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China’s Xinhua jumps on NFT bandwagon with thousands of news photos to be issued as ‘digital collectibles’

  • State-run Xinhua will release mainland China’s first ‘news digital collectibles’ backed by NFTs on Christmas Eve
  • Selected news photos, packaged into 11 collections of 10,000 copies each and one copy of a special edition, will be available through Xinhua’s app

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State-run Xinhua News Agency makes its foray into NFTs with the launch of ‘news digital collectibles’ on Christmas Eve through its mobile app in China. Illustration: Shutterstock
State-run Xinhua News Agency, the biggest media organisation in China, will soon issue the country’s first “news digital collectibles” backed by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), showing that domestic interest in virtual assets continues to grow in spite of earlier warnings about the risk of fraud and potential creation of a bubble that would harm consumers.
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On Christmas Eve, Xinhua will release a total of 110,001 copies of selected news photos for free, according to a statement on Wednesday from the influential Beijing-based news organisation.

That package is made up of 11 collections of 10,000 copies each and one copy of a special edition, which will be available on Xinhua’s mobile app at 8pm local time on Friday.

The collections “record many precious historical moments in 2021”, the Xinhua statement said. “It is also a digital memory written into the metaverse world.”

The facade of Xinhua News Agency’s headquarters in Beijing. Photo: Weibo
The facade of Xinhua News Agency’s headquarters in Beijing. Photo: Weibo
Xinhua’s digital collectibles include the Chinese Communist Party’s celebration of its 100th anniversary in July at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the country’s recent milestone of administering more than 2.7 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses nationwide.
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