The only reason they should have spent $2.6m at auction is, if there was another bidder taking them that high.

Short of someone literally bidding against them with the foreknowledge of their maximum bid, it seems very unlikely that anyone else would have gone close to that number from the $35k expected price.

A more sane approach if they realised that someone was bidding the up would be to duck out of that auction and by any of the other copies of the book that exist, likely for faaar less than $2.6m

Due to the nature of the DAO, their maximum bid was known beforehand, and I don’t know if there was a mechanism to bail out at that point, and with short notice.

Edit: Except the person/people tasked with doing the actual bidding making an executive decision to, but would that have been within their mandate?

But why buy the book, for any amount? It was already available scanned to everyone for free online. The purchase literally didn’t further any of their stated goals, unless they thought it would give them rights to the IP.

It seems clear that the purchase of the book was a purpose in and of itself.

Why would people come together to do that? Owning a copy of the book gives them no rights or possibilities to do anything they couldn’t before, except keeping it at someone’s house or do viewings of it in meatspace. Is the latter the idea?