Australian whistleblower and journalist Julian Assange is to collaborate with digital artist Pak, who is behind the non-fungible token (NFT) “The Merge”. The project will be released on 7 February, the day of Assange’s extradition request to Sweden. A thousand open edition NFTs should be available for sale as well as a single dynamic NFT
Censored NFTs
A collaboration between Julian Assange, the famous whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks, and Pak, a digital artist who has been successful in the non-fungible token (NFT) scene for several years, will be launched on 7 February.
The project will be called “Censored” and is expected to bring together a thousand open edition NFTs, as well as 2 exclusive “dynamic” NFTs that will adapt according to the smart contracts
Censored is a collaboration with Julian Assange.
It’s about you.It consists of two parts, a dynamic 1/1 and a dynamic open edition, for you all to participate.
It will be here on February 7th. https://t.co/QvKlk3oIs8
– Pak (@muratpak) January 30, 2022
The funds raised should go to the Wau Holland Foundation, which has already shown its support for Julian Assange by raising over $1.2 million in donations for his defence since 2009, and which is also responsible for collecting donations from the WikiLeaks website.
They support freedom of communication and, through their moral courage, the defence of Julian Assange,” said Gabriel Shipton, regarding the Wau Holland Foundation.
The various NFTs in the two collections are expected to reference Assange’s journalistic and whistleblowing work, on topics as diverse as corruption, US war crimes and espionage.
The release date of the project is not insignificant: on 7 February, a British court will decide whether Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to face trial on sexual assault charges.
NFTs for political use
Julian Assange is an Australian journalist who has been on trial since 2010 over WikiLeaks’ revelations about how the US-led coalition operated in Iraq and Afghanistan during the second Gulf War.
In addition to this case, two Swedish women have accused him of rape, which is why Sweden requested Assange’s extradition on 7 February.
He is also facing up to 175 years in prison for publishing official documents compromising ministers, heads of state and the UN secretary general about sabotaging climate change summits.
Pak is a digital artist whose identity is still unknown, but he is already the author of successful collections of NFTs, and also the creator of the collaborative NFT ‘The Merge’, which sold for $91.8 million on the Nifty Gateway platform. This is the most expensive NFT ever sold, ahead of two works by artist Beeple.
This collaboration is likely to cause a stir, and is reminiscent of the story of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the website Silk Road, who was jailed for life and sold an NFT for ETH 1,446 in December 2021, or $6.2 million at the time of the auction.
