The market is like a roller coaster, easy to buy and difficult to sell, some players laugh at themselves and get cut leeks
Will there be the next pick-up man in the digital collection circle?
In April 2021, the copyright of China's first NFT (Editor's Note: the full name is Non-Fungible Token, which refers to non-fungible token) platform was launched, and thousands of NFT blind boxes of works of art were successfully issued, opening up the development of digital collections in China. The big curtain reached its peak in April and May this year.
However, the ebb and flow of digital collections is faster than the rising tide, ranging from a month or two to a few days, and countless digital collectors begin to admit that they are "cut leeks".
The distribution platform on the other side also said: "We hope that someone will take care of us, lest this circle completely collapse."
Enter
Many Tibetan users
Self-proclaimed "leek"
"The so-called digital collection is actually a JPG picture." This is the intuitive view of Zhang Yu, a digital collection enthusiast, after he entered the digital collection.
During the 11th holiday, he called and complained to various "connected" management departments every day.
Changyu once spent more than 4,000 yuan to buy digital collections, of which more than 3,000 yuan was spent on "mouse", and another several hundred yuan was spent on "Xiaoqing".
"Rat" is a picture called "New Year's Rat", in the picture is a sideways mouse wearing an ancient costume making a yawning gesture; and "Xiaoqing" is a shadow puppet painting of a woman in cyan ancient costume.
The collection comes from the publisher Huansheng Art Platform.
The platform once claimed that the platform officially entered 365EX (trading and trading platform) on September 12.
Zhang Yu said that he was interested in the fact that the "endorsement" of the Huansheng platform included China Culture Media Group, and he believed that the IP produced by the official design must have good collection value and excellent transaction value.
Changyu bought more than a dozen "mouse", the unit price varies, most of them cost a few hundred yuan.
But I didn't expect that on September 20, the second day after he bought the last "Mouse" and "Xiaoqing", the official account of the new cultural and creative platform of China Culture Media issued an announcement, clearly stating that it is related to Huansheng Art. The platform has nothing to do with the platform, and collects and fixes evidence for the platform's fraudulent use of its name, and reserves the right to take further legal measures.
After seeing the announcement, Chang Yu confirmed that he had been deceived.
Afterwards, Huansheng also issued an announcement, expressing its willingness to refund 80% of the selling price to users.
The problem is that everyone doesn't buy it at the offer price.
"Mouse" has no sale price, while "Xiaoqing" is only priced at 99 yuan, and even "Xiaoqing" can only refund 80 yuan.
Chang Yu said, "The Magic Rank said that the 'mouse' was an 'airdrop' (that is, a free gift), but when users bought it, the price was already hundreds or thousands. They (referring to the platform) said 'airdrop', but Who the 'airdrop' was given to, no one knows."
There was a user who entered the trading market when "Rat" was released, and found that the price of "Rat" has been rising, but they just couldn't click.
Some users said that after the "rat" rose, they wanted to make a move, but they couldn't put it on the shelves.
There are also users who uploaded screen recording videos on their mobile phones to try to prove that the actual distribution of "Mouse" and "Xiaoqing", which Huansheng had previously promised to release in limited quantities, exceeded the promised number.
Up to now, although the platform has a "aftermath" plan, Changyu has not heard of anyone who actually got a refund.
He admitted that he was "cut leeks".
encounter
The more you invest, the more the price falls
In fact, Changyu is just a "little leek" among Huansheng investment users.
Wang Yongchang invested 18,799 yuan on "Mouse" and "Xiaoqing".
Having entered the Huansheng Group, he was once told by Huansheng staff either explicitly or implicitly how to pull the disk to increase the value of the two pictures.
Wang Yongchang saw the advertisement for the sale of "Rats" in the exchange group of Shuzang. He stopped investing on September 12. "At that time, the unit price had reached eight or nine hundred yuan per piece." He first bought 3 pieces, and later added them. 3 sheets.
The reason for this is that on September 14th, the platform issued an announcement saying that users who have three "rat" cards in their hands can get the priority to buy "Xiaoqing", and the termination time of this right is on the 16th.
But on the 16th, something Wang Yongchang did not expect suddenly appeared, and the price of "rat" plummeted.
"It's not normal."
Wang Yongchang said, "Everyone who plays the collection knows that the price usually falls after the 'snapshot' (that is, the platform takes a screenshot of the user's background to determine whether they have the right to enjoy the discount). Now the price has plummeted before the 'snapshot', and it is The 'ankle cut' dropped from 1,200 yuan to three or four hundred yuan."
At that time, large households including Wang Yongchang communicated with the platform's customer service, and the official explanation was that the person who got the "rat" for free maliciously smashed the market and shorted the platform.
At that time, the big households also agreed to cooperate with the official to raise the price together, and the platform also promised to find institutions to bring funds to raise the price.
But the result is that the more money you invest, the harder the price falls, the "rat" keeps falling, and "Xiaoqing" starts to fall after rising for three minutes. That night, "Xiaoqing" also "slashed his ankle", and then approached. the starting price.
"Actually, in three or four days, my little 20,000 yuan was thrown in." Wang Yongchang said, "I regret it a little." He now insists that the platform is cheating.
stuck
Take it if you want
but found that it was not possible to withdraw
The above-mentioned experiences of Huansheng users may only be the tip of the iceberg in the digital collection circle.
False propaganda, running away with money, being unable to withdraw cash or being locked up have occurred this summer.
According to a number of senior users of digital collections, from April to May this year to the end of September, it was a period of explosive growth of domestic digital collections, "almost one platform a day."
At the end of May this year, Wang Lu bought a digital collection on a platform at the recommendation of a friend, and the price went up after he bought it, which made him very happy.
Later, he saw a senior user in the official group saying that he wanted to find someone to raise the price of the collection together. At first, Wang Lu didn't believe it, but every time the other party finished speaking, the price of the collection would always rise. Many people in the group I thought it was reliable, so I bought it.
At that time, some users wanted to withdraw the appreciated money, but found that they could only withdraw a small amount, and could not withdraw a large amount at all.
The official answer of the platform is the problem of the payer, but when someone finds the payer, the payer claims that it has never received the money, and the users find the platform again, but the platform starts to find other excuses.
After investing more than 1,000 yuan on the platform, Wang Lu accepted it as soon as he saw it, but also found the problem that he could not withdraw it: he sold the digital collection in his hand and gained more than 9,100 yuan, but all these could not be withdrawn, only one number was placed in the wallet of the platform .
Wang Lu said that some users later discovered that the original senior users were the nurses of the platform. "On the surface, he asked users to spend money to buy collections (in order to increase the value of the collections), but behind the scenes was to change the data on the platform."
College student Lin Chuan started playing digital collections on May 10 this year, and now he has invested in dozens of platforms, with a total loss of more than 100,000 yuan.
He learned the lesson that the reasons for the losses vary.
Some are trapped because the value of the collection has plummeted after investing in a leading platform in the industry such as IBOX. There are also problems like Huansheng, and some small platforms that have invested a few hundred yuan run away. As for those who lose money After selling it, he already felt very content.
The reason why he voted for so many platforms, Lin Chuan mocked himself for being cheap.
He said that as soon as the platform issued an announcement to "airdrop" some collections, he followed to get the whitelist for the first issue. After getting it for free, and seeing that the situation was good, he began to add money to it. Unexpectedly, it began to fall on the second day after the investment, and it fell every day. A little bit, and finally it slowly fell miserably.
Lin Chuan said that he can only sell as much as he can now, and let himself slowly recover. As for the mentality of the buyer, he can't figure it out. Anyway, he is enough to be a "leek".
get out
I feel this circle is "too savage"
Can digital collections make money?
Ma Boqian is one of the people who made money. He declined to disclose the amount of his profit to reporters.
At the end of April and the beginning of May, IBOX, the leading platform in the data collection industry, once held activities, and old users
If you invite new users to register, both parties can get an "airdrop". That time, Ma Boqian joined at zero cost. After getting the picture, he sold it for a few hundred yuan.
"In May, basically everything you buy will go up, and you can buy anything you want." Ma Boqian said that at that time, the digital collection industry was "a new platform a day, and new people would be airdropped, and if you get the picture, you would make money." But by June or July In August, Ma Boqian noticed something was wrong, and he began to sell a large number of his collections. Before August, he sold almost all of his collections except the "Dewu" platform.
Ma Boqian said that the main reason why he quit the digital collection circle early was because he felt that the circle was "too barbaric".
"Without a good ecology, how can it be possible to make money all the time?" Ma Boqian summed up the three major problems of the domestic digital collection industry.
First of all, unlike foreign NFTs that do transactions on Ethereum, quite a few domestic platforms and collections are not on the chain, and some platforms just type a string of characters and lie on the chain, and even if they are actually on the chain, there are Many of them are private chains of their own companies. Blockchain technology is not difficult, but without unified management and channels, it will lose its practical significance.
Secondly, from the brutal growth of the digital collection industry in May at that time, it can be seen that "wild platforms" are everywhere, and a few college students who study computer can set up a platform to engage in digital collections.
Third, from his own point of view, he has never regarded digital collections as "collections". Ma Boqian feels that those collections are actually JPG files, and the artistic value and use value of the pictures themselves are close to zero. The price of hundreds of thousands of yuan is actually completely speculated by the platform and users.
Therefore, Ma Boqian entered the arena early, got out of the circle quickly, and closed it when he saw it. "Unfortunately, my next family has become my pick-up man."
method
Big users find ways to fry
Small users force the platform to fry
Liang Lu, who is engaged in the distribution of digital collections, said that the purpose of digital collection players is to make money, and the way to make money is to hype. Among them, medium and large users will find ways to hype, and small users will force the platform to hype.
Liang Lu said that NFTs are allowed to be circulated in the primary and secondary markets overseas, but currently only collections are allowed in China.
However, in the current digital collection market, due to the endless emergence of platforms, the secondary market was once hot. Many small platforms were grafted onto small payment platforms to build a secondary market, and the so-called pictures issued were used for trading.
The value of buying and selling is actually controlled by the platform itself, but users are willing to work with the platform to hype the collections in their hands in order to exchange profits together, and the profits come from those who have just entered the circle.
Liang Lu introduced that there are many means to hype digital collections, which can be roughly classified into two types. One is financial means, such as synthesis, repurchase, destruction, empowerment and so on.
Among them, synthesis means that the platform stipulates that several small pictures can be combined into a large picture, so that there are fewer and fewer small pictures on the market, and the value of the big picture is getting higher and higher; repurchase means that the platform will put a collection on the secondary market. Taking it back will make the collections in circulation on the market less and less, to achieve the effect of rareness being precious; destruction is to destroy a collection, which can also achieve the same purpose as repurchase; empowerment is to add extra to the collection. Rights and interests, for example, if you own a certain collection, you can regularly exchange for physical discounts, or have the priority to buy other collections, etc.
Another hype method, which is more "barbaric" than this type of financial method, is that the platform directly pulls the offer.
Some platforms pull the disk to find funds, and some simply change the data.
For example, a platform can say that it has sold 5,000 copies of a digital collection to the outside world, but in fact there are not that many, or it actually issued more, and then changed the quantity and price, so that the value of the collection soared, attracting people to take over, or use "to be a mouse warehouse" model hype.
As for which way the platform and the issuer will hype which collection, it is entirely up to them to choose according to their own interests.
Users are actually "little whites", and they simply don't know whether the collections they buy have room for appreciation.
But don't think that users have become "lambs to be slaughtered", and they will also find ways to pull the plate.
The easiest way is to unite some large investors who invest in the same collection, and strive to have an absolute advantage in controlling the collection, so that the transaction price of this collection will increase, and there will be "leeks" available below.
There are also big households who will join forces to set up companies, directly connect with the platform and the issuer, and hype with them to form an industrial chain, and the three parties will "cut the leeks" together.
Are those small users just waiting to be "cut leeks"?
Liang Lu said, not necessarily.
Small users often complain and report in order to protect their wallets.
Liang Lu said that the issuers and platforms of digital collections are most often caught by tax evasion, because in the transfer transaction, the platform will take a share of the guarantee fee, but often do not issue an invoice, which has also become a report by users. focus.
In addition, whether the platform has the qualifications to issue digital collections, etc., is also a problem that users focus on.
Photo courtesy/Visual China
focus on
Relevant requirements for preventing the risk of illegal financial activities have been released one after another
In an interview, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily found that whether it is a user who is trapped in the quagmire of digital collections, a "lander" who makes money, or a staff member in the circle like Liang Lu, they are all circulating such a message: at the end of this year In the past, relevant state departments may issue standards and regulations on digital collections to comprehensively rectify the digital collection market.
In fact, since March this year, the relevant state departments have emphasized the standardization of digital collections more than once.
On March 31, the official accounts of many domestic digital collection platforms were shut down by Tencent. The Tencent WeChat team released a Weibo saying that, in accordance with relevant national regulations, in order to prevent the risk of speculation in virtual currency transactions, the public accounts for speculation and secondary sales of digital collections were banned. and small procedures for standardized rectification.
In this round of rectification, "hype" and "secondary sales" are prohibited as key words.
Subsequently, on April 13, the China Internet Finance Association, China Banking Association, and China Securities Association jointly issued the "Initiative on Preventing Financial Risks Related to NFTs", pointing out that NFTs have shown a certain value in enriching digital economic models, but There are also potential risks such as speculation, money laundering, and illegal financial activities.
The "Initiative" calls on member units to jointly curb the tendency of NFT financialization and securitization, and strictly prevent the risk of illegal financial activities.
The next day, the Metaverse Industry Committee of the China Mobile Communications Federation and the Blockchain Professional Committee of the China Communications Industry Association jointly issued the "Self-discipline Requirements for Regulating the Healthy Development of the Digital Collection Industry".
In September, the above-mentioned three associations jointly issued the "Self-discipline Requirements on Re-Regulating the Healthy Development of Digital Collections", again calling for industry self-discipline and putting forward regulatory requirements for the members of the organization: adhere to integrity and innovation, and exert positive value; strengthen industrial cooperation, empower Can cultivate soft power; resist disorderly hype and promote normative development; adhere to the bottom line of compliance and stay away from illegal models.
People in the digital collection circle generally believe that the relevant associations and departments began to publish documents continuously from the spring of this year, and began to emphasize self-discipline and legality this fall. .
Liang Lu said that, as the publisher, she also hopes that specific regulations can be issued as soon as possible to regulate the digital collection industry.
(All parties in the text are pseudonyms)
Text/Reporter Zhang Ziyuan
Coordinator/Lin Yan Zhang Bin