National displeasure: Sale of U.S. Constitution delayed before crypto investors nab document

Move over, Declaration of Independence. A National Treasure-like heist is underway for another historic Philadelphia document.

On Tuesday, a group of cryptocurrency investors was ready to bid on an original copy of the U.S. Constitution before being told by New York auction house Sotheby’s that its sale would be postponed.

When the auction was announced, investment group ConstitutionDAO2 launched a fund-raising campaign to ensure that “the objects which were designed ‘for the people’ are returned to the people,” which means its members hoped to use a democratic voting system to maintain control over how the copy is exhibited and maintained.

This isn’t the first time a crypto group sought to nab a copy of the nation’s guiding charter.

Springing to viral attention last year, investors calling themselves ConstitutionDAO — unaffiliated with ConstitutionDAO2 — led a grassroots campaign of around 17,000 investors to bid on a different copy of the Constitution.

Despite pooling over $40 million in cryptocurrency, those digital patriots ultimately lost that auction to a higher bidder.

Shortly before ConstitutionDAO2 was set to bid on Tuesday, Sotheby’s said it postponed the sale to give other “interested institutional parties additional time to fund-raise.”

In an email response, a Sotheby’s spokesperson did not address whether the postponement was related to the crypto campaign.

The legion of crypto enthusiasts are now left in the dark, but like Nicolas Cage of Treasures’ past, they haven’t given up on their mission.

ConstitutionDAO2 is the work of a decentralized autonomous organization — a DAO, for short. Popular in digital communities, DAOs are legal entities that pool cryptocurrency to fund a common goal, despite having no central governance. Membership requires purchase of a digital token, which allows members to vote on how the funds are spent.

“DAOs are becoming the new institutions,” said Jason Yanowitz, cofounder of crypto trade publication Blockworks, in an interview with Digiday. “There are DAOs with more than $10 billion in their treasury [and] media companies have not recognized this.”

Given the recent fallouts in the cryptocurrency community — the billion-dollar collapse of crypto exchange FTX, let’s say — a critical eye is understandable.

For DAO campaigners who sought a copy of the Constitution in 2021, it appears that all was not lost. Members’ funds were returned when the group was outbid by Ken Griffin, a conservative donor and hedge fund manager, who paid $43.2 million.

Crypto’s transparent system may have been the first group’s Achilles’ heel: By pooling funds on the publicly accessible blockchain ledger, speculation arose that competitors knew exactly how much money was needed for the winning bid.

ConstitutionDAO2′s website says this time around, it pooled 233.2 Ethereum — the second-most-popular cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin — that’s worth $294,417.33.

Private donations to bolster any bids were expected but not listed, in part to prevent another besting at the auction gavel.

The group stressed that should they meet their goal, individual investors would not own a piece of the Constitution. Rather, the document would be held by a nonprofit with a historical adviser who would find it a “home base” and coordinate museum showings.

The group said on its website that the adviser would help with the proper casing, humidity, and transport of the copy, though it didn’t list who would fill the role.

ConstitutionDAO2 mentioned it would also insure the document, which would be legally owned by the nonprofit Unum DAO Inc.

Leftover funds from the auction would be used to sustainably care for the historic text, the group said.

In the vein of the last year’s frenzied campaign to pump up the stock of video game retailer GameStop, it appears ConstitutionDAO2 is hoping to pull off a similar David-vs.-Goliath scenario.

“Buying the Constitution resonates with so many because it’s only partially about the Constitution itself — it’s also about believing in the dream of liberty and justice and realizing that, in this world of old money and value extraction, the only way the disenfranchised can live our ideals is if we pool our power,” the group says on its website.

Thirteen copies are known to exist, to be exact.

After putting to paper the guiding principles of our government here in Philadelphia, the nation’s founders commissioned 500 copies for delegates to send to their colleagues. Of the copies that survived, 11 are held in private galleries. The original text is on display in the National Archives Museum in Washington.

The copy auctioned by Sotheby’s in 2021 was the most expensive text ever sold at an auction, according to Smithsonian. Earlier this year, that document appeared on public display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark.

The copy ConstitutionDAO2 are after was first auctioned in Philadelphia in 1894.

Originally part of the collection of Charles Colcock Jones, a Georgia politician and historian, the document was eventually gifted to another owner. Before Tuesday’s postponement, it was set to sell for the first time in 125 years and was estimated by Sotheby’s to be worth between $20 million and 30 million.

The sale remains paused, according to Sotheby’s. In an email, a spokesperson said the sale has attracted a “strong institutional interest” after the document was recently shown at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

There’s no word on who the mystery investor is, or whether there’s an army of crypto enthusiasts behind them.

On Tuesday, ConstitutionDAO2 said in a tweet that it had paused fund-raising while it discusses next steps with its investors.