The particular piece of digital art is receiving promotion on the Foundation platform. The user @PleasrDAO was the winner of the bid by paying a total of 2,224 ethers.
Former US National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden created his non-fungible token, or NFT, and later auctioned it for $ 5.5 million on the Ethereum network. Stay Free’s artwork shows a beautiful combination of both court documents and a silhouette of Snowden’s face in the same image.
User @PleasrDAO acquired the piece by winning the auction with a bid of 2,224 ethers on the NFT Foundation market. The request lasted 24 hours and began with an offer of 2 ETH, that is, for almost 5,000 dollars. In the final minutes, @PleasrDAO and @aaa bid for the last time, but the second participant did not reach his 2,021 ETH or nearly 5 million dollars.
Snowden followed the auction live and posted messages on Twitter about the event. Snowden also mentioned the Foundation for Press Freedom, which will be the organization that will serve as the receptor of the funds as a donation. Snowden is the current president of said foundation.
“We have a winner, Internet friends. I desire to thank you all who followed this auction the last 24 hours, and deepest thanks from EVERYONE on @FreedomofPress to those who bid on charity events. They help us make a better world. Stay Free!” Said Snowden.
The court documents in Stay Free evoke the decision of a United States of America court on the mass surveillance of the National Security Agency. The court ruled that the Patriot Act did not permit any data collection and telephone surveillance of US citizens. In other words, the NSA’s monitoring broke the law.
In 2013 Snowden started a revolution by leaking NSA documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers. These documents described several clandestine mass surveillance programs active in the United States of America, including PRISM and XKeyscore. The revelation generated a global concern that led to criticism from every corner.
Snowden is a Fervent Believer in Privacy
The former American tech consultant, who currently lives in Russia, is a fervent believer in privacy. Snowden qualifies privacy as one of the most fundamental rights people have, and that needs complete protection in every area.
In an interview released in January 2018, Snowden stated that privacy is the tap for all other rights. Rights come directly from privacy because it is the right to self. Privacy is the right to set the mind free.
Those same thoughts about privacy are now guiding Snowden through the world of cryptocurrencies. The insider has also said that bitcoin “sucks” for its lack of privacy in user transactions.
Snowden has praised privacy-oriented projects like Zcash or Monero in the past. Regarding this type of characteristics, the message of the computer scientist is clear: “if it is not private, it is not safe.”
By: Jenson Nuñez
