Skip to main content

Imprisoned Silk Road founder causes a stir with NFT drop

Those who support him hope he raises enough money to fulfill his personal and charitable needs, while others don’t think he should be selling NFTs at all.

Ross Ulbricht, founder of defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road, has created a stir by announcing he will auction off his series of nonfungible tokens (NFT) starting Dec. 2.

The imprisoned early Bitcoin adopter announced via his supporter operated Twitter account on Dec. 1 his plans to auction the Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection on Superare NFT marketplace from Dec. 2-8. The collection consists of 11 works of art Ulbricht handmade, then his supporters minted into NFT form.

The art was made in different stages of Ulbricht’s life from childhood up to his time in prison. The early works depict comic book characters and animals, while the later works depicts scenes from his court trial and inner feelings he has had since being imprisoned.

Proceeds from the auction will help fund a trust to support Ulbricht’s efforts to be freed from prison. Funds will also help launch the donor-advised charitable fund Art4Giving, which is “dedicated to relieving the suffering of the incarcerated and their families.”

Ulbricht has been a controversial character in the crypto space since he was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison in Oct. 2015 for operating the Silk Road marketplace. Silk Road opened on the dark web in Feb. 2011 and allowed users to purchase nearly anything with Bitcoin (BTC), including illicit substances.

Ross Ulbricht's Perspective from The Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection of NFTs.

The announcement sparked a blizzard of conflicting commentary from people on social media, some against Ulbricht’s decision, but most in support of his cause.

Related: Crypto's impact on sanctions: Are regulators' concerns justified?

One skeptical commenter, founder of bullbitcoin.com @francispouliot said that although he supports Ulbricht, “the fact that the insane and immoral NFT ponzi has now become fully normalized is deeply troubling.” Other Bitcoin maximalists also took exception to the entire concept of NFTs with @vladenhawk writing "I can tolerate the creation of international drug and weapons markets. But NFTS is where I draw the line."

Crypto Cobain, high-profile host of UpOnly TV, pointed out in support that although a few Bitcoin maximalists may be against Ulbricht minting NFTs, he was instrumental in generating early Bitcoin adoption.



from https://ift.tt/3pdcVQJ
https://ift.tt/3xIvFM4
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Any questions, Please.

Popular posts from this blog

DeFi isn’t dead, it just needs to fix these 3 critical problems

It’s been a rough year for DeFi, and it may not get any better until projects focus more on security, regulation and usability. The persistent challenges  decentralized finance  face have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do in order to have another revival.  Improved usability To date, the promise of open and uncensored access to a global decentralized financial system has been largely hampered by the complicated interface, confusing multi-step staking processes and lack of clarity surrounding the yields on various tokens. What do you thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

ENS DAO delegates offer perspective on DAO governance and decentralized identity

AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community.  Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers. Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for  resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. Alpha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Institutional demand for crypto isn’t subsiding, but impact will be gradual

As another $2-trillion stimulus package looms in the U.S., institutions will continue to look at BTC as a hedge against inflation. For example, just last week, when the currency was hovering around the $30,000 threshold, a whole host of pundits was warning investors to brace for impact, suggesting that the premier crypto asset was on the verge of a correction and could once again dip to around the $20,000 region. However, in just one day, Bitcoin was once again playing with the bulls, retesting the $38,500 limit, only to witness a selloff and eventually settle around the $33,500 region. While for most crypto veterans that might have been another day at the office, others branded the upsurge as “Elon’s Candle,” which relates to Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who included “Bitcoin” in his Twitter bio as well as sent out the following cryptic message “in retrospect, it was inevitable” to his 40 million-odd followers online. Regardless of the cause, has the recent price volatility sca...
Post a Comment
Read more