Elizabeth Howcroft
Reuters
This article was published by Elizabeth Howcroft in Reuters:
An online auction of digital art raised more than $52 million worth of cryptocurrency to help fund WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal defence on Wednesday, the winning bid coming from a group of supporters who had pooled their money.
Australian-born Assange is battling extradition from Britain to the United States where the authorities want him to face trial on 18 criminal charges including breaking a spying law, after WikiLeaks began to publish thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010.
Last month, Assange, who remains in a London prison, was given the chance to challenge approval of his extradition at Britain's highest court. The Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to hear his case.
Assange collaborated with a crypto artist known as Pak to sell a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) called Censored in an online auction from Feb. 7-9 to raise funds to support his case.
NFTs are a kind of crypto asset that uses blockchain to record the ownership status of digital files such as images, videos and even items within online games.
The centrepiece of the auction was an NFT artwork, Clock, that displays the number of days Assange has been imprisoned in white text on a black background. It updates each day.
The Clock NFT fetched 16,593 of the cryptocurrency ether, a sum worth around $52.8 million at 1400 GMT . It was bought by a group of more than 10,000 Assange supporters called AssangeDAO.
A Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is a sort of online community which allows members to pool their money and use blockchain-based tokens to vote on decisions about how the group is run.
An online auction of digital art raised more than $52 million worth of cryptocurrency to help fund WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal defence on Wednesday, the winning bid coming from a group of supporters who had pooled their money.
Australian-born Assange is battling extradition from Britain to the United States where the authorities want him to face trial on 18 criminal charges including breaking a spying law, after WikiLeaks began to publish thousands of secret classified files and diplomatic cables in 2010.
Last month, Assange, who remains in a London prison, was given the chance to challenge approval of his extradition at Britain's highest court. The Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to hear his case.
Assange collaborated with a crypto artist known as Pak to sell a collection of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) called Censored in an online auction from Feb. 7-9 to raise funds to support his case.
NFTs are a kind of crypto asset that uses blockchain to record the ownership status of digital files such as images, videos and even items within online games.
The centrepiece of the auction was an NFT artwork, Clock, that displays the number of days Assange has been imprisoned in white text on a black background. It updates each day.
The Clock NFT fetched 16,593 of the cryptocurrency ether, a sum worth around $52.8 million at 1400 GMT . It was bought by a group of more than 10,000 Assange supporters called AssangeDAO.
A Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is a sort of online community which allows members to pool their money and use blockchain-based tokens to vote on decisions about how the group is run.
