Welcome to The Daily Forkast, August 31, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News,
covering all things blockchain.
So much to cover today, one that’s uniquely well, China.
A Chinese internet company which started out in gaming that did a 180 into mining crypto
has made yet another move, this time into NFTs. The heat and big money behind non-fungible
tokens is far from cooling off and China is just the tip of the iceberg, that and more
coming up.
Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.
First up, China-based The9 has announced that it is stepping into the NFT business with
the launch of NFTStar. The platform is set to sell NFT collections featuring global stars.
While China’s Central Bank has vowed to keep the pressure on cryptocurrency and speculative
trading, NFTs have not faced any political backlash in the country. So looks like this
is another sign of that market shifting up a gear.
Forkast.News Timmy Shen reports.
NFTStar, a wholly owned subsidiary of The9, will be based in Singapore and expects to
launch in the fourth quarter.
The company is offering incentives to those who signed up early. And while global sports
stars will be the main partners initially, more collections from the entertainment and
arts world are expected to follow.
The platform says it will accept payments from credit cards to make it easier for mainstream
consumers to get involved.
The9 CEO Zhu Jun says adding NFT as a core business alongside cryptocurrency mining will
help drive the company’s globalization strategy.
For Forkast.News, Timmy Shen, Taipei, Taiwan.
Meanwhile, in Korea, three major crypto exchanges are getting ready to follow international
anti-money laundering rules. And they’re working together on this to figure out a way
to abide by the Financial Action Task Force travel rule, that’s the FATF travel rule.
Now, the joint effort is called “CODE”, short for Connect Digital Exchanges, and it’s
a joint venture by Bithumb, Coinone, and Korbit in South Korea.
Except here’s the twist – those three exchanges have yet to meet Korea’s own domestic
standards, in order to continue operating in the country. And they only have 25 days
left to do so. So much international intrigue.
Forkast.News reporter Danny Park has more.
The travel rule is the Financial Action Task Force’s guideline for virtual asset service
providers, an effort to combat global money laundering and terrorist financing. It requires
exchanges to collect information on senders and receivers of crypto transactions of US$1000
or more.
Korea’s Financial Services Commission applies to requirement to any crypto transactions
of over a million won, or about US$860. It has given exchanges until March 25th to construct
the travel rule system.
CODE aims to build a solution to serve any exchange that wants to comply with this international
standard. The three exchanges will combine their individual anti-money laundering progress
so far to further develop until the March deadline.
In future CODE plans to link its system with those of trusted exchanges in other countries.
However, as none of the three exchanges have been qualified by the FSC as legitimate crypto
operators, they face the risk of being closed down if they don’t meet the new regulations
before September 24th. Unless that happens first, we may not get to see CODE in action.
For Forkast.News, I’m Danny Park.
Now, over in Hong Kong, the Securities and Futures Commission, or the SFC, has warned
that digital tokens and initial coin offerings, or ICOs, could be involved in unauthorized
collective investment schemes.
Ok, so what are we talking about?
Well, the SFC’s warning comes as LABS token, a token for fractional investments into real
estate projects, was added to the SFC’s suspected unauthorized CIS alert list on the
same day.
Now, professional investors or those with more than US$1 million in their portfolio
are legally allowed to invest in unauthorized collective investment schemes.
But the SFC has urged investors to exercise extreme caution and to do their own due diligence
before investing.
And finally, today, looks like you are never too young to make money from NFTs. I can’t
wait to introduce you to this young lady in India.
13-year-old Laya Mathikshara from Chennai has already made around
US$40,000 selling her works as NFTs. Now that’s almost enough to buy a house in her home city.
She started out exploring how to create digital art by watching online tutorials and has not
looked back since she learned how to mint her works as NFTs.
“When I was nine, I started with art, like basic paintings and drawings and portraits.
When I was 11, I started with programming and stuff. And in this pandemic, I had a lot
of time to kind of try to integrate both art and tech, both of my favorite hobbies together.”
You got to love the hustle. Since then, one of her animated works of “Gratitude”,
which pays tribute to Covid-19 frontline workers, has been nominated for both the All-American
High School Film Festival and the 16th Busan International Kids and Youth Film Festival.
If she’s got one fault, maybe it’s being a little too modest. Mathikshara says she’s
not different, really, from any other teenager. – she loves to dance, is a picky eater,
she tells us, you know, the usual.
But it’s a great reminder. It’s never too early or late to start anything.
And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit
Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau.Until the next time.