The
identity of the winning bidder was not immediately clear, nor
was it clear why the cryptocurrency group, called "ConstitutionDAO"
was outbid at that price, as their crowd-funding page
https://juicebox.money/#/p/
constitutiondao had amassed more than $47 million.
"Community: We did not win the bid," ConstitutionDAO said on
Twitter, promising its 17,437 contributors a refund minus
transaction fees. Sotheby's said it was the largest
crowd-funding initiative ever.
The extremely rare official first-edition printed copy of the
U.S. Constitution, which was adopted by America's founding
fathers in Philadelphia in 1787, had been estimated by Sotheby's
to be worth $15 million to $20 million.
It last sold for $165,000 in 1988, when it was acquired 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 overheads and other costs, Sotheby's said.
Sale proceeds will benefit a charitable foundation in the name
of his wife, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, to further the public's
understanding of democracy, according to Sotheby's.
The ConstitutionDAO website https://www.constitutiondao.com had
said contributors would become members of the Decentralised
Autonomous Organisation, or DAO, but would not themselves have
had a stake in the document.
A DAO is a kind of online community that uses blockchain
technology to allow members to suggest and vote on decisions
about how it is run.
More than $47 million, or 11,600 of the cryptocurrency ether,
had been paid into the project, according to the crowdfunding
website Juicebox.
"While we @ConstitutionDAO lost the battle, the past seven days
showed what a group of internet friends, memes, and a vision can
achieve - bidding neck to neck at the most elite art house of
the land," Alice Ma, one of the people behind the project, said
on Twitter.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft; additional reporting by Noel
Randewich in Oakland, California, and Alun John in Hong Kong;
Editing by Alden Bentley, Diane Craft and Gerry Doyle)
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