FreeRossDAO Makes Winning $6M Bid for NFT Art by Silk Road Convict

Ross Ulbricht is the founder of Silk Road. Silk Road was popular for hosting money laundering activities and illegal drug transactions using Bitcoin. In 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years after being convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering, narcotics trafficking, and related crimes that took place on the website he created.

PleasrDAO, which is known for winning the auction for Edward Snowden’s NFT in April, has formed FreeRossDAO a week ago, with a mission to create “an open community aimed at buying Ross Ulbricht’s NFT collection and funding the mission to #FreeRoss and fight for prison reform.”

WE DID IT. Over 1,320 people raised over 2,800 ETH in a week (over $12m at todays price) to win the auction for Ross’s NFT (sold at 1446 ETH - about half of our treasury). Crypto is amazing.

Here's what happens now 👇👇👇

— FreeRossDAO (@FreeRossDAO) December 9, 2021

All the community members who contributed to the DAO will receive ROSS tokens representing fractional shares in the NFTs. ROSS holders will also vote on governance proposals for the DAO. The DAO won the auction for around 1,446 ETH ($6M).

The Ross Ulbricht Genesis Collection includes one oil canvas and four graphite pencil compositions with accompanying essays created by Ross during his incarceration. The series also features five artworks from Ulbricht’s childhood and teen years and an animation created by artist Levitate accompanied by a voice-over performed by Ulbricht.

The crypto community has shown interest in this NFT as Bitcoin was Silk Road’s exclusive currency.

“This is just the beginning; we still have a long way to go to seek justice and rectify his disproportionate sentence,” says FreeRossDao