Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s NFT just sold for over $5 million, or 2,224 Ethereum, at auction. Due do Ethereum’s price fluctuations, the value of the purchase has been bouncing between $5.2 million and $5.5 million.
The digital artwork, called Stay Free, features Snowden’s Platon portrait comprised of the court documents of the ruling in 2013 the violated the law when he exposed the NSA’s mass surveillance efforts. Snowden produced and signed Stay Free, the only NFT he’s produced as of now.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a type of cryptocurrency. They’re digital objects you can own or trade, and can be seen as a sort of digital collectable cards.
The winner of the NFT is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called PleasrDAO. In an interview, PleasrDAO founder Leighton Cusack explained that the organization formed with the sole purpose of pooling their funds to buy another NFT by an artist called pplpleasr, x*y=k.
PleasrDAO successfully won that NFT in March, but it seems that there’s no sole purpose anymore. With their second win, they’re now “2 for 2”:
Snowden isn’t profiting off the sale. Rather, the proceeds will go to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, where Snowden serves as president. Snowden called PleasrDAO a dark horse in a tweet celebrating the win:
“It feels like the whole staff of [the Freedom of the Press Foundation] is watching live,” Snowden said of the auction. “We’ve never seen anything like this. This is more than a spectacle – this is drama.”