Cryptocurrency company buys Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’ NFT
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Cryptocurrency company buys Wu-Tang Clan's 'Once Upon A Time In Shaolin' NFT

The legend of Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin continues to grow as it once again changes hand. Having previously been owned by pharmaceutical villain Martin Shkreli, a cryptocurrency company has once now purchased the record as an NFT for $4 million.

The company, PleasrDAO, have used cryptocurrency to make the purchase and bought the NFT from the US federal government after it was seized from Shkreli following his fraud conviction in 2017.

PleasrDAO have made other digital purchases in their time. They’ve also collected works from Russian punks Pussy Riot and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and have now added a classic Wu-Tang LP.

“This album at its inception was a kind of protest against rent-seeking middlemen, people who are taking a cut away from the artist,” Johnson told the publication. “Crypto very much shares that same ethos.”

Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA said of the album’s release in 2015: “The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years. And yet it doesn’t receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it’s been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.” A single copy of the album was produced with the proviso it would never be shared.

“We believe that we can do something with this piece,” PleasrDAO’s Johnson said, in refute of the purchase agreement “to enable it to be shared and ideally owned in part by fans and anyone in the world.”

The company have been in contact with RZA who has declined to comment but also connected with the LP’s co-creator Clivaringz, who said of the sale: “We wanted to honour the NFT concept without breaking our own rules.”