Chinese government launches an NFT marketplace

China is following up its CBDC efforts with a state-backed NFT marketplace, which will enable trading of digital copyrights and digital collections on a blockchain called the China Cultural Security Chain.

China’s Cultural Safety Chain

According to China Daily, the Chinese government is planning launch the nation’s first government-backed 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 built in part by the China Technology Exchange, a national technology 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 continue to rely on trading instruments and settlement mechanisms provided by the state-backed China Technology Exchange.

Details about the NFT marketplace are scarce, except for the fact that it will enable secondary trading of digital assets. The China Cultural Security Chain is most likely centralized, meaning that all NFTs backed 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 did not mention interoperability between the China Cultural Security Chain and other blockchains. Due to the Chinese government’s current negative view of decentralized cryptocurrencies (the country knocked down on cryptocurrency and crypto-related activities in 2021) it seems unlikely that non-Chinese NFTs will end up being supported by the state marketplace anytime soon.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.