Image source @ Visual China
Text | Magnesium.com
In Kevin Kelly's book What Technology Wants, the last part discusses the "direction" – after going through informatization, the need for technology now points to digitalization: what the real world is, we have the ability to store it in the computer world, relative to informatization, which is supplemented by people and machines, and the representation of digitalization is machine-based and human-supplemented.
Thus, when the dominoes of the metaverse concept are quietly torn down, the real world today seems to be torn apart, and more and more new things are emerging, and a series of commercial phenomena associated with it, including digital collections.
The concept of digital collection comes from the popular NFT abroad. NFT (Non-Homogeneous Token) is a technical standard on the blockchain that gives the characteristics of blockchain technology to digital artworks, so that these virtual objects have unique credentials that cannot be tampered with. What's surprising is its commercial potential: On March 11 this year, crypto artist Beeple's NFT work Everydays: The First 5000 Days (a collage photo in JPG format) was auctioned for $69 million, making New York Times headlines.
On December 21, 2021, LGD Esports Club launched the LGD Commemorative Edition Series Badge, the first digital collection series to enter the Meta universe, on the Red Cave Digital Collection (hereinafter referred to as the Red Cave Digital Collection).
The figure | provide screenshots from netizens
Two days before the official release, many players have begun to "rub their fists". They "value" the style of the badge, the number of issues, etc. The badge is priced at a unified price of 25.9 yuan, and they estimate its future appreciation potential. By noon on December 21, some people had prepared accelerators, and some people even joked about running to the signal tower to prepare for the robbery. "You have to have an invitation code to grab it, and it's too hard."
This scene seems to be no different from any limited-edition product sale scene, but the difference is that it is not a badge for sale, just a picture. Less than half a minute after going online, 3154 copies were all sold out, rushing to the Weibo hot search list, and to a certain extent, the company behind the platform was also hotly discussed.
According to public information, the underlying technology of the red hole is from a Hangzhou blockchain company, Qu chain Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Qu Chain Technology).
According to the information of Tianyancha, Qulian Technology has completed five financings of Pre-A, A, B, B+, and C. Moreover, after the C round of financing, the company said that it officially entered the ranks of unicorns in the industry.
It is worth noting that in this financing, the leading investment institution is the well-known fund company E Fangda. In addition, the follow-up investment institution Yinhong Fund is also "not small", behind which is the investment "old cannon" Gong Hongjia took the lead. The latter has always maintained a high degree of enthusiasm for hard technology investment, and the angel round investment in Hikvision 20 years ago brought it a return of more than 20,000 times (there was a reduction in the middle), which was once regarded as a "myth" in the venture capital circle.
Why exactly can digital collections make capital collectives "head"? For the average player, behind the bubble and spectacle, what is the appeal of a virtual artwork itself? What kind of interaction do these virtual, mobile-only collections interact with their personal lives? The author chatted with several players on the red hole number and tried to analyze the new market standing on the cusp.
A detail worth adding is that most of the digital collections currently sold on the Red Cave Digital Collection are priced at 9.9 or 19.9 or 25.9 yuan.
01 Young people's first experience of art collecting
"Digital collections are basically paid for by young people." Zhang Chi (pseudonym) from Wenzhou revealed that in the digital collection exchange group he joined, it is rare to see anyone over the age of 35, and more than half of them are post-95s.
Talking about the reasons why young people have such a heat for digital collections, Zhang Chi said that some of them take this as a way of financial management, and these people have also experienced "flipping shoes" and "flipping hands", and now the new outlet is digital collection.
Figure | Respondents provided screenshots
Zhang Chi told the author that the differences between men and women in the group are also very obvious. "Most of the groups have a male-to-female ratio of 73, and even some extreme groups have 80% male players."
It can be seen that female users are not interested in digital collections, even if they have long been in the eyes of the public as some kind of collectibles or wealth management products.
"In a thousand-person QQ group I joined, the top provinces and cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Shandong and Zhejiang, it can be said that either first-tier (cities) or coastal (cities)" In fact, it is not difficult to understand, the level of economic development and education level determine whether young people can access the concept of NFT. Obviously, coastal areas have "innate advantages".
Zhang Chi, who has just been "in the pit" for a few months, has always been grumpy about not grabbing the LGD limited badge. He told the author that at that time, the number of ant chain users was only tens of thousands, "very good to grab." He analyzed that "in the future, more and more users, the circulation of the collection may increase significantly, and when the time comes, the front grabs rare products." ”
Not only that, Zhang Chi also believes that the price of this digital collection is relatively cheap, the technical operation threshold is also low, unlike foreign NFTs, which also need to be purchased with virtual currency. For Zhang Chi, the digital collection has brought him a more accessible collection opportunity.
"So glad I have a digital collection." As a generation that grew up under the development of the Internet, Zhang Chi, born in 1990, quickly accepted the concept of digital collection, "If you really buy physical antiques, you also need a special collection space, but also worry about moisture, theft, maintenance, the real cultural relics collection must also have a knowledge reserve threshold - you will worry about buying fakes, and virtual collections do not have this trouble." ”
Xiao Qiao (pseudonym), who is in the same WeChat player group as Zhang Chi, was lucky enough to grab three LGD badges, which can be exchanged for an out-of-print physical badge of LGD. However, he is not an e-sports enthusiast, this is the first time he feels that the badge has a scientific and technological aesthetic. In the end, he gave the physical badge to an LGD fan friend, leaving his own digital collection.
What is the need to spend money on an image that everyone can download and watch? Little Joe explained to the author, "It is indivisible, it has data, it can prove that this thing is yours, it is like a real estate certificate for a house." ”
Figure | Little Joe's Tiger Cat Maid Collection
Xiao Qiao told the author that he generally looks at the number of releases (looking at rarity) when selecting collections, and the other is to look at the edge of the eyes and the cultural values behind them.
Speaking of his treasure collection, Xiao Qiao's words were full of irrepressible excitement, which was a digital collection of "Yue Wang Gou Jian Sword" authorized by the Hubei Provincial Museum.
"At a little, this thing will show your name", this "proof", gives him a kind of pleasure like collecting real cultural relics, it stems from a most primitive human desire to possess, "you have it, and it is connected with the ancient history and heroes behind it." ”
At present, he has more than 40 collections, and when he is idle, he will open the red hole or ant chain, enlarge and reduce these collections, and look at the details. If it is a 3D work, it can also be rotated to view. Through 3D technology, people can see the lines, gems, and inscriptions on a 3D "Yue Wang Hook Sword" at a very close distance, "the gap is just untouchable."
Little Joe also said that he rarely mentions his collection to his relatives and friends around him — in fact, most digital collectors can only share this happiness with their peers. Judging a person's acceptance of digital collections depends largely on the other person's online experience and knowledge of the Internet — for example, his parents have been running wholesale stores for a living, and he once advised them to open an online store, but they never listened. As a result, his parents still don't understand what he's busy with on his phone.
02 There is a risk of foam
Xia Xing (not his real name) is an old player of the NFT.
On the public blockchain platform Ethereum, he owns 3 or 40 NFTs, and on the Alipay digital collection platform, he owns nearly 60. He works as a program developer at a game company in Guangzhou, and as an Internet technology enthusiast, he noticed NFT assets when he first came into contact with blockchain.
At present, the most expensive NFT he bought is worth 1 ether, when he started, 1 ether was equivalent to 1,000 US dollars, and now, the price of the coin has risen to more than 4,000 US dollars. On one of the world's largest NFT platforms, he also works with the company's art colleagues on NFTs (colleagues draw, he casts), at very low prices, around 0.02 to 0.05 ether.
Xia Xing said that on Ethereum, people usually pay the most attention to works that sell for hundreds of yuan, such as the "cryptopunk" series, in contrast to his and his national interest works.
Figure | "Captain of Mars Ecosystem #001" on Binance Smart Chain (Captain Mars 001)
"Most digital collection buyers only vaguely know some NFT concepts, and also know that digital collections can make them money, which seems to be enough for some people who are accustomed to single-threaded behavior," Xia Xing told the author, "Those foreign pixel works are not marketable in China, before most of the domestic follow-up, plus the capacity of the chain has not kept up." Therefore, the category of digital collections is the best, much higher than the cultural value of those pixel paintings. But don't play as an art trade, really play will be played by people in the circle. ”
Reuters has also quoted analysts as saying that as an emerging thing, the metacosm is also facing many risks, such as asset bubbles.
In fact, the source of value for all NFT digital products does not stem from the indivisibility and indivisibility of NFTs, but from the digital products themselves.
As we all know, before NFT technology, the transactional value of data was always a metaphysical concept. While the content of the data may be the result of the creator's painstaking efforts and is extremely valuable, it is precisely because the best work surfaces on the data, and in the replicable data network, everything becomes completely scarce and worthless.
"(With) the advent of blockchain-based NFT contracts, digital assets have been given indivisibility and immutability to be written into the standardized part of the contract, while the non-standardized part has given creators the opportunity to freely formulate transaction contracts, thus providing the possibility for the operation of the metaverse." According to Xia Xing, at present, there are many blockchain bookkeeping systems in foreign countries with Ethereum as a data transaction, and platforms such as Ant Chain (Ali) and Zhixin Chain (Tencent) have also appeared in China.
Anything can be NFTs, but technology has never been a scarce commodity.
"Behind the deliberate hype, there may also be hidden risks of money laundering and illegal fundraising, and technology and art can coexist but should not replace each other."
03 Speculation value is also market-oriented
In his book From Good to Excellent, management expert Jim Colins once mentioned the flywheel effect: "No matter how great the end result, the transition from good to excellent is never achieved overnight—never a miracle event that is done right ends up producing an indicator." It must have been constantly pushing a heavy giant wheel, spinning in circles, and finally producing a breakthrough and starting to spin on its own. ”
The waves of the virtual world are also like flywheels - constantly rotating, rising higher than waves.
According to the forecast model built by analyst Willy Woo, by 2025, the number of users of digital assets may reach 1 billion people (equivalent to the number of Internet users in 2005), and the Internet penetration rate will exceed 20%, which will make digital assets expected to formally cross the gap and enter the early mass stage (see chart below).
Figure | network public information
Therefore, on the issue of hype, industry insider Gao Lin (pseudonym) has his own understanding, "In fact, for the NFT market, because there is no restriction on the production of NFTs, anyone can create NFTs, so the cost of NFT creation is still relatively low, and the NFTs that the market can really hype up must have the value of its hype." And not all NFTs can be hyped, so the hype of NFTs is differentiated. ”
Gao Lin said that the hype of art and other collections that are also in the real world is actually the same. For example, celebrity works and works with a certain era of history have a high hype value in the market, while most ordinary people or low-level works do not have a corresponding hype value, and the hype value should also be market-oriented.
William Gibson, the "father of cyberpunk," said: "The future is here, it's just not yet popular." ”。
So when we talk about cyber world, we shouldn't just talk about "hype" and "bubbles", this is the future world, and the future should not be useless.
In Xia Xing's view, Stephenson's greatest contribution is that he depicts the beautiful parts of the metacosm in "Avalanche" and imagines the scene of yellow hair hanging down and enjoying himself. (The novel ends with the protagonist of Secondary Two creating a security company in the Metaverse to maintain order in the world.) ）
Figure | Metavalse described in Avalanche
"Why is the digital world a young man's obsession? Because it is a highly free space without center, without centralization. Yu Hao, founder of Burning Wheat Technology and creator of trend art, shared his views. He is a post-80s, "I am also constantly learning," he said. "The young people of the future will be more and more receptive to the setting of the virtual world, and they are people born in the pristine digital world."
Raoul Pal, founder of business finance news site Real Vision, has also touched on this, arguing that what young people are thinking is "if you can't win the game, then change the rules of the game." He described america's millennials as 30 years old, "in reality they are heavily indebted, and they are poorer than the 30-year-olds of any era in the last 70 years." These young people have been failed by us (the older, social rule-makers), and why should they follow our rules when they can make their own? ”
Admittedly, Zhang Chi, Xiao Qiao, and Xia Xing are a group of speculators, some young people, a group of people with faith but no ability to take risks, who have a strong curiosity about new things; they all know nothing about what will happen after 180 days, after the transfer is released — but at least, even if they "lose", the loss is extremely low. In fact, this rush-to-buy experience brings them both the role of social currency and, more importantly, a simple, primitive collection pleasure – like philately.
It is undeniable that the flywheel effect has emerged.
According to The Wall Street News reported on May 13, 2021, Ether has broken through the $500 billion market capitalization milestone, climbing to $505 billion at one point, rising to 14th in global assets, surpassing financial giants JPMorgan Chase ($480 billion) and Visa ($496 billion).
This year, Bitcoin once surpassed Tesla, and Ethereum surpassed JPMorgan Chase.
Still, countless people think they are scams.