PleasrDAO has revealed itself to be the new owners of Wu-Tang Clan's one-of-a-kind unreleased album In one case Upon a Time in Shaolin.

The 74 members of the decentralized democratic organisation (DAO) now share collective buying of the album. The group purchased the sole copy of the album from the U.s. federal government for $4 meg at the finish of July, collected it in September, and moved information technology to a vault at an undisclosed location in New York. PleasrDAO has minted the ownership deed every bit a nonfungible token (NFT) with the assistance of crypto-savvy attorney Peter Scoolidge.

A collective of decentralized finance leaders, early on NFT collectors and digital artists, PleasrDAO is well-known for tokenizing the original Doge meme and purchasing Edward Snowden'south "Stay Free" artwork for two,224 Ether (ETH).

The regime came to possess the album in 2022 later on seizing the assets of former owner "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli on fraud charges. Shkreli, who was widely reviled for jacking up the prices of life-saving drugs by up to 5,000%, had anonymously purchased the album in 2022 for $2 million, making it the nearly expensive piece of music ever sold at the time.

The atomic number 82 of the Wu-Tang Association, RZA, and album producer Cilvaringz originally created the anthology in response to their concerns that piracy and digital streaming cheapens the value of music.

Cilvaringz said they hoped that the album would "render music to the value of fine art — a mission finally possible in today'due south environment, well-nigh a decade later with NFT engineering and the ability to mint this album as a unique 1:1 original."

For this reason, PleasrDAO's interest in the album is cocky-explanatory, wrote "chief pleasing officeholder" Jamis Johnson in a blog post.

"Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in many ways is the OG NFT before NFT technology had made its mode into the zeitgeist."

Related: Original $4M Doge NFT meme auctioned off in 17 billion pieces

As for the future of the anthology, Johnson said PleasrDAO believes the "next chapter of the incredible story of this album should be Web 3.0 native."

PleasrDAO is nevertheless leap by a legal agreement underpinning the anthology, which prevents information technology from being commercially released until 2103, although listening parties are allowed. Despite this, the grouping insists they "firmly believe in that location are ways to share this musical masterpiece with the earth."