KEY POINTS
- Tencent will officially launch its NFT collection Wednesday
- Each NFT costs around $0.13
- Tencent will also launch a virtual music room where friends can listen to music together
The unprecedented popularity of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) may be slowly dwindling, but it looks like Chinese tech giant Tencent is joining the emerging industry. Its latest activities suggest it has started testing the NFT profile picture avatars as well as a virtual music room.
Last week, several Twitter users shared videos and images showing the supposed NFTs of the Chinese tech giant Tencent. These collectibles, seemingly inspired by the Mfers collection created by sartoshi_NFT, were tested on the QQ Music app.
Mfers is a collection of 10,021 stick-figure NFTs, initially introduced by its creator as memes on Twitter before it was launched as an NFT collection. Apparently, these NFTs are popular in China and it makes sense that Tencent chose them for its first set of Non-Fungible Token's profile pictures.
A logo of Tencent is seen during the World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, November 23, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Aly Song
The NFT collection will launch Wednesday, with each PFP selling at around $0.13 and available only in 40,000 versions. However, Android users can try the profile picture NFT function starting Monday, Tencent said in a post.
The Chinese tech giant is also testing a virtual room function dubbed Music Zone on the music app QQ. The space will allow users to invite their friends' avatars as guests and listen to the music in the virtual room together.
Last year, QQ Music ranked second out of all the music apps available in mainland China with 275 million monthly active users.
The latest information about Tencent's NFT and Music Zone came at the heels of a "self-disciplinary initiative" launched by Chinese business giants, including Tencent, to eradicate speculation in the NFT industry on Monday.
Along with Baidou, Ant Group and JD.com, Tencent issued a 14-article proposal to the China Cultural Industry Association, which requires NFT platforms to meet the requirements in accordance with the law.
The proposal does not say anything about the resale of NFTs, but the initiative promises to prevent setting up secondary NFT marketplaces.
"Different from most foreign platforms that apply NFT technology as financial products, domestic digital collections are more regarded as the category of digital cultural creativity," the China Cultural Industry Association said in a statement.
