Recently, the sheep head of the twelve animal heads of the Yuanmingyuan that have been missing for many years "appeared" at the auction, and the price of the hammer fell 8141 yuan. At this price, you certainly can't buy real artifacts – in fact, consumers can only buy a virtual GIF at a high price, but with a unique global code. According to the relevant plans, the virtual GIF of the twelve beast heads will be unveiled at auction.
In recent years, this digital collection, known as "NFT" (non-homogeneous tokens), has spread around the world. Last year, an artist Beeple's "NFT" fetched a whopping $69.34 million at Christie's for just $100. In China, not only Internet platform giants have entered the field, but also a large number of startups have built platforms, attracting countless individual creators, artists, museums, and brands to release digital collections.
At present, some platforms adopt the sale method of direct purchase price combined with auction price, but this price difference may not be able to pick up leaks, and may also leave loopholes in market disorder. Taking the Yuanmingyuan beast head series as an example, the first of the twelve beasts in this period each has 10,000 copies, of which 9982 copies can be purchased directly with 29.9 yuan, and there is no limit, 90 days later can be transferred through the WeChat Mini Program, and only 1 copy is really auctioned. This is very subtle, because the high price of thousands of yuan auctioned for this 1 copy will become the reference price of the previous low-priced "same paragraph" transfer. And will it continue to the next issue? Industry insiders believe that it is not excluded that there are buyers who stock up on a large number of goods in the early stage, and then speculate on the auction price so that the high price can be "transferred" in the later stage.
People pursue works of art, one is for the appreciation of beauty, and the other is the collection value brought about by scarcity. Whether the digital collection has an appreciation value comparable to the price varies from person to person, but judging from the high demand for transfer, most buyers mainly want to earn income through transfer. However, the low production cost and replication cost of digital collections, the doubtful scarcity, and it is likely that they will not be able to support the expectation of appreciation, shattering the dream of sudden wealth.
There is also a layer of risk for domestic consumers: "NFT" is essentially a token in foreign countries, generally built on the public chain, and the value of the work is recognized. Domestic institutions insist that they only do digital artworks, trading platforms are mostly based on alliance chains, and some startups have their own platforms and blockchains. So many platforms and alliance chains mean that the price system of digital collections is not solid, and the risk of speculation is high. Some platforms prohibit secondary resale, but the effect of the ban is not good, private transactions are still frequent, and WeChat has recently banned a number of digital collection platform public accounts suspected of illegal speculation or secondary transactions. There are still some platforms that directly release issuance and resale and charge high commissions, and once the platform is shut down, consumers who take over at high prices are likely to suffer heavy losses.
From a practical point of view, if the digital collection is only regarded as a cultural and creative commodity traded online, supervised by the market supervision department and the intellectual property department, it is not enough. As a derivative of financial technology, digital collections have both commodity attributes, monetary attributes, securities attributes, etc., and their supervision involves multiple departments, and it is urgent to establish a joint regulatory mechanism. According to reports, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is launching an investigation into illegal fund-raising on "NFTs," and the U.S. Treasury Department has also warned that "NFTs" could become money laundering tools. Some domestic experts suggest the introduction of a "regulatory sandbox", select platforms to communicate closely with regulators, report in advance measures such as operating mechanisms and consumer rights protection, and trial operation within a certain time and within a certain range. This is also a line of thinking.
Web 3.0, with blockchain, metaversity, "NFT" and so on as the core, is seen as the next stage of the Internet. Compared with the metaverse, digital collections can impress people more, and it is the fastest application scenario for blockchain to land. In order to polish and popularize new technologies, it is not impossible for China to take the lead in opening the door to a new world. For this emerging thing, it is necessary to tolerate prudence and pay close attention to find a key to prudence. Before the regulatory mechanism is clarified, it is recommended that consumers look at it calmly and participate rationally.
(ly Source: Economic Daily)