The Strange Path of Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,’ Now a $1 NFT

It all started with the disgraced former pharmaceutical executive, Martin Shkreli. In 2015, Pharma Bro bought Wu-Tang Clan‘s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million. It was the only copy ever made, and the album was never made available to stream. It is considered the most expensive album ever sold, and now, apparently, you can listen to a portion of it for $1.

In 2017, Shkreli was arrested and convicted of securities fraud, for which he spent seven years in federal prison. He was also ordered to forfeit $7.4 million in assets. This included the Wu-Tang album, which PleasrDAO bought while he was incarcerated. The digital art collective—made up of artists, collectors, and leaders in decentralized finance—purchased the album for a whopping $4 million from the U.S. Department of Justice.

PleasrDAO bought the album with the idea to make it more widely accessible. They scheduled an exhibition of the album at the Museum of Old and New Art in Australia for June 15 to 24. Before that, though, Shkreli livestreamed the album on Twitter to approximately five thousand people on June 9. In response, PleasrDAO filed a lawsuit against Shkreli, claiming he devalued the album as well as played it without permission.

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