Imprisoned Silk Road Founder Sold His First NFT For $6.3M to the DAO Trying to Free Him

Read the full article by Morgan Chittum

Key Points:

Ross Ulbricht, a man serving two life sentences after creating an illegal website that was used to buy anything from narcotics to exotic plants, has sold his first NFT for over $6 million.

A group of 1,320 crypto investors, who formed the FreeRossDAO, raised over $12 million to win the auction.

Proceeds from the NFT auction will go towards charity, accord to Ulbricht.

“I am floored,” Ulbricht tweeted on his account run by a loved one on Friday. “I feel like I have a new purpose now. The auction exceeded all expectations.”

“This is just the beginning,” the DAO said in a tweet. “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 leftover funds that weren’t spent in the auction will stay in the group’s treasury and be managed by contributors of the DAO. Members received a $ROSS token to vote on how funds will be used — necessary for the “autonomous” component of a functioning DAO.

“We really want to get this bootstrapped, started and get the community together to essentially fight for the freedom of Ross but also to fight for fixing this broken prison system,” a member of the DAO, who goes by “Jamis”, said in a Twitter space on Dec. 1.
Proceeds from the collection are going to charity, according to Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn. “Ross wants to use his art to help people. And we’re starting out with helping the incarcerated [and their families with] the suffering they go through,” she said in the same Twitter space.