Tron’s Justin Sun Eyes ‘Acquisition’ Move for Tencent’s NFT Division
Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun says so TronDAOa decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that manages the Tron network’s development wants to “acquire” a non-fungible token (NFT) arm of the Chinese tech powerhouse Tencent.
As previously reported, Tencent once had high hopes for its NFT entities and could theoretically have developed them into some of Asia’s most lucrative platforms. Tencent has huge financial resources and a large preponderance of gaming and entertainment IPs. But the firm was forced to severely dilute its offerings by the Chinese government, which imposed strict regulations on the NFT sector.
These regulations included a de facto ban on the term “NFT” itself (Tencent and its Chinese rivals were forced to call their offerings “digital collectibles”). Beijing has also imposed heavy restrictions on secondary market trading, forcing companies to use private blockchains – rather than popular public networks.
Tencent had tried to soldier on, and launched Huanhe app and trading platform. After a promising start last year, recent Huanhe collections have experienced weak sales. And earlier this week, the firm announced it was closing Huanhe for good.
Per Jiemian, a number of other NFT-related Tencent services, including Magic core, has also been earmarked for closure, with Tencent keen to take “cost-cutting” measures after experiencing a 23% year-on-year decline in net profit in the first quarter of the current fiscal year. The company saw similar declines in the last two quarters of FY2021.
The media outlet stated that Magic Core would stop operating “this week”, citing unnamed Tencent insiders.
However, Sun is keen to step in – and wants to integrate Huanhe as part of ApeNFT ecosystem.
On Twitter, he wrote that,
TronDAO “intends to acquire” Huanhe “so that we can continue to support and [build] on it to provide a top platform for all users with [the] ApeNFT Platform.”
When one Twitter user responded by challenging Sun to “make sure” he “screened the employees so you have someone who can make the team successful,” the Tron founder replied:
“Yes. That’s the first thing we would do.”
ApeNFT launched in April of this year as the “first official NFT marketplace on” the Tron network. Sun has attempted to kick-start interest in the platform by “donating several famous works of art,” including the works “Le Nez” by Giacometti and “Femme nue couchée au collier (Marie-Thérèse)” by Pablo Picasso to ApeNFT’s foundation “to support the development of NFT art.”
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Learn more:
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– Tencent Shutter’s NFT platform
– New Tencent Digital Yuan wallet prepares for launch
– Chinese Tech Titans’ Digital Collectibles Involve “Fighting Crypto”
– Tron DAO Reserve will deploy additional USDC 500M to protect Stablecoin as Depeg expands
– Massive short interest pushes the funding rate for Tron’s TRX to negative 500% annually
