The New Yorker:

Adozen or so friends from the Internet gathered recently at Sotheby’s in Manhattan to buy a first printing of the U.S. Constitution (estimated value: fifteen to twenty million dollars). The group, who called themselves ConstitutionDAO, had just spent a week raising millions of dollars on Twitter, TikTok, and Discord from anonymous screen names: recent immigrants, college dropouts, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of someone who fought in the American Revolution. (The “DAO” in “ConstitutionDAO” stands for “decentralized autonomous organization”—a leaderless corporate structure that resembles an online chat room with a bank account.) They raised four million in the first twenty-four hours. Then someone pitched in another four million, in Ethereum’s currency. By the next evening, the project had gone viral: seventeen thousand donors had given more than thirty-three million (median contribution: $206.26). “I feel like I’m part of an organism!” a twenty-eight-year-old contributor wearing a green fur coat and leather sandals said, excitedly, in the Sotheby’s lobby. “It’s fucking awesome.” Nearby, a man named Sean Murray, dressed in a military jacket, white breeches, and a tricorne hat, held up a homemade sign reading “i’m buying the constitution.”

Another man walked up to Murray and introduced himself: “I was wondering if anyone else would show up!” Murray looked down at his getup and said, “I gotta be different, right?” He laughed. “I’m glad it’s a real-life thing. You don’t want to come out here and figure out it was Twitter bots the whole time.”

The item the D.A.O. planned to bid on that evening was one of only thirteen surviving first printings of the U.S. Constitution. It belonged to Dorothy Goldman, whose late husband purchased it, in 1988, for a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. The document—Sotheby’s Lot No. 1787—was typeset by David Claypoole and John Dunlap, in Philadelphia, on September 17, 1787. (Dunlap also typeset the first printings of the Declaration of Independence.) “It was a very labor-intensive process,” a Sotheby’s representative said, in a film distributed to prospective bidders.

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