You know what? The same people who fired shoes, they're now firing digital collections
"Stir-fry shoes, stir-fry do fashion play is not so hot, now the circle is stir-fry digital collections." Sneaker player old Liu introduced.
In September 2019, the news that Supreme 19 FW's opening season gift paratrooper toy was priced at more than 2,000 yuan in the secondary market flooded the shoe circle. Limited edition sneakers and fashionable play items were wildly hyped, creating countless wealth myths. But with the later "shoes wear not fried" regulatory restrictions, now the shoes tide play market has long been no hot scene in the past, even some bleak. With the exception of the occasional limited edition sneaker launch, shoe players have turned their attention to another market: digital collectibles.
"Let me show you how profitable this is," Liu wrote in a screenshot of a quote from the secondary market for digital collections. "These pictures used to cost only a few yuan or even free, but now they can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan. Can you believe it?"
Circle of friends in the digital collection of secondary market quotation chart
The name of NFT has already spread around every corner, and in blockchain applications, it has become a more popular species than bitcoin. While entertainment and sports luxury have boosted the track, which is now valued at more than $17 billion, the concept of digital collections has also caught on.
Under the layout of Tencent, Baidu and other major companies in China, this concept has risen rapidly. The secondary market performance of a-share related concepts has been amazing, while in another private market, there is A more exaggerated wealth effect. NFT and digital collectibles, seemingly interchangeable terms, have completely separate markets and players.
A young man's dream of new riches
"Digital collections can make 70,000 times, can NFT?" Wang, a post-00s digital collection enthusiast, asked about digital collections and NFT.
On September 24, 2021, Ant Group said in a statement that after receiving a report from netizens, Ant Chain and Ali Auction jointly pulled down a transaction suspected of online fraud. A user with the ID "Hip-hop Geek" posted bidding information about the "Asian Games torch" on the auction platform. Ant Chain said that "hip-hop geeks" attached details of the digital torch collection on the auction page, confusing the difference between the digital collection and the physical torch, misleading the buyer, suspected of fraud, so the platform will deal with the illegal products and users of the corresponding violations. The NFT torch, a limited edition of 21,000 copies priced at 39 yuan, was sold for 3 million yuan outside the venue in front of more than 15,000 onlookers.
Hangzhou Asian Games torch NFT
This limited edition Asian Games torch NFT, is exactly what Xiao Wang said "can earn 70,000 times" digital collection. The deal never went through, but players didn't think so. "If it hadn't been for the official intervention of the ants, everyone thought it would have gone through at this price." Wang said.
The exaggerated 70,000 times did not appear, but hundreds of times still exist.
As early as June 23, 2021, Alipay's ant chain fans launched the first digital collection "Dunhuang Apsaras and Jiucolor deer", which was designed and issued by Dunhuang Research Institute and sold at a price of 9.9 yuan + Alipay 10 points. Later, he was charged tens of thousands of yuan on Xianyu, among which the highest price was 1.5 million yuan. However, after less than a day, Xianyu hastily removed all related products.
The disappearance of public trading platforms has spurred players to form over-the-counter trading groups, and the digital collections of Flying Sky have gone from thousands to tens of thousands, with different numbers offering different prices. "Yesterday I sold 7,500. Today I sold 10,000. That's more than 2,000 less." One player who earned 750x had some regrets.
"Dunhuang Apsaras and Deer" digital collection
"Most of the digital collections are sold for dozens or even a few dollars, and even if you lose money, you can't lose much. NFT I know some of them, it's too expensive, I can't afford to lose." Wang said this with some frustration. Admittedly, most NFT projects are very cheap at around 0.1ETH(about 2,100 YUAN) after getting the whitelist qualification to participate in the pre-sale through various methods. However, for Wang, an ordinary college student who only has 2,000 yuan to live on every month, it is very difficult. Digital collection is undoubtedly an excellent "NFT replacement" for him. He can not only enjoy the fun of buying and collecting digital artworks, but also invest and manage financial affairs at a relatively low cost.
A screenshot of wang's recently sold digital collection
Xiao Wang shares his recent profits. "What if you get rich suddenly?" he asks. He said it might represent the dreams of many young people like him in his circle.
Young people's new plaything
"I clicked on it, will show this thing belongs to me", the "prove" gave her a kind of like a real cultural relics collection of pleasure, it comes from the most primitive human acquisitiveness, "in a sense, I have it through one thousand, with it and the ancient civilization, hero story behind it, the grand history have established a connection." Talking about her own digital collection, Jessica, a digital collection enthusiast, is full of excitement. It is a "Yue King sword" digital collection authorized by hubei Provincial Museum.
Hubei Provincial Museum launched the "Yue King sword" digital collection & NBSP;
This is just one of more than 50 pieces in her collection, and in her spare time, she opens the digital collection platform to zoom in and out to see the details. If it's 3D, you can rotate it. Through 3D technology, people can see the lines, gems and lettering on a 3D "Yue King sword" very closely. "The gap is just that we can't really touch it."
Whale Scout launches digital collection of Zodiac Cultural Relics
Digital collection of the issue, it is not difficult to see that there are a lot of authoritative endorsements and top IP support. In the past, CCTV.com and Shanghai Securities News, the legal media of CSRC, were included in the digital collection, which enhanced the investment confidence of consumers. After the Spring Festival ant chain during the digital collection platform whale exploration joint 24 museums (institutions) issued "tiger cultural relics", "twelve zodiac cultural relics", "treasure of the town museum" and other 3D digital collections. As the Spring Festival and the Winter Olympics meet, digital collections, as a new form of congratulation, accelerate into the public's vision and influence continues to expand, and the value of digital collections begins to be discussed by the public. On Jan 19, digital collections topped the 10th most popular search on Baidu, and the index has since soared. "Yesterday I just went to draw lots for Feng Zikai's digital collection. The IP of this cultural relic is estimated to be hard to appear on the FOREIGN NFT, right?" Jessica introduces the advantages of domestic digital collections.
Baidu Index keyword "digital collection" search trend
When it comes to asset ownership, NFT has the advantage of decentralization because it is deployed on public chains such as Ethereum. Blockchain is a distributed ledger in which all data is open and transparent and cannot be modified once written to the block, so an individual's NFT assets are guaranteed in terms of ownership. However, the vast majority of domestic digital collection platforms, such as Whale Exploration (ant chain) and magic nucleus (To the message chain), adopt alliance chain technology. Alliance chain treats a small number of participants with equal power as verifier, rather than an open system like public chain, allowing anyone to verify blocks. The downside of the alliance chain is obvious. The rules of transaction and ownership of assets are not actually controlled by users, but by these digital collection platforms.
"No matter whether it is a public chain, an alliance chain or a private chain, with so many authoritative endorsements, big factories cannot run away like some NFT projects." Jessica says that most investors in digital collections, like her, don't care whether the digital collection really belongs to them or to the platform. With big platforms and authority endorsing them, they are more likely to believe that digital collections are safer than NFT projects, which have been prone to fraud.
Huge consumer groups create this new market, BlockBeats found in the community, the release of new items in digital collections has been an hourly frequency statistics. On April 1 alone, 33 new digital collections were released, with prices ranging from 10 yuan to 30,000 yuan. Some platforms even have a detailed timetable for new products, with a recommendation index. Stock speculation shoes that a set of gameplay, in the digital collection to reproduce.
Source: forty Scenes & NBSP;
The market for NFT and digital collections is fragmented
"It's easy to rob digital collections, and I taught my parents to do it with me, but I still haven't figured out how to buy NFT." Kevin in '90 seems to be complaining.
Compared with digital collections, the bar for NFT is too high. Participation in NFT requires a lot of related knowledge: learning the concepts of wallet, private key, address, whitelisting, mint and so on, learning how to surf the Internet scientifically, transfer money, distinguish between various public chains, and beware of all kinds of scams and phishing links in Crypto World. Even English is one of the important reasons for dissuading many investors.
Domestic digital collection platform is simple to operate
Taking a digital collection platform in China as an example, there are only three steps to participate in a digital collection sale: enter the website, click the lottery, and get the qualification to pay. For many digital collectors, digital collections offer a more accessible opportunity, and the learning cost of buying NFT is too high.
Information on the sale of digital collections on a sneaker information platform
"Digital collections are basically young people paying the bill." Kevin says he rarely sees anyone older than 35 in the digital collection community he joins, and more than half of them are born after 1995. As for the reason why young people are so interested in digital collections, Kevin says that some of them are using it as a way to manage their money. They have also experienced "shoe flipping" and "hand flipping", and now digital collections are the new craze. At present, many shoe information platforms have also joined the digital collection interface, in addition to monitoring the shoe tide play and other sales, various digital collection platforms have also been included in their monitoring list.
Digital collection of contempt chain and regulation
"Is it illegal for you to do NFT?" "Asked Alex, who has only been working with digital collections for a month.
This question may seem ridiculous at first glance, but it is indeed the question of many digital collectors, and it is also the "sword of Damocles" in the minds of many NFT practitioners.
Domestic regulation of virtual currency has always been very strict. As early as last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and 11 other departments announced that virtual currency mining would be officially eliminated as an industry; At the same time, the central bank and 10 other departments made it clear that virtual currencies do not have the same legal status as fiat currencies, and related business activities are illegal financial activities. Although NFT is not the same as virtual currency, considering that NFT and homogeneous token use similar blockchain technology basis, and NFT has speculation, financial products and other risks, with the promotion and popularity of NFT application, the casting, issuance, sales and circulation of NFT may have regulatory intervention in the future.
The development path of digital collections in China follows a business model different from that of overseas markets, exploring and establishing chinese-oriented rules and standards in distribution, sales and circulation. First, the mainstream domestic digital collection platforms such as Whale Exploration emphasize that digital collections are supported by the actual value of specific works of art, and do not have any monetary attributes such as payment function. Second, different from overseas virtual currency as the bidding and trading currency, domestic digital collections use RMB as the bidding and trading currency, which largely ensures the stability of the value of digital collections. Third, the domestic mainstream platform architecture in the league chain, chain block technology providers can design its use and trading rules, issued on the platform of digital collection can be realized from the source design non-transferable (i.e., not to open the secondary trading market), make the domestic digital collection can do real "monetizing".
从实际效果看，严格的 「 有限转增 」 在一定程度上减少了炒作的发生，但也引发大批场外交易乱象。灰黑产业暗生，场外交易成诈骗高发地，类似「假担保人」的诈骗时有发生，诈骗数额也在几百元到几万元不等。针对鲸探拥有 180 天转赠期等问题，部分玩家还通过拟定交易合同进行提前售卖先行获利，在解除转赠限制后再转交货品。但这种合同是否真正有法律效力是要打一个大大的问号的，「合同生效是建立在法律的基础上。虽然合同里会规定什么三倍赔偿的条款，但是平台不支持转卖，没有法律效力，一切都是废纸。」
In response, the customer service of Whale Scout said: "Whale Scout does not support any form of resale, please beware of the risk of fraud."
The wealth effect of NFT is similar to that of digital collections, but the reality is that they are two very separate markets, with chains of prejudice and contempt between them for a variety of reasons. Indeed, Lao Liu, Xiao Wang, Kevin, Jessica and Alex are a group of speculators, a group of young people with a strong curiosity for new things. It's impossible to know what will happen after 180 days when transfers are officially allowed -- but it's clear that the experience of snapping up a digital collection is not just a financial gain, but a simple, primal pleasure -- like collecting stamps.
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