China News Service, April 4 (China News Financial Reporter Wu Tao) "Only when the tide goes out do you know who is swimming naked."

　　Recently, a report that "a 31-year-old programmer is addicted to digital collections, and his family's savings of 500,000 yuan turned into electronic waste" has attracted attention. Once popular digital collections, now people are beginning to question their true value: Is this an investment opportunity, or is it charging an "IQ tax"?

Digital collection scam attracts attention

　　Digital collections usually refer to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on blockchain technology, which represent a unique digital asset, which may be a work of art, a piece of music, or even an animation.

　　In August 2021, NBA star Stephen Curry bought an NFT work for about US$180,000 and replaced his social platform avatar with the work. At the time, digital collections were all the rage. In China, Xu Beihong's horses and Qi Baishi's shrimps have been sold as digital collections and have been selling well on multiple platforms.

　　However, as the concept of the Metaverse cooled down, the popularity of digital collections gradually declined, and complaints continued. "When purchasing, I was told that digital collections would generate points that could be redeemed for goods, but gradually the goods became less and less, and now they are no longer available. The purchased digital collections have also been removed from the shelves, cannot be sold, and their value has returned to zero." There is consumption. The reporter said on the Black Cat Complaint Platform.

　　In addition, there are cases where fake digital collections are used to commit fraud. According to multiple media reports, the police recently revealed that a certain platform promised a fixed increase of 3% for each "digital collection" traded every day, with an annual interest rate as high as 216%. But in fact, these are just photos of "paintings". What consumers spend real money in exchange for is a bunch of "photos" that cannot be redeemed, and these photos do not even generate unique serial numbers.

　　Abroad, the popularity of digital collections is also shrinking. Lianhe Zaobao earlier published an article stating that the monthly transaction volume of an NFT trading platform had shrunk by 1,079% from the highest monthly historical transaction record. "NFT, as a new technology, will inevitably encounter the process of market promotion bubbles."

Trading restricted but transferable

　　The reporter's investigation found that although some well-known platforms are still selling digital collections, the prices have dropped significantly compared to before. Many of them are 18 yuan or even 9.9 yuan. Previously, they were often several hundred yuan or even thousands of yuan per piece. Rare.

  Screenshot of a digital collection that will be released soon on a certain platform.

　　Some consumers told Sino-Singapore Finance that although they have purchased digital collections, they are not "top". Moreover, many digital collections are now relatively low-priced, and some are even obtained for free through events, so they can accept them even if they cannot be sold.

　　Several platforms that issue digital collections have made it clear to China News Finance that "transactions are not supported, but transfers are possible." Some consumers said that after transferring the digital collections in their hands, the platform will clearly indicate the "circulation hash value." Generally speaking, digital collections store the hash value obtained after encrypting the original electronic file on the chain to complete the certificate storage.

　　Although there are no public trading channels in the domestic market, at present, most digital collection players are still rushing to "trade". A report released by iBox pointed out that 57.7% of players are motivated to purchase digital collections because they feel that “there is a lot of room for appreciation in the future and they need to plan ahead.”

  Report screenshot

　　It is worth noting that in 2022, 36 units including the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology signed a self-discipline convention, and all platforms of the signing units did not allow secondary market transactions for digital collections. An article published on the official account of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology pointed out that there are currently no clear provisions on the issuance license or qualifications for digital collections in China. Most of my country's digital collection platforms do not open secondary transactions and only support personal collection and use or free transfer, restricting their circulation. , greatly weakening the risk of speculation.

Is it an “IQ tax”?

　　Some analysts pointed out that the reason for the frequent occurrence of digital collection scams is that players have an excessive hype mentality. Many people enter the game with the mentality of "as soon as the picture is bought, it will double overnight". However, the reality is that the secondary market has not yet taken shape, and the purchased collections It is mostly used for collection, appreciation, etc.

　　From the current point of view, digital collections have not become a key to the world of the Metaverse as the outside world imagined. "At most, becoming a social account avatar" has become a helpless choice for many digital collection players.

　　In response to the chaos in the digital collection industry, Shen Yang, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, said in an interview with China News Service, "If the secondary market does not exist, there will be no so-called primary market, and the popularity will naturally decline."

　　Gu Jiang, a professor at the International Business School of Nanjing University, believes that art collections are only a small part of cultural digitization. Whether they can be turned into asset attributes or commodity attributes for legal transactions requires the relevant national departments to clarify and refine relevant policies and regulations, and secondly, rely on Let the market test it.

　　In addition, the "indivisible" feature weakens the non-fungible characteristics of digital collections, which is quite different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin can be divided into units of 0.1, 0.01, etc. for trading, but digital collections cannot. "If you don't have a life without Bitcoin, you will suffer from the disease of Bitcoin." Some NFT players joked.

　　In 2022, the China Internet Finance Association, China Banking Association, and China Securities Association issued an initiative on preventing NFT-related financial risks, proposing not to weaken the non-homogeneous characteristics of NFT through split ownership or batch creation, and to develop tokens in disguise Issue financing.

　　However, some people believe that it is one-sided to simply equate digital collections with an “IQ tax”. The introduction of blockchain technology provides strong support for the authenticity identification and ownership tracing of digital collections, making digital collections a more reliable and valuable collection.

　　What do you think of it? (over)