Infamous “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli is almost as good at hocking his possessions on eBay as he is at jacking up the price of critical AIDS-related medication.
Less than two days after posting the world’s only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan double album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” on eBay, bidding on the CD has already passed the $1 million threshold — and there’s still eight days left to go.
Shkreli, who became “the most hated man in America” after his company raised the price of antiparasitic drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent, shelled out $2 million for the disc in 2015,
making it most expensive work of music ever sold. He was convicted of securities fraud in Aug., 2017l, and is now awaiting sentencing, but he insists he isn’t selling the album because he’s cash-strapped.
“I am not selling to raise cash — my companies and I have record amounts of cash on hand,” said Shkreli in the eBay post.
Now, the 34-year-old said he’s hoping “someone with a bigger heart for music can be found for this one-of-a-kind piece and make it available for the world to hear.” Continuing his newfound altruistic approach, Shkreli said he’ll be giving half of the final bid to charity.
“Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was auctioned off in 2015 with a binding stipulation that it cannot be commercially exploited until 2103, though the owner of the CD is allowed to release the individual songs for free, or play the album at listening parties. Shkreli drew outrage after he was revealed as the winning bidder and even Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killah called him a “super villain” at the time.
For his part, Shkreli seemed to glee in public scorn, even threatening to destroy the album if Donald Trump wasn’t elected president in 2016. His purported change of heart aside, he’s is still keeping destruction of the album on the table — in his eBay posting, he said “at any time I may cancel this sale and I may even break this album in frustration.”
So much for having “a bigger heart for music.”
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.