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Digital currencies
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Neil Newman
Neil Newman

Abacus | Cryptocurrency and NFT-friendly Hong Kong could be sitting on a new investor time bomb

  • A recent digital auction netted investors virtual Beatles memorabilia, but no physical artefacts from the Fab Four
  • Will the unregulated non-fungible token market thrive in Hong Kong and hurt investors?

Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
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An illuminated neon sign of an NFT displayed in Hong Kong, China, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. Photo: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
Neil Newman

SLEEPWALK

This will make you cringe.

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In 1985, I bought my first CD in London: The Collection, an album of Ultravox’s greatest hits. Although I did not have a CD player at the time, I knew I was being seconded to Tokyo where I’d get one cheaper and kick off the transition of my music collection to crisp digital, leaving my analogue vinyl LPs behind in the attic.

By 1992 I had amassed a decent CD collection, the year MiniDisc arrived, an expensive technology offering 60-80 minutes of audio on a tiny silver disc. I moved my favourite tracks to that format. I still have a pile of MiniDiscs in a box along with the CDs I never play, but with no new MiniDisc players being manufactured, technology has moved on and made them worthless.

A Sony CDP-101, the world’s first commercially released compact disc player. The system was launched in Japan on October 1, 1982. Photo: Sony / Handout
A Sony CDP-101, the world’s first commercially released compact disc player. The system was launched in Japan on October 1, 1982. Photo: Sony / Handout
Also in 1992, I was clearing my house in the UK ready to move to Hong Kong and throwing out junk. My dad held up the two plastic cases of vinyl records containing everything from The Sound of Music – bought when I was six years old – and my amassed collection of teenage Deep Purple and Black Sabbath LPs to the Duran Duran and Simple Minds classic albums I listened to in my early 20s. Original pressings.

“What shall I do with them?” Dad asked. “We’ll take them down the dump, I no longer have a record player, everything is on CDs.”

I said it would make you cringe.

DANCING WITH TEARS IN MY EYES

So you can imagine what went through my mind when I read about a recent non-fungible token (NFT) sale where an auction house in New Zealand, a respected dealer in art, vehicles, and jewellery, auctioned two historical photographs with the original glass plate negatives and NFTs of the pictures, then recommended the buyers smash the fragile glass negative plates making the photos permanently and exclusively digital.
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