#60 | Chinese Government Launches National NFT Marketplace???

Estimated Read Time: 8 minutes

Hey friends,

Welcome into 2023 with our 60th edition of Morning NFTea! We're starting the year with a bang — given big news from China, Rolls Royce, and top crypto exchange Kraken. Let's jump into it!

Chinese Government Launches NFT Marketplace

Only five newsletters ago, China took the limelight with the Chinese Court of Law ruling NFTs as valuable property that must be protected. This was a massive deal considering the central bank banned all crypto transactions last year. Still, if this official support for NFTs was not enough, the new China Digital Asset Trading Platform makes the future of Non-Fungible-Token technology even brighter.

Launched on January 1, 2023, the new marketplace will act as a government-regulated platform for the secondary sale of NFTs; however, not quite NFTs as we know them. The platform runs on an underlying Layer-1 called the “China Cultural Protection Chain” which is heavily regulated, showing how the Chinese government seems to be cherry-picking the technological advances related to crypto and the blockchain.

There will also be stringent regulations around the platform which will make it more restrictive compared to platforms like OpenSea.

The NFT platform operator is the state-owned China Technology Exchange that governs intellectual property rights and IT-related matters, as well as the China Cultural Relics Exchange which deals with culture-related affairs. Together, the government indicated this platform is tasked with “implementing” Chinese efforts to “digitize culture” and “develop cultural projects and industries through technical assistance and innovation”.

Though we may not see support for mainstream chains like Ethereum and Solana for quite some time due to China continuing to sideline crypto assets, this is undoubtedly a step in the right direction for the development of blockchain networks and NFTs. After all, if China can sign off on them, then what else is standing in the way of inevitable mainstream adoption?

Although this may sound like a bad thing for NFTs as we know them, it's important to remember China doesn't even have the likes of Google, Youtube and Facebook to name a few. So the fact this highly censored “crypto-hating” country is embracing the benefits of NFT technology, the same NFT technology we talk about every week, that’s an extremely bullish sign for the future of our space.

Rolls Royce Embeds NFT Into New Cars

When it comes to household name luxury brands, it's hard to go past Rolls-Royce, the most expensive car brand in the world. They are also the latest automobile brand to start embracing the technological advancement of NFTs. In a historical first for Rolls-Royce, they unveiled their first-ever co-branded cars in partnership with leading artist Sacha Jafri.

Introduced by the man himself, CEO of Rolls-Royce Torsten Muller-Otvos says 'The Six Elements Phantom II Collection' is “the highest form of meaningful, expressive and artistic excellence with this first-ever artist-created Rolls-Royce Phantom Series II, with additional NFTs included within the car. After a remarkable journey of collaboration, creativity and craftsmanship, we are thrilled with the success of the entire project”

The six uniquely artist-designed Phantom cars have been hand-painted with a Sacha Jafri gallery, but what's awesome here is in each glove compartment of the six cars is an embedded QR code that links to the cars accompanying unique one-of-a-kind digital artwork NFT. The owners of these exquisite cars can sell their matched NFTs, and in doing so the “The Rolls-Royce That Keeps on Giving” NFT initiative built into the smart contract comes into play where 100% of the resale royalties will go to the Jafri chosen charities, which Jafri says will now be “forever raising money and awareness for the four main charitable concerns of our world”.

Progressive stories like this are some of our favorites to talk about, and here we have one of the most prestigious brands in the world that traditionally shies away from attaching their name to anything embracing NFTs. Heck, this is their first co-branded car collaboration ever! Yet, this century-old company chooses to explore the new opportunities unique collectible digital artwork has for the owner and the cool benefits that smart contracts have opened up, another bullish sign for the future of NFT technology.

Kraken Opens NFT Marketplace

As the world's third-largest Cryptocurrency exchange (behind Binance and Coinbase), there's probably a good chance you have used or at least heard of Kraken. With over 6 million active users, these Kraken customers will have improved accessibility to Web3 through a new NFT marketplace. Currently open in public beta mode, Kraken users can trade and collect 110 of the most prominent collections across both Ethereum and Solana. If you're wondering why 110, it's because the marketplace vets all collections before they are added, including any future additions, all in an effort to improve the ease and safety of the end user as they enter Web3.

In case you missed it, that quote mentioned “free”, because the Kraken NFT marketplace does not contain any gas fees. This means there will be no additional transaction fees when buying or trading NFTs (unless you transfer them to another platform), but if you were wondering, there will be enforced creator royalties. Through the Kraken wallet, users can buy, sell, and trade digital assets from multiple blockchains using a single wallet.

Although it may be overwhelming with the crazy amount of NFT marketplaces available now, we must remember that fundamentally all this is doing is increasing the accessibility of NFTs to the rest of the world. Whether that's Binance users having easier access to a marketplace, or now Kraken users being one step closer to an NFT purchase, all and all the entire space is inching that ever bit closer to mainstream adoption.

Thanks for starting 2023 off with us! We hope you enjoyed this edition and we can't wait to show you what's in store for the rest of the year with Morning NFTea. Until then, take care!

What's the NFTea?

Solana went through a bit of a downturn this week, hitting a low point of $8.14 which is almost 97% off its all-time high of $250. Yikes.

Many pundits have been quick to call the demise of this blockchain, and even its top projects DeGods and y00ts have announced their departure in 2023 to Ethereum and Polygon respectively.

However, that doesn't mean that there isn't still fun stuff happening on Solana. Apart from the ongoing fight for top NFT collection on Solana, a new dogecoin variant has appeared for the first time on Solana...

Introducing $BONK, a Solana community-focused token which perhaps provides more potential and stability than the native token of the chain itself. Its integration through various community-built dapps and mints has revitalized the Solana-based community's energy.

While the Ethereum ecosystem is more established, NFTs exists on multiple different chains as well and we wish all chains nothing but success and innovation in the new year.

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DISCLAIMER:

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.