16/12/2021 Andreessen Horowitz backs NFT investor group behind rare Wu-Tang Clan album purchase

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The crypto collective that bought Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album and an NFT of the original Doge image has a new member: venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The firm tells TechCrunch it has made an investment inPleasrDAO, a blockchain-aligned group of a few dozen crypto investors that have been teaming up to buy high-priced NFTs in recent months. The group’s purchases include the famous Doge image, which they bought for $4 million (1,696.9 ETH to be exact) then later fractionalized and sold to the crypto community (its current implied market cap is just above $100 million). The DAO also paid some $5.4 million for a work from Edward Snowden and $4 million for the Wu-Tang Clan album.

A DAO (or decentralized autonomous organization) is basically a group organized formally around blockchain voting mechanisms to make decisions and invest capital.

A16z Crypto’s investment in PleasrDAO is not their first publicly announced bet on the organization type. In October, the firmmade an investment inFriends With Benefits (FWB) DAO, which theyvalued at $100 million. Andreessen Horowitz did not disclose the size of their investment in PleasrDAO though council member Santiago Santos specified their overall stake of the DAO’s governance tokens was “less than 5%.”

Like many other crypto groups, PleasrDAO had a very singular ambition when it was formed — to bid on a work by a digital artist, in this case one bypplpleasr. Said work was an animated video advertisement for the decentralized exchange platform Uniswap. The group formed in March after crypto founder Leighton Cusacktweeteda link to the auction and asked, “Anyone want to create a quick DAO to bid on this???” The group eventually won the bid at 310 Eth (some $525,000 at the time) with all proceeds for the purchase going to charity.

“Very quickly on, we thought, a lot of the smartest minds in DeFi are here — there is an opportunity to really take this in an interesting direction,” Santos tells TechCrunch. “I think, over time, the DAO grew to the point where we felt that we needed some more structure and hierarchy.”

The group has since continued making investments and bulking up its portfolio while aiming to discover new artists that it can support. Santos says he has aims for the group to become a “Medici house” of NFTs “where a lot of digitally native artists can come and get initiated and discovered.”

“DAOs are almost the purest manifestation of what web3 and crypto are all about,” a16z GP Ali Yahya tells TechCrunch.

While a16z was early to crypto, the rise of so-called “crypto native” investment funds operating closer to founder and developer networks in the space has made it necessary for legacy firms like a16z to get bolder in backing new groups like DAOs. Andreessen Horowitz sees plenty of areas where they can help PleasrDAO including policy and regulatory concerns — an area where DAOs currently seem to be operating in a gray area of as unregulated investment funds of pooled capital.

A16z’s bet on the group is, in many ways, a leveraged bet on NFTs, which the group has already bet heavily on. This year, the firm backed NFT marketplace OpenSea, NFT gaming giant Sky Mavis and NFT music platform Royal, among others. The firm also anchored Meta4 — a $100 million venture fund dedicated to buying up pricey NFTs. These investments are being made from the firm’s massive $2.2 billion crypto-centric fund, which the firm debuted this summer.

“It’s easy to underestimate the potential of NFTs,” Yahya says. “It very well could be that NFTs will be enormous and that the total market cap of all NFTs down the line will actually be bigger than the market cap for fungible tokens.”

Arts

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/14/andreessen-horowitz-backs-nft-investor-group-behind-one-of-a-kind-wu-tang-clan-album-purchase/

Interesting NFTs
Next to Nothin’ (Console)
MISHA KAHN (B. 1989) Next to Nothin’ (Console) Printable 3D model (FBX with vertex colors) together with an MP4 (00:00:08 seconds, 2048 x 2048 pixels) Executed in 2021. This work is unique and is sold as a non-fungible token. token ID: 25589172339488513184097753251259367849292773157707017705630314477231882108929 wallet address: 0x3892f55253893325771bcebda2aaacdd5c793c4c smart contract address: 0x495f947276749Ce646f68AC8c248420045cb7b5e
Art Is The Currency of the Infinite
This still-life, titled after one of Pablo Picasso's infamous quotes, was made solely using 3D softwares and apps, in an attempt to bring this often forgotten artistic genre into the 21st century through the use of new artistic mediums and technologies. This piece is also an invitation to meditate on the role of "value" throught the ages and how it's been radically altered by the coming into existence of technologies and concepts like cryptocurrencies and digital scarcity.
The Moth Catcher
In this psychologically bed-headed portrait, a creature sets in a trance; his eyes devolved and vestigal, his third eye open but hardened and in a form resembling a Sharingan. The imagery therefore expresses an awareness existing in corporeal introspection. The creature’s mind sprouts, on the left side, an emerging face, grinning. To the right side of the head, red tentacles and fingers intertwine–a collaboration of invertebrate and vertebrate consciousness cooperatively handling paint brushes of the sort used to build an oil painting. The neck and throat bristle with random thorns, as from a rose or the upper portions of a beak sprouting from its flesh. The neck itself disassociates into layers of membranous material, terminating upon an abstracted base of convoluted forms composing its body. The nose is virtually non existent, more a sinus reiterative of the shape of the third eye. Set against the exposed teeth peering out of thick, meaty cheeks, a skeleton-like impression results. That impression sets behind a visceral set of lips and tongue, which is the creature’s prime seat of awareness. Sensual, organic, the tongue organ hangs, meaty, and with consciousness of a sea cucumber. It illuminates at the tip, drawing the attraction of a nearby moth–with mystery of purpose.
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By OthersideDeployer
Gunky's Uprising
Gunky's Uprising by SSX3LAU Slimesunday and 3LAU team up once again under their alias SSX3LAU for a collection featuring their first exploration into color. TBD is a full length music video featuring an unreleased song from 3LAU and Slimesunday\u2019s mesmerizing animation. In a first for the artists, TBD\u2019s collector will have the opportunity to name the song (some restrictions apply).