Music

“The album itself is kind of the O.G. NFT,” said Mr. Johnson, 34, who was proudly sporting a Wu-Tang T-shirt.

To tie “Once Upon a Time” to the digital realm, an NFT was created to stand as the ownership deed for the physical album, said Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency and NFT deals and was involved in the transaction. The 74 members of PleasrDAO — the abbreviation in its name identifies it as a “decentralized autonomous organization” — share collective ownership of the NFT deed, and thus own the album.

As the owners, they can listen to the 31 tracks on its two CDs, ogle its engraved nickel-silver box and leaf through the leather-bound parchment book that are part of the item’s overall package. But, for now at least, PleasrDAO’s members are still bound by the original restrictions that RZA and Cilvaringz imposed on Mr. Shkreli, including that it cannot be released to the general public in any form until 2103 (88 years from its initial sale in 2015). Archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20211021081900/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/music/wu-tang-clan-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin.html