The image is called "chorus" and is on thecdn.vox-cdn.com.
There are 13 copies of the Constitution left.
The image is from Sotheby's.
If you want to buy an early printing of the US Constitution, you have to pay a couple of bucks. Normally, you would be out of luck, but maybe not today: over the last week, a collective has formed to raise enough money to buy a rare early printing of the Constitution at an auction, raising money from anyone who wants to chip in online.
The document is expected to sell for as much as $20 million, which would seem to be an impossible price for a crowd funding initiative. The collective has raised $27 million. They have more than 24 hours to go.
There is a lot going on here, so I am going to break it down.
The document being purchased is one of 13 copies of the Official Edition of the Constitution, a final draft created for the Continental Congress.
The group is raising money to buy the copy.
Decentralized organization is what DAO stands for. A lot of these have been popping up recently in the space, usually with specific goals, like selling merchandise or buying a copy of the US Constitution.
A cadas is a worker couthing for nerds. It is a kind of corporation with all of the rules written into smart contracts on the ethereum block, so all the sensitive corporate functions happen in a decentralization and automatic way. It is a way to raise a lot of money very quickly for a capital intensive endeavor like buying a copy of the Constitution.
There are more and more instances of people pooling finances online in ways that have real-world impact but are also silly.
After being featured in The New York Times, ConstitutionDAO raised more than $10 million in just one day.
All of the money is being raised in ether. The governance token will give contributors the ability to vote on what becomes of the document should they successfully buy it.
If ConstitutionDAO wins the auction, they will find a partner organization that will display it for free to visitors.
Money will be sent back to contributors if they lose.
The auction will be held on Thursday. Good luck to whoever is bidding against the internet.
