The FreeRossDAO group has won the auction for the first NFT “Genesis Collection” of Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road, who is currently serving a disproportionate prison sentence of two life sentences plus 40 years.
The funds raised were over 2,800 ETH ($12 million), offered by over 1,300 supporters led by the PleasrDAO community.
Summary
FreeRossDAO wins the Genesis Collection NFT auction
The FreeRossDAO group won the NFT auction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s “Genesis Collection” with a mission to raise funds to:
- Free Ross;
- Promote prison reform;
- Share Ross’s work with the world by giving everyone the opportunity to own it.
According to their description, Ross Ulbricht, introduced hundreds of thousands of people to cryptography, while now serving a double life sentence plus forty years, for running the defunct Silk Road darknet marketplace.
As a gesture of solidarity and protest against the injustices of the US prison system, the NFT collection in question presented by FreeRossDAO, dubbed the “Genesis Collection”, is a collection of digital objects including diaries and art pieces created by prisoner Ulbricht and put on display on the SuperRare platform.
To everyone’s amazement, the auction of the Non-Fungible Token collection saw a winning bid of 1,446 ETH (approximately $6.2 million), with a total balance raised of 2,836 ETH.
FreeRossDAO will split the NFT collection and distributes ROSS tokens
In a series of tweets, FreeRossDAO announced not only that it had won the auction but also what it intends to do:
https://twitter.com/FreeRossDAO/status/1468902274256756740
“WE DID IT. Over 1,320 people raised over 2,800 ETH in a week (over $12m at todays price) to win the auction for Ross’s NFT (sold at 1446 ETH – about half of our treasury). Crypto is amazing. Here’s what happens now”.
He continued:
“This is just the beginning. Buying this NFT has not freed Ross. We still have a long way to go to seek justice and rectify his disproportionate sentence of double life imprisonment as a first-time, non-violent offender. The multisig will now fractionalize all of the NFTs in the collection as a bundle and distribute pro-rata, to all participants as $ROSS token. Any excess ETH funds will stay in the DAO to be managed by the community of token holders. Expect an official announcement from this Twitter in the next few days on when the NFT has been successfully fractionalized (be wary of fake $ROSS tokens in the meantime, and check here for the official token address)”.
Interview with Ross Ulbricht’s mother
Ross Ulbricht’s Silk Road was the marketplace on the Dark Web, founded in 2011, where everything was buyable in Bitcoin.
Also referred to as the “Amazon of drugs”, Silk Road was shut down by the FBI on 3 October 2013, while in 2015 Ross was jailed with all his associated convictions.
Two months ago, The Cryptonomist interviewed Ross’s mother, Lyn who has been fighting the system for years for his release or reduction of sentence.
