Key Takeaways
- China is setting up an NFT marketplace.
- The platform was built by the state-sponsored China Technology Exchange.
- Interoperability between the Chinese NFT marketplace and decentralized blockchains currently looks unlikely.
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China is following up on its CBDC efforts with a state-sponsored NFT marketplace, which would enable the trading of digital copyrights and digital collections on a blockchain called the China Cultural Security Chain.
The China Cultural Security Chain
According to the China Daily, the Chinese government is planning on launching the nation’s first state-sponsored NFT marketplace.
The “China Digital Asset Trading Platform,” as it was called in the article, has a launch ceremony scheduled for January 1, 2023, in Beijing. The platform was partially built by the China Technology Exchange, a national technological institution established by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the State Intellectual Property Office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Beijing Municipal People’s Government.
The NFT marketplace is expected to enable transactions of intellectual property rights, digital copyrights, and digital collections. The platform will apparently use a blockchain called the China Cultural Security Chain, but will keep relying on trading instruments and settlement mechanisms provided by the state-sponsored China Technology Exchange.
Details surrounding the NFT marketplace are scarce, except for the fact that it will enable the secondary trading of digital assets. The China Cultural Security Chain is highly likely to be centralized, meaning that all NFTs supported by the chain will belong to the entity in control of the chain—not users, as is the case with Ethereum or a number of other blockchains.
The report also made no mention of interoperability between the China Cultural Security Chain and other blockchains. Because of the Chinese government’s current negative view towards decentralized cryptocurrencies (the country cracked down on cryptocurrency and crypto-related activities in 2021) it seems unlikely for non-Chinese NFTs to end up being supported by the government-run marketplace any time soon.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.
