Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s NFT Fetches Over $5 Million At Charity Auction
Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Edward Snowden’s NFT has sold for 2,224 Etherium, or an estimated $5.2 million to $5.5 million, at an auction.
Titled Stay Free, the digital art piece uses pages from the landmark court ruling in 2013 when the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance activities were found to have violated the law to form an image of the famed whistleblower’s face.
The artwork was made using open software, and was signed and verified by the artist.
Snowden’s Stay Free NFT surpassed the staggering US$2.9 million that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey managed for an NFT of his first tweet.
Similarly, proceeds from the sale won’t be going to Snowden. Instead, the money will go towards the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization where he serves as president.
According to Mashable, the winner of the NFT is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called PleasrDAO. Snowden was live-tweeting during the auction's bidding war. “The whole staff of @FreedomOfPress is watching live, and we’ve never seen anything like this,” he wrote.
FIVE POINT FIVE MILLION from @PleasrDAO. It feels like the whole staff of @FreedomOfPress is watching live, and we've never seen anything like this. This is more than a spectacle -- this is drama. All eyes turn to the dark horse. https://t.co/GOcrOiraXS
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 16, 2021
✨ {stay free} ✨ https://t.co/v8DM4kxUw5
— PleasrDAO (@pleasrdao) April 16, 2021
[via Engadget and Mashable, cover image via Wikimedia Commons]
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