Wu-Tang Clan’s ultra-rare album is now (sort of) available as an NFT

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin – known as the most expensive piece of music ever sold – is now reborn as a fixed-term digital ISA.

In a tortuous tale of legal loopholes and questionable financial practices, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (the one-off album created by de facto Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA and associate of the Cilvaringz group) is now published as NFT… type of.

The news broke yesterday (June 13) in a statement from the album’s new owners, PleasrDAO, a cryptocurrency collective specializing in digital artwork. “The most expensive album in the world is now available for $1,” they wrote on X. “Go into the room and get a copy.”

The message came just days after they announced plans to sue the album’s former owner. Martin Shkreli (once doubled)The most hated man in America‘) for having illegally duplicated and distributed the project to its subscribers.

Espousing vague notions of the devaluation of music in the digital age, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was originally conceived by RZA and Cilvaringz as a unique work of art and sold on the condition that it could not be exploited commercially for 88 years. years, or until 2103. Unfortunately, the reality was not so idealistic. The project’s first owner, Shkreli, broadcast parts of the album to subscribers on In response, the couple tried to buy the project, but were prevented from doing so by their own conditions of sale.

This latest version exploits the 88-year-old trade embargo and the legal language of its acquisition to generate artificial demand in the Web3 space, gradually releasing tracks from the album as NFT purchases accumulate. Sold under the slogan “2103 will arrive sooner than you think,” the album has essentially been reduced to a fixed-term ISA that will be released when around 28 million people buy the token. (In reality, however, PleasrDAO only managed to acquire the rights to 16 of the 31 titles, meaning only about half of the project will be published).

In a nod to RZA and Cilvaringz’s concerns about the value of music in the streaming era, PleasrDAO also promised that artists contributing to the projects would receive a share of the profits. Cilvaringz, however, is so far the only member of Wu-Tang to publicly support the announcement. Of note, following the project’s first unveiling in 2014, founding Wu-Tang member and project contributor Method Man famously called the version “stupid” and said he “can’t stand Cilvaringz.”

This latest news received generally negative responses from fans online, with comment sections almost immediately flooded with calls for the project to be hacked. One user even proclaimed “Shkreli or his friends should just leak the album, it’s even dumber than the original concept”. It really means something when the infamous POS Martin Shkreli, who already bought the rights to the HIV/AIDS treatment Dararaprim to then raise the price by 5,600 percent overnight, is contested for greater dum-dum (even though its own story is still dumber than everything else put together).

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was, once upon a time, a pretty interesting concept. Now the only thing left to say is… CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME!

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