[inbox] Blockchain / Web3 / Crypto stuff

[rufuspollock]

Various articles

• FT Dec 17 2021 Tether’s CEO: from IT sales to calling the shots in crypto land - Jean-Louis van der Velde’s career offered few clues that he would become a key figure in fast-growing industry - CACHED Tether’s CEO_ from IT sales to calling the shots in crypto land _ Financial Times.pdf

Free Ross DAO

So this is a DAO set up as basically a fundraiser for the life-sentenced founder of the Silk Road ... 🕊 FreeRossDAO.pdf - they won the auction for the NFT paying $6m.

Interesting both in terms of DAOs as simple community fundraisers and for the type of cause / people that (some) people in the community like to support.

Connected to PleasrDAO (who seed-funded it) https://pleasr.org/ Here's their about page (with emphasis added):

PleasrDAO is a collective of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists who have built a formidable yet benevolent reputation for acquiring culturally significant pieces with a charitable twist.

Since the DAO purchased its genesis piece, pplpleasr’s Uniswap V3 NFT, the DAO has evolved and elevated its mission to collect digital art that represents and funds important ideas, movements and causes that have been memorialized on-chain as NFTs. PleasrDAO has set a precedent for bidding on unique pieces, many of which have powerful messages that transcend crypto.

Dubbed as an art collecting empire, the DAO is experimenting with novel concepts in digital and community art ownership. Its members are exploring ideas such as fractionalizing iconic pieces to be distributed to, and owned by, the community. However, beyond just shared ownership of these pieces, the collective plans to apply creative innovations within DeFi to add and disseminate value. In a way, the DAO is a platform for collective experimentation at the nexus of community ownership, DeFi, and digital art.

In essence, the DAO’s modus operandi is to buy and fund culturally significant pieces and then create something fundamentally additive to the soul of the piece before sharing it back with the community.

So ... how does this differ from e.g. art museum (open to us all) or rich people who buy art for lots of money ...

And isn't most of this made possible by a one-off bubble (whatever way it goes - either to collapse or survival)?