DENVER – The Denver Broncos are Huge discountand a group of crypto enthusiasts are aiming to raise more than $4 billion using a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, to make it their own.
You can think of a DAO like a group of individuals performing in concert without a single leader. Unlike a group of ordinary investors, DAOs rely on cryptocurrency technology to track and validate participation in the pool, as well as to facilitate the inner workings of how to raise and distribute large amounts of cash. This group includes an eclectic mix of lawyers, accountants, software developers, professional athletes, and at least one mathematician.
One of the leaders of the cause is Sean O’Brien, who has spent more than a decade in the Ciscoof the legal department, before leaving the corporate world to run several small businesses with his wife.
“We know that sounds a little crazy, but it also gets a little bit shabby,” says O’Brien. “The goal is basically to establish an infrastructure so that fans from all walks of life can be owners of the Denver Broncos.”
Highly rated professional soccer team just under 4 billion dollarsand it is expected to collect the largest price tag in North American sports history, according to ESPN.
The group’s trustees said in a statement that the goal is sell the team at the beginning of the 2022 NFL season. O’Brien told CNBC that while smart contracts and crypto wallets are set up, their DAO won’t officially go live until the first week of March, so the “BuyTheBroncos” cause will need to quickly give many bases to have a chance.
But the crypto collective has a secret weapon in Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who recently announced plans to accept crypto for state tax payments this summer. On Friday, the pro-crypto legislator told CNBC on the sidelines ETHDenver — a major conference devoted to dissecting ethereum’s current and future use cases — that he would be “delighted” if their efforts bear fruit.
Governor Polis said: “I am delighted to be a part of it myself.
“The challenge will be it’s going to cost a lot of money … but you know what, if your imagination is big enough, it can happen. And anything I can do to make it happen. Really, I’m happy,” continued the governor.
Denver Broncos player Drew Lock passes the Kansas City Captain.
Getty Images / Dustin Bradford
They say this DAO is different
According to Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuikNode, a company that provides blockchain infrastructure for developers and companies, DAOs take the coordination of resources on the internet to the next level.
“They represent a new type of organization that is moving at lightning speed,” says Bunsen.
Investor Cooper Turley, who has helped build several popular DAOs, says they are 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 raise capital together, [typically] using Ethereum wallet, “Turley previously told CNBC.
The BuyTheBroncos team joins a long list of DAOs pooling funds to buy real-world assets. In July 2021, PleasrDAO acquired copy of the album Wu-Tang Clan once owned by Martin Shkreli cho 4 million dollarsand in November 2021, a group of crypto investors established the ConstitutionDAO, raked in $47 million worth of ether in a week to try and buy a rare, first edition copy of the United States Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction. Although the team did not place a winning bid, the movement captured the world’s attention and helped popularize the concept of crypto crowdfunding.
The ConstitutionDAO’s rallying call was “WAGBI” or “we’ll all buy it.” But in reality, the thousands of investors including that DAO will not receive fractional ownership of the material. Instead, they will become holders of a cryptocurrency token called “Everybody” that will grant them certain voting rights over the future of the document.
Denver Broncos cheerleaders perform during the game against the LA Chargers at Empower Field.
Getty Images / Justin Edmonds
Derek Sorensen, a mathematician and computer science PhD student at the University of Cambridge, UK, who is advising BuyTheBroncos on how to structure the DAO, said: “Constitution DAO is essentially a fundraising activity.
“It’s like, we’re going to raise money, we’re going to buy this Constitution, you don’t own any of the Constitution or actually have any legal rights to anything about it. You can vote on where we put it, but there are no legal guarantees,” Sorensen continued.
Sorensen said BuyTheBroncosDAO will adopt a completely different governance structure. While the team will still be crowdfunding with crypto, the idea is to give people partial ownership, in which they will participate in deciding how the group is run. They also plan to form the group as a cooperative, similar to outdoor sports retailer REI, rather than an LLC, which they believe will exempt owners from some SEC regulations regarding invest in stocks.
Buy Denver Broncos
4 billion dollars seems like a huge amount of money, even though institutions like BitDAO, now have more than 2.3 billion dollars the value of crypto tokens on its balance sheet, shows that the endeavor is not entirely impossible.
“That’s certainly possible in the crypto world. That amount of money is not unprecedented,” Sorensen said. “I am very, very confident that this amount of money is completely doable in web3,” although Sorensen has stated in a disclaimer that he is an academic mathematician and, therefore, probably not. the best way to gauge the future success of the business.
So far, the BuyTheBroncos cause hasn’t had much traction. Its Twitter account had less than 50 followers as of time of publication, and O’Brien’s last two attempts to buy professional sports teams with the DAO were unsuccessful. But the origin story of the ConstitutionDAO has a similar tenor.
The 19-year-old ConstitutionDAO member Miguel Piedrafita told CNBC that the DAO Constitution was started primarily as a joke. He said that he and his friends saw an article about the Constitution posted on the auction block, and they started putting up memes about buying it. From there, the effort becomes a snowball.
“We set up Twitter, went to bed, and the next day we had a ton of followers. So we started working with legal teams, museums and Sotheby’s to try to get it all up and running. and as a result it worked,” says Piedrafita.
Carried away? Don’t underestimate the weak in crypto land.
The BuyTheBroncos team also has a pretty solid plan B. Organizers told CNBC the more realistic goal is to raise about 25% of the money needed to set the winning bid and, from there, partner with a consortium. include more traditional buyers to make up the Difference.
Even if BuyTheBroncosDAO fails, O’Brien is optimistic that the effort will spread awareness despite.
“While having a fan-owned Denver Broncos in a DAO-based system would be a great thing, it’s not our ultimate goal,” said O’Brien.
“We wanted this effort to fundamentally open people’s eyes to what DAOs can do in the real world and create a tangible connection between this web3 life and the real world. We think it will accelerate the adoption of DAOs to solve real-world problems such as food scarcity or underutilized people.”
But as Governor Polis pointed out, it would certainly be nice if these crypto enthusiasts can close the deal.
“I can’t play the favorites,” said Polis. Obviously whoever buys the team, we absolutely, we want a good owner, but this is going to be really remarkable for Colorado. if they can do it”.
