Bet on 2024 candidates now by buying shares to campaign urls
Inauguration is over and done with and the 2020 election is finally behind us. You know what that means: Time to think about 2024!
MSCHF, the group behind offbeat projects like Walt's Kitchen and "killing brands" on TikTok, had this forethought when they created In The Year 2024. They bought plenty of potential candidate domain names — such as ElectWest.com (for Kanye West) and MikePence4America.com (pretty obvious) — and are now "holding them for ransom."
What does this mean? MSCHF is domain squatting, or buying urls in the hopes of flipping them for more money. MSCHF broke the urls into 100 shares, which are available for purchase for one dollar each.
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If you buy shares for a url and MSCHF later sells it, you'll get a cut of the profit. The idea is that the urls for various politicians and celebrities will be so valuable that the campaigns will buy them in the future and you, having made this investment now, will benefit.
In the Year 2024's manifesto declares that politicians often run for their own self-interest or a corporation's self interest while they tout being "for the people." MSCHF believes this move can force them to actually be for the people. "Let us collectively hold hostage those assets a campaign needs," the manifesto states, "and force a prospective candidate to pay ransom back to the crowd before commencing their voyage of public aggrandizement."
The manifesto goes on to reiterate that some people think betting markets are better election predictors than polls. In reality, both bookies and polls can influence how people vote. MSCHF wants to take this influence to another level with In the Year 2024. "By betting on an asset a candidate will be forced to buy back," they state in the manifesto, "these bets will interface with campaigns directly."
As of now, we don't know if The Rock or Oprah or Trump Jr. will run in 2024 — but if we're lucky, we can make some money on our predictions. We just have to wait a few years.
UPDATE: Jan. 25, 2021, 4:57 p.m. EST An earlier version of this story reported that MSCHF broke each url into 1,000 shares instead of 100.
Anna Iovine is the associate editor of features at Mashable. Previously, as the sex and relationships reporter, she covered topics ranging from dating apps to pelvic pain. Before Mashable, Anna was a social editor at VICE and freelanced for publications such as Slate and the Columbia Journalism Review. Follow her on Bluesky.
