The government sold “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” to satisfy a judgment against its first owner, Martin Shkreli. It ended up with a collective cal

Meet the New Owners of the Wu-Tang Clan’s One-of-a-Kind Album

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2021-10-20 17:30:08

The government sold “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” to satisfy a judgment against its first owner, Martin Shkreli. It ended up with a collective called PleasrDAO that paid an intermediary $4 million.

Seven years ago, the Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was created as a protest against the devaluation of music in the digital era. Before long it got caught up in a tale of capitalist villainy when it was purchased by Martin Shkreli, the price-gouging young pharmaceutical speculator who was later convicted of securities fraud.

Now the album has found yet another life on the frontier of digital art and cryptocurrency, having been sold for $4 million to PleasrDAO, a collective that has existed for less than a year but has already built a reputation for acquiring high-profile digital works.

In a complex deal with multiple parties, one of whom remains unidentified, PleasrDAO acquired “Once Upon a Time” after its sale in July by the federal government, which had seized the album to satisfy the balance of a $7.4 million forfeiture money judgment against Mr. Shkreli that was part of his sentencing in 2018. (Mr. Shkreli is still serving out a seven-year prison sentence.)

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