Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings, Baidu, JD.com, Ant Group – the fintech arm of Alibaba Group Holding – and several other companies have adopted a ‘self-discipline initiative’ to curb speculation in the NFT market. reports The South China Morning Post.
According to the document, platforms selling ‘digital collectibles’ must implement real-name authentication for users when conducting operations with NFT.
Such services’ activities are proposed to be certified, with particular attention to ‘the security of underlying blockchain technologies’ and ‘the protection of intellectual property’.
The document does not directly mention the resale of tokens; the initiative obliges avoiding the creation of secondary trading venues for NFT trading and ‘firmly resist speculation’.
The signatories also backed China’s ban on the use of cryptocurrencies, emphasising the need ‘to support only legal tender as the nominal and settlement currency’.
The privately prepared document has no legal force. Nevertheless, government bodies responsible for developing industry standards may take note of these proposals.
As a reminder, this is not the first self-discipline agreement in the NFT space for China’s tech giants. A similar document on mitigating financial risks in the NFT market was signed by them in November 2021.
In autumn 2021, Tencent and Ant Group changed the term NFT to ‘digital collectibles’. Other platforms also distanced themselves from the definition of ‘non-fungible tokens’.
In March 2022, NFT marketplaces owned by Ant Group and Tencent updated their user agreements due to regulatory uncertainty. As a result, WeChat removed the accounts of several platforms.
In June, WeChat introduced a ban on secondary NFT trading, and said it would impose ‘sanctions’ on accounts linked to cryptocurrency trading.
According to media reports, on the state-backed Blockchain Services Network, infrastructure to support NFTs not tied to cryptocurrencies has been deployed. Prior to this, Chinese authorities said that NFTs and metaverses could be bubbles and Ponzi schemes.
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