At the most embarrassing time, Zhang Hui borrowed all the borrowing software and credit cards, and he used up all the 160,000 yuan borrowed by Alipay. What really overwhelmed Zhang Hui was another "secret" that he couldn't tell: within a year, all of his parents' savings of 500,000 yuan had become a bunch of worthless pictures on the digital collection platform.
This is the savings that Zhang Hui's parents have saved for many years. His mother in the countryside did not dare to put her money in the mobile bank, thinking that it would be safe in his hands. Zhang Hui is 31 years old, working as a "code farmer" in Beijing and drifting north for 12 years.
On a digital collection platform called "Eighteen", the savings of 500,000 yuan for two generations of the entire family have been wasted, and more than 100,000 foreign debts are still owed. This money is equivalent to 50 months' salary of Zhang Hui.
"Digital collectibles have been reduced to a speculative game of drumming and passing flowers, and it's up to who can run fast. "Suddenly rich, and plummeting in an instant, it has hit the players' view of money hard.
Data map: NFT digital collectibles According to Visual China
"Gold everywhere"
Zhang Hui's first contact with the 18th Digital Collection platform was in October 2022. I heard from a colleague that Bai Song, the founder of the Eighteen Digital Collections, was the person in charge of the operation of the tens of millions of digital collections platform IBOX, and his ability was outstanding, and the Eighteen Digital Collections he handled must be no different.
In foreign countries, digital collectibles are called NFTs, i.e., non-fungible tokens. Overseas markets usually support secondary market transactions and have strong financial attributes. In 2021, the concept of NFT entered China, and Internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent launched trading platforms such as Whale Scout and Phantom Core. Due to strict supervision, whale scouts and phantom cores have been de-financialized, focusing on the concept of "digital collections" to avoid building a secondary market.
In contrast, the new batch of digital collection trading platforms represented by Unique Art, iBox, and Eighteen have set up secondary trading channels, and even directly extracted transaction fees from them, which provides space for speculation.
Platform interface
Eighteen Digital Collections is a product of Beijing Shenyuan Culture Technology Co., Ltd. Tianyancha shows that the company was established in April 2022, with Li Guozhi, the legal representative, and 2 insured employees. The actual controller after the equity penetration is Jiyi Enterprise Management (Hangzhou) Partnership, with Baisong holding 55% of the shares.
In the Eighteen Collections, Zhang Hui's first purchase was a Picasso drawing, which allowed him to obtain airdrops and priority purchases, and for another 100 yuan, he could get a second Picasso drawing at a low price. When the picture rose to 10,000, Zhang Hui felt that it was a high point and decided to throw it.
In the transaction link, the digital collection platform has two channels: "initial offering" and "consignment", the first offering is mostly issued by the platform in conjunction with various IP copyright holders, the price is low, the number is limited, and most people can't grab it through airdrops to users. Consignment is a secondary market between buyers, where users can list or buy on their own. For each transaction in the secondary market, the platform takes a comprehensive service fee of 4% to 5%.
Platform consignment announcement
Three or four days later, the picture was hyped to fifteen thousand. The sense of impact hit Zhang Hui, and he was annoyed that he had sold it early, and he had made five thousand less.
"My chance has finally come. Zhang Hui held on to his illusions. Subsequently, he began to buy virtual images in large quantities.
"Betting" - Zhang Hui described his gambler's mentality at that time: as long as you buy a low-priced picture, it is equivalent to picking up a treasure and waiting for the platform to do activities on it. "For example, if I buy 20 low-priced images, I bet that 10 of those 20 will be out of the campaign, and I will make money and sell the rest. ”
"As soon as the picture is bought, it doubles overnight, even in tens of thousands. The money came too easily, and it came for no reason. The dense soaring created the illusion of "gold everywhere" for Zhang Hui and other digital players.
The "Insider" in the "Consensus Group"
2022 is a year of rapid development of digital collection platforms, and thousands of platforms have emerged in China this year. Different from cumbersome financial transaction operations, players can directly buy and sell virtual pictures on the platform by registering an account, mobile phone number verification, and then binding a bank card.
Tan Yisheng, who was born in 1997, is a construction cost clerk in Guangzhou, and at the end of September 2022, he entered the eighteen digital collections. Tan Yisheng bought the most expensive picture for 30,000 yuan per unit, and the cheapest Luohan picture cost 50 or 60 yuan. On the eve of the World Cup in Qatar, his income reached its highest point, and the 100,000 invested became 300,000 in two months.
After two months of "gold rush", the inflection point came. At the end of November 2022, the eighteenth number collection launched a new activity during the World Cup, according to the designated collection to distribute a certain number of "football baby" collections, each team picture corresponds to the odd and even number tail number, players through the purchase of bets, the single number of the team wins, the losing double number of the team collection will be destroyed. "It's a turning point, and from this wave of activity, a lot of players' money has evaporated. ”
Intervening in prices through activities is a way for many digital collection platforms to speculate on the secondary trading market. Many players generally reflect that whether the price of the picture has increased depends on whether the platform has done activities for a certain picture.
Zhang Hui also sensed that something was wrong with this half-cut game, but he still decided to continue buying. As soon as his salary was paid every month, he invested all of his money in the eighteen collections, and even tried to get money from other places. At the end of 2022, Zhang Hui has lost more than 200,000 yuan, and his only idea is to make back the loss. At this time, the platform showed that the existing collection had been speculated to 185,000 yuan, and the circulating market value of the whole platform was 1.448 billion yuan.
At the end of 2022, the platform showed that the existing collection had been fried to 185,000
In June last year, the eighteen digital collections entered the 2.0 era, and all the virtual pictures were uniformly replaced with small pictures of "Outside the Mountain, Qingshan Building, Outer Building" in proportion to the amount, more than 8 million, which is equivalent to a complete reopening, "Another frenzy, a picture began to fry from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands." Tan Yisheng recalled that in August of the same year, the platform entered the so-called 3.0 era, setting up different areas and playing in small areas. Start frying with a few pictures, there is always a profit to be made, and there are always people who keep buying. ”
Each image may have a "consensus group". In the group, you can know how high everyone's expectations are for the picture, and then decide whether to buy or sell. "It's like walking on thin ice when you're playing alone, but the jubilation of the chat group melts the tension, and everyone agrees that the platform will continue to take off. Mo Wei said.
Mo Wei is in her early 30s and is engaged in the automotive machinery engineering industry in Shanghai. In addition to the eighteen digital collections, he has already traveled several platforms (i.e., the digital collection platform) and dived in dozens of chat groups. The first price of a new picture of eighteen was 198 yuan, and there was immediately "inside information" in the group that said, "This picture will rise tomorrow!" Mo Wei followed and bought one, and it really rose by 800 yuan the next day.
When there is a big fall, there will be so-called "big investors" who will be pulled into the consensus group to share their experience, and instill the logic of holding positions for a long time to Mo Wei and other players - "just a temporary big fall", "make friends with time", "believe in the power of time, see you at the peak", "the later you sell, the more you earn". In order to stabilize the players, the "big household" will also share how big his plate is and how much money he has invested, "Follow the logic of the big household, and you won't lose." ”
Mo Wei feels that in the group chat, people with the same disease will temporarily forget the pain, "I feel good when I compare." Everyone is under the illusion that it will rise (in price) later, right?"
A speculative game of drumming and passing flowers
"Digital collectibles have been reduced to a speculative game of drumming and passing flowers, and it's up to who can run fast. According to an industry insider, many digital collection platforms are "rat warehouses" for sale, that is, the platform itself issues and buys, constantly raising the market at high prices, and occasionally giving players some "welfare" to absorb more funds, resulting in hot transactions, and finally the secondary market harvests or runs away.
Mo Wei is not a greedy person, sometimes the pictures he buys on the day of the eighteenth number collection are sold the next day. He followed the "inside information" to buy a few more and earned more than 3,000 yuan. At the peak, Mo Wei bought 20,000 yuan in a picture, and sold 30,000 or 40,000 yuan when he made a move, "The mentality is inflated, and he can earn 10,000 yuan a day, and his mind has become unconscious." ”
Mo Wei witnessed with his own eyes that at the highest time, a picture was hyped to 80,000, and then it began to collapse in a few days. Despite running faster than others, he still lost hundreds of thousands. Now, he still has a few pictures of 10,000 or 20,000 yuan in his hand, which can only be sold for a few hundred yuan at the current market price. He wasn't going to sell, so he put it there to remind himself.
Zhang Hui's position in the Eighteen Digital Collection on May 30 last year
Suddenly rich, and then plummeted in an instant, hitting the players' view of money hard. Before working as a programmer, Zhang Hui worked as a chef in Beijing with a monthly salary of less than 6,000 yuan, and after attending a training course in 2016, he switched to becoming a programmer. He only had a surplus of money since the year before last, but he didn't expect to plunge into digital collections.
Before losing money, Zhang Hui was immersed in the dream of getting rich, and watched the money in the collection increase several times. At that time, he looked down on the small amount of money he made from food delivery. In July last year, the debt-ridden Zhang Hui signed up for Meituan crowdsourcing and ran Sam's Supermarket, delivering food on weekends and working on weekdays, basically all year round. "Now I basically don't wear it if I can, and I eat less if I can. ”
Like Zhang Hui, Tan Yisheng did not succeed in "running away" in the end, and the 500,000 demolition money given by his family became a bunch of worthless electronic pictures, and in real life, there were still 150,000 online loans waiting for him to repay. In August last year, Tan Yisheng's platform could not be sold, the loan could not be turned, and he received calls to urge him every day. He thought about cutting himself off, and was finally persuaded by his family.
In October last year, due to the inability to contact the registered domicile or business premises, the actual controller of the 18th Digital Collection, Jiyi Enterprise, was included in the list of abnormal operations by the Market Supervision Bureau of Yuhang District, Hangzhou. In the past year, Mo Wei, Zhang Hui and others have rushed to the registered place and actual office of the company belonging to the Eighteen Digital Collections in Beijing many times, but there are no figures of the relevant staff of the Eighteen Digital Collections. They called the police several times, "the police said it was just a suspected fraud, and there was no conclusive evidence." ”
Li, the legal counsel of Eighteen Digital Collections, told Red Star News that the platform is mainly engaged in the consignment area market, and most of the collections in the initial market are airdropped to users, allowing users to trade in the consignment area market (secondary market). The collection in the consignment area is priced by the user, and the transaction funds are directly into the user's account, not into the platform, "We will charge a handling fee." ”
According to Li, the laws and regulations of the digital collection industry are lagging behind, and the company has tried to introduce some compliance measures, such as limiting the minimum age to 21 years old, limiting the maximum price of collections, and preventing speculation. Li said that the platform also has a risk warning, "Knowing that there is a risk, he (the user) is still playing, and we can't control it, so we can only remind and do our own compliance obligations." ”
Recently, Mo Wei met a young man who lost his family in the eighteenth number of Tibet, and his debts of more than 1 million yuan could not be repaid, and he shouted that Mo Wei would continue to "play bullets" this year, "He said that he had earned 90,000 yuan, and he was about to win it back, and he wanted to pull us into the game together." ”
Related Reading:
The criminal case was announced, revealing the "trap" of digital collections, 5 major routines, and lawyers gave advice on how to solve the scam
Red Star News reporter Cai Xiaoyi Intern Zhou Song
Editor: Zhang Xun, Editor: Wei Kongming
(Download Red Star News, there are prizes for reporting!)