When Shkreli was later convicted of securities fraud, the U.S. government seized the album as an asset. It was eventually sold to , a digital art collective, for $4 million in 2021. The Myth of the "RAR"
In 2015, the album was sold at auction for $2 million, making it the most expensive piece of music ever sold. The buyer was later revealed to be Martin Shkreli, the "Pharma Bro" who gained notoriety for hiking the price of a life-saving drug. The sale sparked outrage among Wu-Tang fans and even members of the group. Ghostface Killah famously feuded with Shkreli, calling the situation a slap in the face to the fans who built the Wu-Tang legacy. The Quest for the Leak once upon a time in shaolin rar
Then, in 2018, Shkreli was convicted of securities fraud. As part of his forfeiture, the U.S. government seized his assets—including the Wu-Tang album. The physical box is now believed to be held in a government vault, inaccessible even to the public. When Shkreli was later convicted of securities fraud, the U
Furthermore, RAR’s ability to split archives into multi-volumes could have been used to distribute segments of the album to different stakeholders (e.g., RZA, the Wu-Tang corporation, a law firm), meaning no single party held a complete unlockable file without collaboration. This layered security is crucial. The famous 88-year contractual gag order (expiring in 2103) preventing public sale is not enforced by magic or copyright law alone—it is technically enforced by that RAR file’s password. Upon the album’s sale, the password was legally transferred to Shkreli. When he later forfeited his assets following his fraud conviction, the fate of that password became a matter of federal court and eventual NFT-related controversy. The Myth of the "RAR" In 2015, the
The current owner, the digital art collective , has been finding creative ways to share the music without violating the 88-year ban:
The choice of the RAR format (Roshal ARchive) is not incidental. Developed by Eugene Roshal, RAR offers robust features superior to basic ZIP compression for this specific purpose. Most critically, it supports strong AES-256 encryption. By placing the high-quality master audio files (likely WAV or FLAC) inside a RAR container with a complex, 15+ character password, the creators ensured that even if the digital files were copied, leaked, or intercepted, they would remain unplayable gibberish. The RAR acted as a digital vault.
In 2016, Shkreli leaked a RAR file containing of every track. This file spread widely. The snippets confirmed the album’s density: featuring Ghostface Killah, RZA, Method Man, and even a young Canadian soprano named Cilvaringz (who co-produced the album). However, these snippets were of laughably low bitrate (96kbps) and intentionally clipped.