Advisors with philanthropic clients, especially those interested in art and/or NFTs, or human space travel, or giving to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in particular—or all of the above—will doubtless get a kick out of part of Wednesday’s launch of Inspriation4.
Advisors have likely been seeing a lot about NFTs, which use the same blockchain principles employed in cryptocurrency to program and record identifiers, transactions and "ownership" of a digital asset.
With its launch window set to open at 8:02 pm Wednesday, this first all-amateur-crewed mission will orbit Earth for three days aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
While it has numerous purposes, the entire mission is also a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. One small part of that overall effort is an online auction—set to begin at launch time—of some 50 non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs, all of them space related that will go toward the $200 million money-raising effort. One hundred percent of the auction proceeds will go to St. Jude.
Billionaire and Mission Commander Jared Isaacman got the fund-raising ball rolling by writing a $100 million check directly to St. Jude—the auction and other mission-related fundraisers have only $100 million left to raise.
Among the artists is crewmember and geoscientist Sian Proctor. Her piece entitled “My Genie” will be sold, along with more than four-dozen others ranging from “Toys For Tardigrades” by Hipworth and Moderna, to “Circle of Light” by Ilya.
The Los Angeles-based creative agency Subtractive and the sustainability platform Aerial organized the auction, which is being powered by Origin Protocol Inc.
