PleasrDAO, the crypto company that paid $4.75 million to "pharma-bro" Martin Shkreli for the Wu-Tang Clan's highly controversial time capsule album 'Once Upon A Time In Shaolin,' now allows the public to buy a digitally signed and encrypted copy for only $1.
The album is currently hosted at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania. Cali artist Hassan Rahim was also commissioned to update the artwork after a legal examination of the first cover.
Pleasr, the online collective, started selling access to 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' on Thursday, June 13, for $1 to be part of what the group called an experiment to test the simple question, "Do people still value music in a digital era?"
The group said only a five-minute album sampling will be available now. However, it noted that for $1, fans will gain access to an encrypted digital edition of 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.'
According to the Wu-Tang Clan's original 2015 deal with Shkreli, 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' could not be released publicly for 88 years, or until Oct 8, 2103.
The group claimed it would shorten the time to release the album by 88 seconds for every $1 that Pleasr receives. It would take around 28 million contributions of $1 by a rough calculation to remove the delay.
Pleasr announced that it had been "secretly working with the original artists and producer" to release the album. The group claimed that the Wu-Tang Clan and the album's producers, RZA, the group's leader, and Cilvaringz, who worked with RZA on the project, would split the profits from sales.
'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' was designed as a unique physical object covered in the extravagance of a historical artifact. The two CDs included with the record were housed in an engraved nickel-silver box and accompanied by a leather-bound book with 174 parchment pages.
