How we came together to buy the US constitution | #54

Story time. It's November 15, 2021 and in 3 days the only privately held copy of the US Constitution is going up for an auction at Sotheby's for a projected price of $15-20 million. In a bold and a downright crazy move - the people of the internet decided to come together to buy The US Constitution.

Why was this significant? The US Constitution is one of the founding documents of the United States and its original copy carries a lot of significance. In 1787, 11 years after the Declaration of the Independence, 500 original copies of the US Constitution were sent to print. Today, there are only 11 copies that are known to exist. And for the first time in 33 years, an original copy of the Constitution was going up for an auction with the proceeds going to a non-profit promoting democracy education. But more importantly, this was the first time people from all over the world could come together to collectively bid and own this historic document. But how?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about DAOs, a new type of organizations that allow people to work together towards a common goal using the power of crypto and blockchain. A team of 30 core contributors created the ConstitutionDAO with the goal of buying the US constitution a week before the auction.

The premise was simple - anybody with a crypto wallet and some Ethereum could invest into the ConstitutionDAO and receive PEOPLE coins. PEOPLE coins represented your share of the project. The goal was to raise as much money as possible and at the end everyone would have a share of the total pie. If the DAO would succeed in buying the constitution, the contributors will become the owners. And if it was sold in the future, contributors would get their share of the proceeds. For example, If you contributed 10% of the total amount raised, then in the event of the future sale you would get 10% of the proceeds.

But to be honest, the economics didn’t matter. People didn’t invest because they wanted to make money from this. It was the idea. For the first time in history, people of the internet - no matter where they lived, could come together to buy something of such significance. It was the first time that We, the people, could collectively OWN The US Constitution. This idea fascinated me. I was in. I didn’t care if this would make any money at all. It was about being part of something historic. So I went to their page, connected my crypto wallet and made a small contribution.

And I wasn’t alone. The idea caught fire on Twitter and generated a lot of buzz. When I invested, the DAO had raised a total of $3M. But we were just getting started. When I woke up the next day, the total amount raised went up to $10M. Then $25M the following day. Before the auction, the DAO raised $42M from 17,437 people. All in 3 days!

The projected price of the Constitution was $15-20M, and we raised a total of $42M. I thought that we had the Constitution in the bag. The discord server was full of discussion about where to store the constitution and how to make it more widely available to the public.

The action was supposed to happen past midnight my time. So I went to sleep expecting to wake up to good news. But when I woke up the next morning, all I saw was collective sadness on Twitter. Somebody outbid the group and bought the Constitution for $43.2 million. It was sold for 2-3x the projected price…

While I was sad, I learned a couple of things from this experience:

1. Crypto and blockchain will allow people to own things not only in the digital, but also in the physical world

2. Crypto will enable people can come together for a shared cause in unprecedented speed and timeframe

3. Crypto will allow us to do things that we couldn’t even image in the past

Most importantly, this experience made me wonder - If we could come together for this cause, what other things could we come together to make a difference? While this experiment failed, it set an example of what’s possible if people of the internet come together.

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