Crypto Enthusiasts' DAO Tries Raising $4 Billion to Buy a Football Team (cnbc.com) 48
In NFL news, an American football team — the Denver Broncos — "are up for sale," reports CNBC, "and a group of crypto enthusiasts is aiming to raise more than $4 billion using a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, to make it their own...."
This group includes an eclectic mix of attorneys, accountants, software developers, pro athletes, and at least one mathematician. One of the people spearheading the cause is Sean O'Brien, who spent over a decade in Cisco's legal department, before leaving the corporate world to run a few small businesses with his wife. "We know it sounds a bit crazy, but it's also a bit badass," said O'Brien. "The purpose essentially is to establish an infrastructure so that fans from all walks of life can be owners of the Denver Broncos."
The pro football team is valued at just under $4 billion, and it is expected to garner the biggest price tag in North American sports history, according to ESPN....
DAOs take coordination of resources on the internet to a new level, according to Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuikNode, which provides blockchain infrastructure to developers and companies. "They represent a new kind of organization moving at hyper speed," said Bunsen. Investor Cooper Turley, who has helped build several popular DAOs, says they're like an "internet community with a shared bank account."
"Basically, a small group of people come together to form a chat group, and then they decide to pull capital together, [typically] using an Ethereum wallet," Turley previously told CNBC....
Though the group will still fundraise in cryptocurrency, the idea is to give people partial ownership, in which they will participate in deciding how the team is run... The BuyTheBroncos group also has a pretty solid plan B. Organizers tell CNBC the more realistic goal is to raise around 25% of the money needed to place the winning bid, and from there, join forces with a consortium of more traditional buyers to make up the difference.
The group's Twitter account had less than 50 followers before CNBC's article — but 390 followers after the article ran. And O'Brien tells CBNC his ultimate goal is "to essentially open up peoples' eyes to what a DAO can do in the real world and make a tangible connection between this web3 life and the real world.
"Our thought is that it accelerates DAO adoption for solving real-world problems such as food scarcity or unhoused peoples."
The pro football team is valued at just under $4 billion, and it is expected to garner the biggest price tag in North American sports history, according to ESPN....
DAOs take coordination of resources on the internet to a new level, according to Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuikNode, which provides blockchain infrastructure to developers and companies. "They represent a new kind of organization moving at hyper speed," said Bunsen. Investor Cooper Turley, who has helped build several popular DAOs, says they're like an "internet community with a shared bank account."
"Basically, a small group of people come together to form a chat group, and then they decide to pull capital together, [typically] using an Ethereum wallet," Turley previously told CNBC....
Though the group will still fundraise in cryptocurrency, the idea is to give people partial ownership, in which they will participate in deciding how the team is run... The BuyTheBroncos group also has a pretty solid plan B. Organizers tell CNBC the more realistic goal is to raise around 25% of the money needed to place the winning bid, and from there, join forces with a consortium of more traditional buyers to make up the difference.
The group's Twitter account had less than 50 followers before CNBC's article — but 390 followers after the article ran. And O'Brien tells CBNC his ultimate goal is "to essentially open up peoples' eyes to what a DAO can do in the real world and make a tangible connection between this web3 life and the real world.
"Our thought is that it accelerates DAO adoption for solving real-world problems such as food scarcity or unhoused peoples."
Is this even possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that they couldn't pool enough crypto to account for $4B, but could that crypto be turned liquid immediately to be able to make the purchase outright? Would such a sudden conversion of crypto into fiat actually tank the value of the crypto by the simple action of selling it suddenly? Or could you find a bank willing to finance that amount off no real asset collateral other than crypto?
Not that I believe for one iota of a second that the famously tightly controlled NFL owners group, a group that famously is wary of even letting black people own teams and is a notorious old school boys club let such a transaction take place. Nothng exemplifies their attitude better than the fact they have banned the practice of a non profit public ownership systems like the Green Bay Packers have. Can't have the fans have any control over their own teams, that just won't do.
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And let's not even talk about how, when this inevitably fails, it's going to be insanely costly to reimburse the people that 'gave' crypto to this DAO. If they even bother.
The gas costs for this sort of thing are insane, and it was never designed with this in mind.
Re:Is this even possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not believe for one moment that they could turn $4B worth of crypto into real currency in any sensible timeframe, if at all.
I REALLY want to see them try, because I'm pretty sure it'd break enough things to expose the whole sham, but I think the commenters saying that the NFL won't let it happen are probably spot-on.
Re:Is this even possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
They won't be allowed to buy the team. You have to have one owner with at least 30% of the team and no more than 24 people in the ownership group in total (though I think there is some wiggle room for spouses), and a combined net worth to show you're not buying the team leveraged (you can get loans, you just have to be able to pay them off instantly if needed).
The NFL will shoot this down instantly and they won't even be allowed in the room to appeal.
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The DAO meets the goal. The basic formula of these things
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I can't wait to see who runs off with the keys to the wallet.
I'm only sad that I didn't think of something like this first...
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Most of these Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are not distributed, not autonomous and barely qualify as organizations.
The original idea was a smart contract, code that would be executed on the blockchain. Problem is it turns out that it's quite hard to write code that isn't exploitable, and that does useful things in the real world like buying real things. So most of them just don't bother. They might use blockchain to collect the currency or to do some trivial management functions, but it's act
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Not to mention the not so minor fact that, since the chain is immutable, any bugs or exploits found in the original code can't be fixed...
Crowd funding private assets (Score:2)
Can't imagine what will go wrong.
It becomes a public company, like any big company (Score:2)
I don't know in what sense you mean "people private assets", so I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you.
It would become essentially like most large companies - a public company, owned by anyone who wants to become an owner. Aka share - someone who holds a share of the ownership. There's nothing unusual about that. That's assuming the charter allows an owner to sell their share to someone else, without approval of the other owners.
There's no *logical* point in involving cryptocurrency here. One could do t
I forgot to finish the first thought (Score:2)
I forgot to finish the initial thought.
Yes, it's partly a private good.
A public company.
Although com to think of it, a football team is unusual in that it's a mixed private good and public good. There are only a certain number of seats in the stadium, so in that sense it's a private good. The number of people watching on TV is unlimited and fans like it when there are more fans, so in that sense it's a public good.
(Private goods are those for which only one or a small number of people can use the item - onl
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Neither can I... wait, let me fantasize a little.
Those were the first three I could come up with. Come o
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Neither can I... wait, let me fantasize a little.
Those were the first three I could come up with. Come on and step up. Keep the snowball rolling. Can we reach 100 scenarios before the thread runs dry?
Scenarios two and three are unlikely. If they use the same procedural model as the Green Bay Packers (which is effectively a publicly-traded company), then internal disagreement and unclear ownership structure wouldn't be issues.
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I never gave metrics for the probability. But unclear ownership structure not a problem when people can create pseudonymous wallets? Are the owners not entitled to something? And how should that be implemented if they aren't known (by other means than their crypto wallet). As for money laundering, not sure why you omitted it from my scenario.
But feel free to come up with better!
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Everything else you said is pretty much correct, though. I also thought of the problem that having ownership shares tied only to cryptocurrency walle
Smoke and mirrors (Score:3)
How does this "accelerate DAO adoption for solving real-world problems such as food scarcity or unhoused peoples"? Those sound like applications where ownership is not an issue, it's simply a collection for a good cause. And a crowdfunding drive to pay for my private jet isn't going to accelerate adoption of Gofundme to help flood victims or whatever either. Also, wtf does any of this have to do with "a tangible connection between this web3 life and the real world"? More smoke and mirrors.
Re: The NFL is dead man walking (Score:2)
Super Bowl LVI Ratings Soar to Record Heights [si.com]
On a story about how a team is going to sell for $4 Billion. Real world disagrees apparently.
The secret is to have something different (it's both woke and racist all at once!) everyone can complain about which means no one actually cares in a substantive way.
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> The concussion issue is causing parents to dissuade kids from playing the sport. The pool of kids is going to drop quickly
If both offense and defense are somewhat less skilled, it won't make a difference per TV sports. Generally the more you play the better you get such that it will mostly even out.
> The last of the old guard retired(Tom Brady)
Only Patriot fans miss that double-cheater.
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Parents might not want their kids to play, but the promise of big money by making it in the NFL will, in my opinion, keep the farm system of grade school, high school, and college going.
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I agree with the first point, or at least I hope you're right. The lower levels will be a lot more about acquiring skills and a lot less about running into each other, and this is already happening. When they are of the age to reach the NFL, maybe the NFL will be able to adapt the game to its talent pool. If not, oh well. I saw these guys playing dodgeball at the Probe Owl, and you know what, I'd watch that as a professional sport, if it's played by elite athletes.
On the second point -- no, they know their
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"The Punting Ponzis" (Score:1)
best name
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The Fungible Fumblers?
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The owners association wonâ(TM)t approve this (Score:5, Informative)
They already donâ(TM)t like the ownership structure of Green Bay and Iâ(TM)ve heard that they would actively block anything similar. They really want a few key people to have ownership stake enough to make key decisions. If they have to negotiate changes to the league with hundreds of people itâ(TM)ll be a non starter.
Re:The owners association wonâ(TM)t approve t (Score:5, Informative)
Actually league rules already prohibit it. Max 32 owners per team and one person must own 30%
Much like every other time the cryptodorks were going to change everything they didn't even bother to look into the basics.
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Much like every other time the cryptodorks were going to change everything they didn't even bother to look into the basics.
In the summary it explains that their goal is just to raise about a quarter of the capital and then team up with "more traditional buyers" to make up the difference, guessing that they think their org will count as a single "owner", along the lines of a single VC org. However, sometimes incompetence is indistinguishable from malice - it's just as likely this is a scam, there's going to be a "theft" and someone ends up on a beach with tiny umbrellas in their drinks.
Re:The owners association wonâ(TM)t approve t (Score:5, Informative)
It's now 24 owners max, they recently dropped the total number of owners.
Are / Is? (Score:2)
In NFL news, an American football team — the Denver Broncos — "are up for sale," reports CNBC, ...
So... *is* the one team up for sale or *are* its many members -- maybe sold off individually? (sigh)
The road ahead (Score:2)
"Our thought is that it accelerates DAO adoption for solving real-world problems such as food scarcity or unhoused peoples."
As the saying goes: "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions"
I see fights coming in stadium owners suites (Score:3)
Wait until the DAO board members representing the Honduran fentanyl cartel get into a tiff with the Russian ransomware members over team management policy. AK rounds are going to fly.
Packers (Score:3)
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That's another issue entirely. I'm talkoing about the team owners, not the stadium owners. This would be the first time that a team is owned by a Bitcoin money laundering fund, and I don't think the NFL is raedy for this.
Re: Packers (Score:2)
This isn't a new idea, just a new application (Score:2)
Using crypto schemes to create a capital pool is like when Michael Milken started creating junk bonds in the 80s for companies that couldn't secure financing.
You're basically dumping money into something / ***someone*** that you have no knowledge of or understanding of. Might as well be one of those guys who ran to Wall Street Bets subreddit and threw their money into GME and prayed they didn't get screwed. Most of them took it up the rear sideways, but hey. Throw your money into something you don't und
Translation (Score:2)
Some people want to buy a football team using other people's money.
It will go badly, and a lot of money will be lost on refund fees [slashdot.org].
Slow down. NFTs first (Score:3)
Can we please stop piling stupid on stupid so quickly? We haven't even finished laughing at the morons behind NFTs yet, and you DAO nutjobs please wait your turn, we can't mock you right now, we don't have enough spare capacity.
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They just misspelled NFT and got a little confused.
call them selfs Globex Corporation when they do (Score:2)
call them selfs Globex Corporation when they do buy it.
Lets create a DAO to salvage that burning ship (Score:2)
We could be pirates! It is in international waters and abandoned by the crew so we could have salvage rights to all those sweet rides.
Makes just as much sense...