Peter Thiel-Backed BitDAO Votes to Invest $6.5 Million Into Ethereum NFT Collective PleasrDAO

BitDAO, one of the largest decentralized investment funds in the world, has today unanimously voted to channel $6.5 million into NFT investment collective PleasrDAO. 

The exact terms of the investment haven’t been disclosed “due to legal requirements,” according to the proposal, but 95% of the investment will be paid in Ethereum and the stablecoin Tether, with another 5% to be paid in BitDAO’s governance token, BIT. 

Founded last year, BitDAO has already amassed a treasury of $2.2 billion through a series of mega-raises. The organization has attracted big-name backers, including Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, and the Founders Fund. 

DAO stands for “decentralized autonomous organization,” and most DAOs essentially mimic the governance of shareholder-run companies—but on the blockchain. DAOs utilize smart contracts, self-enforcing digital financial contracts, and the members of these organizations who hold the most governance tokens usually call the shots. 

Jonathan Allen, one of the proposal's authors and a managing partner at Mirana, told Decrypt that "it made perfect sense to further align" with PleasrDAO.

"BitDAO has previously passed proposals working with other industry leaders in various verticals such as Forte for gaming (Game7), Matter Labs for scaling (zkDAO), and eight of the top university groups in the world with EduDAO," he said

More details about how the funds will be used are expected to be released soon, said Allen.

What is PleasrDAO?

PleasrDAO was initially formed in March 2021, when a group of investors pooled together $525,000 to buy an NFT of digital artist pplpleasr’s Uniswap ad. An NFT is a unique token that acts as a receipt and can be used to prove ownership over digital assets, such as artwork, video clips, or just about anything online.

The DAO has now morphed into an all-around digital art acquisition collective, purchasing everything from Edward Snowden’s first NFT to the only extant copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s album “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin.”

Last June, PleasrDAO bought the original NFT of the Doge meme for $4 million. The DAO fractionalized the digital asset on fractional.art into $DOG tokens. Those tokens then hit a market cap of over $500 million just days after its launch.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarity that PleasrDAO was formed in March 2021, not 2022.