He is selling 10,000 ‘digital bears’ designed by his fashion brand
A firm backed by Taiwanese pop icon Jay Chou has launched a non-fungible token (NFT) project featuring virtual avatars called “Phanta Bears”, joining a growing list of entertainment and sports celebrities to test the technology that verifies ownership of unique digital assets. The Phanta Bears, a collection of 10,000 algorithmically-generated digital avatars launched as a spin-off from Chou’s PHANTACi fashion brand, sold out in less than 40 minutes on New Year’s Day, according to an official Tweet from Ezek, the decentralised entertainment platform created by Starvision, which hosted the sale. On the peer-to-peer NFT marketplace Opensea, Phanta Bears prices soared to nearly 0.4 ETH on Monday, a hefty increase from its issuance price of 0.26 cryptocurrency ETH, or about US$1,000. Each bear is depicted in a unique way, using different colours, clothing and accessories designed by the fashion brand co-founded by Chou.
The bears also double as membership cards, granting owners’ access to members-only benefits on Ezek, which is currently preparing to stage virtual concerts, the company said.
Ezek said Phanta Bear NFT owners would also receive priority access to its entertainment metaverse, without elaborating. NFTs are effectively certificates of authenticity generated on a blockchain that represent digital objects such as drawings, animation, music, photos or video. The immutable records of the encrypted tokens allows them to be owned and traded much like physical items in the real world.
In December, former US first lady Melania Trump launched her own NFT platform, becoming one of the latest public figures to join the cryptocurrency boom. Separately, a growing number of artists and cryptocurrency exchanges are riding the popularity of NFTs. The buzz surrounding NFTs helped Mike Winkelmann, a digital artist better known as Beeple, fetch a record US$69 million for NFT artwork at Christies’ online auction last March. Rapper Snoop Dogg also auctioned his NFT Decentral Eyes Dogg, featuring his new audio track and artwork, at Art Basel Miami last month.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency, the biggest media organisation in China, issued the country’s first “news digital collectibles” backed by NFTs on Christmas Eve. Xinhua said in a statement that it released a total of 110,001 copies of selected news photos for free.
The collection “records many precious historical moments in 2021”, the Xinhua statement said. “It is also a digital memory written into the metaverse world.”
In November, the South China Morning Post joined Dapper Labs, the creator of the popular NFT series NBA Top Shot, to release a number of NFT trading cards commemorating the history of Hong Kong, with the first release expected to cover the 1997 handover, marking the end of British colonial rule in the city.
SCMP
