Summary
- Wu-Tang Clan‘s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was sold for $2,238,482.30 USD, revealed by FOIA request
- The album, previously owned by Martin Shkreli, was acquired by Hong Kong-incorporated WTC Endeavors in 2021
- PleasrDAO, which later claimed ownership, is now suing Shkreli over copies and offers NFT access
Bloomberg journalist Jason Leopold has revealed the sale price of Wu-Tang Clan‘s elusive Once Upon a Time in Shaolin following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021.
The album, previously owned by Martin Shkreli prior to his securities fraud conviction, was sold by the US Attorney’s office in July 2021 to cover the forfeiture of his assets. However, the government did not divulge the buyer’s name and price as part of “confidentiality provision.” In October of the same year, the digital art and crypto collective PleasrDAO announced that they had acquired Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for about $4 million USD in crypto.
Leopold went through years of back and forth with the US government, who provided him with unseen images of the album and redacted documents due to “trade secrets.” The journalist explained, “The reason it took so long is that the DOJ still had to hand over other documents I requested, and I couldn’t challenge the trade secrets and privacy exemptions until the agency finished its production.”
Finally, Leopold received an unredacted copy of the album’s bill of sale and purchase agreement. As it turns out, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was sold to WTC Endeavors for $2,238,482.30 USD — the exact amount Shkreli owed. WTC Endeavors was incorporated in Hong Kong in May 2020 but dissolved in March 2023.
In June 2024, PleasrDAO filed a lawsuit against Shkreli claiming that he had created and distributed copies of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. He was then ordered by a federal judge to turn over all the copies he made, as well as the names of any person that received a copy.
While PleasrDAO is required to follow the same rules as Shkreli did when he owned the album (no streaming or distributing the album until 2103), the collective was able to turn Once Upon a Time in Shaolin into an NFT. For $1 USD, interested fans can listen to five minutes of the record. As Leopold notes, each sale “will speed up the release of the album by 88 seconds.”
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