In Brief:
- Xinhua News Agency set to launch China’s first “news digital collectibles” in the form of NFTs.
- The NFTs will be divided into 11 collections comprising 10,000 copies, each with a special edition.
- Zxchain, the blockchain of Tencent, will be used to mint the NFTs.
Xinhua News Agency, a Chinese state-run media company, has announced that it will launch its first NFT collection.
According to the announcement, photographs taken by journalists documenting many historic moments during the year will be included in the NFT collection.
The digital items will be divided into 11 collections comprising 10,000 copies, each with a special edition release so that would make a total of 110, 01 copies.
The NFTs will be available on the Xinhua mobile app for free on Friday, December 24, Christmas Eve.
The Chinese Communist Party’s 100th-anniversary celebration at Tiananmen Square is honored in the new collection, and so is the country’s achievement of administering over 2.7 billion vaccine doses.
The NFT collection would “imprint digital memories into the metaverse”, according to the announcement.
Tencent Holdings is supporting Xinhua’s debut into NFTs by providing assistance for the blockchain technology that supports the news digital collectibles.
Zxchain, the blockchain of Tencent, will be used to mint the NFT collectibles.
If Xinhua’s NFT debut follows in the footsteps of Tencent’s NFT launch in September, the NFTs will be unavailable for trade on any secondary market.
Just in November, The South China Morning Post revealed that it was launching a series of NFTs based on a new token standard called “ARTIFACT,” which is apparently designed for historical assets on the blockchain.
The Chinese government has imposed restrictions on domestic cryptocurrency mining and trade, such as bitcoin, but NFTs and the metaverse have been permitted to function in a grey zone.
In the face of potential regulatory challenges, Xinhua has followed Tencent and Ant Group’s lead by labeling its NFT-backed goods as digital collectibles.
