to buy a team”.

The pandemic ushered in a new generation of crypto investors, but there were few ways to use the new wealth. Some have turned to acquiring NFT, a sort of limited edition digital collectible, but now there is a growing push to move on to more lofty ideas, like trying to help create the next version of it. ‘Internet. This, dubbed Web3, seeks to give collective control of major online sites to the crypto masses. A DAO is part of that utopian dream, only now hoping for collective ownership of things in the real world, like an NBA team.

Investor Michael Lewkowitz, who invested the equivalent of $ 100,000 in Krause House DAO, dismissed questions as to whether the effort is just the crypto community’s latest publicity stunt.

“Kraus House is absolutely serious,” Lewkowitz said in an interview. “We’re used to thinking that a billionaire buys a team as a one-time event. But it will be different. It’s about people coming together and making something that they are really passionate about. Sport should be in their hands. from the people who care the most. ”

In some ways, the DAO community is still healing its wounds from the ConstitutionDAO flop.

This group, which made an offer on a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution, decided to disband, with investors now attempting to recoup as much money as possible, some of which were swallowed up by notoriously high transaction costs known as the name of the gas. costs.

But Lewkowitz, who invested in ConstitutionDAO, sees it as a silver lining. No surprise, as crypto fanatics tend to be enthusiastic and optimistic.

“You can see it as an offer that was lost, or you can see it as thousands of people who came together around a common cause and almost did something amazing,” Lewkowitz said.

While crypto fans taking control of an NBA franchise may be a pipe dream right now, there is of course a way to buy NFTs from the group.

Along with NFTs, which are images that look like tickets to an imaginary Krause House basketball game, comes the right to vote in the community, in the form of a $ KRAUSE token.

But the warning on the page, the proverbial fine print, concedes what may be the end result of this move.

“Neither this NFT ticket nor $ KRAUSE is a promise of future appropriation of a team,” says the group’s website.

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