Despite their being no regulations against NFTs in China, the country has cracked down on WeChat accounts that it deems are promoting NFT market speculation.
The platform said it had “recently standardised and rectified public accounts and small programmes for speculation and secondary sales of digital collections”.
This is all off the back of the very recently launch Blockchain-based Service Network-Decentralised Digital Certificate (BSN-DDC) – basically, China’s homegrown blockchain tech.
While cryptocurrency is off the cards in China, that doesn’t mean the country wishes to be completely agnostic to the technologies that inform it, i.e., blockchain – in fact, this – and specifically NFTs, are very much at the heart of a strategy to embrace these so-called innovations.
To this effect, a Chinese-developed infrastructure – created by BSN – soft launched at the end of January with eight platform operators and seven Open Permissioned Blockchains (OPBs). The full version launched in March, supported by 26 founding partners – all companies with close ties to the Chinese government.
The hope is that Chinese blockchain tech will offer application programming functionality for businesses (and individuals) to build platforms, apps and portals to accommodate the creation and use of NFTs, with all services and fees transacted in Chinese currency, Yuan.
This brings us back to WeChat. There’s a fairly compelling argument to be made that parent company TenCent have come the under the ire of the Chinese Government again as operating within the NFT space outwith the framework provided by the government could lead to what is deemed as misappropriation of the technology.
Recommended
The entire technology sector in China has seen a large amount of official action against it since last year. This including crackdowns on ecommerce firms, online finance services, social media platforms, gaming companies, cloud computing providers, ride-hailing apps and cryptocurrency miners and exchanges.
Even after all the measures, the trading of NFTs is still not illegal in China. However, the digital assets are built on technology which is regulated by Beijing.
Under the rules, buyers have to purchase NFTs in the local currency, the yuan, rather than cryptocurrencies.
Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox
Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.
To subscribe, click here.
Related
