Original $4M Doge NFT meme auctioned off in 17 billion pieces

The $4 million NFT depicting the original Doge meme is set to be fractionalized into ERC-20 Tokens, and auctioned off in pieces.

The owner of the Shibu Inu depicted in the beloved meme, Atsuko Sato sold the Doge NFT for 1696.9 Ether, or $4 million on June 12 to art-focused decentralized autonomous organisation, PleasrDAO.

Starting from Sept.1 at 5pm UTC PleasrDAO will offer exposure to the Doge NFT via a fractionalization that will see the nonfungible token broken down into 16,969,696,969 ERC-20 tokens named “$DOG”.

According to a blog post from PleasrDAO, 20% of the total $DOG supply will be available for purchase initially, with the sale being hosted on open-source smart contract platform, Miso.

After the launch, $DOG will be available for trade on fractional.art, or via decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Uniswap and SushiSwap. The idea behind the $DOG tokens is based on its price  increasing as the original Doge NFT goes up in value.

Holders of $DOG will even be able to vote on what they think the valuation of the original NFT should be, which is set to be re-auctioned at a date determined by the PleasrDAO community in the future.

“We will ensure The Doge NFT does not go up for auction until we feel $DOG has reached full meme escape velocity and is coupled with a strong, thriving community,” the blog post read.

However, the regulatory framework surrounding fractionalized NFTs appears to be in a gray area. SEC commissioner Hester Peirce —also known as “Crypto Mom” — warned NFT issuers back in March to be careful with selling “fractional interests,” as they could be deemed as investment products:

“You better be careful that you’re not creating something that’s an investment product — that is a security.”

Doge is attracting top talent

In other doge related news, Japanese-American tennis star Naomi Osaka told Bloomberg on Aug. 31 that she was considering investing in crypto after her interest was piqued by DOGE.

Osaka’s agent suggested investing in crypto, but she said she had already started learning about crypto after seeing the abundance of hype surrounding DOGE that was flooding her social media feeds.

“I was actually just talking with my agent about cryptocurrencies,” Osaka said. “I know that online, everything is getting bigger. I remember reading about Dogecoin … there’s going to be something new and interesting that’s going to pop up.”

The 23-year-old has won consecutive Grand Slam titles for the past four years, and has already entered the NFT space via a partnership with Tom Brady’s Autograph platform, to drop a series of tokenized collectibles late last month.