Crypto bidders lose copy of US constitution for $ 43 million – Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – A crowdfunded bid by cryptocurrency fans to buy a rare copy of the U.S. constitution failed on Thursday after the document was sold to another buyer for $ 43.2 million, a record price of a printed text, according to the auction house. Sotheby’s.

The identity of the winning bidder was not immediately clarified, nor was it clear why the cryptocurrency group called “ConstitutionDAO” was exceeded at that price, as their crowd-funding page https://juicebox.money/#/p/constitutiondao had. It raised more than $ 47 million.

“Community: We didn’t win the bid,” ConstitutionDAO said on Twitter (NYSE :), ordering a return to its 17,437 contributors by deducting transaction fees. Sotheby’s said it was the largest crowdfunding initiative ever.

In 1787 the founding fathers of America approved a rare official printed copy of the first edition of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia, which cost Sotheby’s to cost between $ 15 million and $ 20 million.

It was last sold for $ 165,000 in 1988 when it was purchased by the late S. Howard Goldman, a New York real estate developer and collector of American autographs, documents, and manuscripts.

The winning bid was $ 41 million and the final price of $ 43.2 million includes overhead and other costs, Sotheby’s said.

The proceeds from the sale will go to a charitable foundation in the name of his wife, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, to increase the public’s understanding of democracy, according to Sotheby’s.

The ConstitutionDAO website https://www.constitutiondao.com said that the contributors would become members of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization or DAO, but that they themselves would not be involved in the document.

A DAO is a kind of online community that uses blockchain technology to suggest and vote on how members are managed.

More than $ 47 million, or $ 11,600 in cryptocurrency, was paid for the project, according to the Juicebox crowdfunding website.

“While we lost the @ConstitutionDAO battle, the last seven days have shown us what a friend, meme, and vision of the Internet can achieve: offering neck to neck at the most elite art house in the territory,” said Alice Ma, one of the members. the people behind the project, he said on Twitter.