Recently, the fire of digital collections has warmed up again.
In May, Internet companies, museums and even media organizations launched digital collection projects. Since Ant Group took the lead in starting the layout last year, Baidu, JD.com, Xiaohongshu, Tencent. Almost all traditional Internet manufacturers have begun to race in the digital collection track, and a new industry ecology is quietly taking shape.
The attractiveness of digital collections to collectors is inseparable from their artistic value and market scarcity, and to a certain extent, it also caters to the psychology of some users who pursue resale and monetization after appreciation. For enterprises and platforms, it is an important step to obtain profits, enrich business means, and even connect their meta-universe projects. So, at present, what is the current status of the entire domestic digital collection market? What is the survival status of the digital collection distribution platform? How will the digital collection market evolve in the future? Cover News The Ministry of New Economy and Science and Technology launched the "Decoding Digital Collections" series of reports today, comprehensively analyzing the value and routine of digital collections, crises and futures.
Cover news reporter Meng Mei Ouyang Hongyu
Recently, the Chinese People's Association Meta-Universe Working Committee and 17 institutions jointly issued the "Declaration on Promoting the Healthy Development of Digital Collections and Promoting the Landing of the Digital Economy Meta-Universe Industry". The Declaration calls on consumers to establish a correct concept of consumption, enhance their awareness of self-protection, and consciously resist the financial productization and speculation of digital collections. At the same time, it calls for increasing the safety and convenience of users of digital collections, as well as the diversification of digital collections as a cultural and creative carrier expression.
Digital collections have become a popular track, and the secondary market has also launched a special concept section. The reporter combed and found that as of April this year, there were more than 20 digital asset concept stocks in A shares, such as Xinghui Entertainment, which launched the digital asset product Parrot Coin, Tom Cat, which authorized the creation of the "Talking Tom Cat Family" series of digital collections, and Visual China, which packaged the pictures and video works of its 500px photography community into chains as digital collections.
According to the Cinda Securities Research Report, digital collections have entered a period of explosive growth. In January, the digital collection topped Baidu's hot search tenth, and its Baidu index soared. The "Report on the Development of Digital Collection Applications" released by the Gyro Research Institute predicts that the mainland digital collection trading market will reach 50 to 80 billion yuan in 2-3 years.
A multitude of IPs poured into digital collections
The level of collection value has attracted attention
In one minute, thousands of digital collections are all sold out; several mobile phones are grabbed at the same time, running with them is the norm, grabbing is an accident... As a concept derived from the framework of the metaverse, today, the storm of digital collections has swept the global market. According to data from NFTGo, a digital asset data analytics platform, the market value of digital assets reached $19.85 billion as of April 2022, compared with $61.74 million in January 2021, a 320-fold surge in market capitalization, although the growth rate has slowed since March 2022.
When the foreign digital asset market gradually stabilizes, domestic digital collections still receive widespread attention. At the end of last month, the digital collection of multi-scenario applications themed "The Legend of the Paladin Sword" was officially released on the Whale Detective Platform, with a total of 80,000 pieces, and it was sold out in each release period. Prior to this, the total 140,000-themed multi-scene application digital collection of Saint Seiya was also sold out after the launch of the platform. In addition, the Temple of Heaven cultural and creative digital collection released at the beginning of this month, and the intangible cultural heritage collection "Yuhuashi Scenery Series" were announced to be sold out for the first time.
The reporter noted that many of these digital collections were launched through ant whale exploration and Ali auction. According to the data, as of April 2022, the platform has issued more than 3.8 million digital collections, with a total transaction volume of 62 million yuan and more than 1 million collectors. At present, a number of museums have cooperated with them to jointly launch digital art collections. In addition, digital collection platforms under Internet giants such as Baidu Super Chain, JD Lingxian, Little Red Book STEO INTO R-SPACE, and Tencent Magic Core will regularly launch digital collections with different themes.
The reason why digital collections are hot is also due to the value of collections and the appreciation space. Although platforms such as Tencent Magic Core and Ali Whale Detective emphasize in relevant clauses that users are prohibited from using digital works for illegal means such as speculation, over-the-counter transactions, and fraud, and have formulated stricter rules for transfer gifts, many collectors still hope that the price of their collections can be speculated higher and higher. For example, on Taobao, a digital avatar called "3D Ape Ape" is still hyped to 3,000 yuan, while the starting price of this collection is 100 yuan.
However, some collectors said that they were banned for paying to give away digital collections, and many people around them no longer played digital collections. "The company makes money every day, but it doesn't let players transfer it, and the heat of the digital collection drops a lot."
Behind the digital collection's popularity
The scarcity of investment value is limited
Equipped with the blockchain express, the digital collection extends all the way to various fields, and for a while, everything can become a digital asset. In addition to games and intangible cultural heritage IP, at the beginning of this month, digital collections also entered the media field, and many media organizations have launched their own limited edition digital collections.
But behind the fiery digital collection market, people's concerns have never stopped. Not long ago, Jay Chou's collection of NFTs was stolen. At the same time, the price of limited-edition digital collections in the secondary market skyrocketed due to its scarcity; whether the price bubble will disappear after the market cools is still unknown.
Conceptual hype on the grounds of "scarcity" often leads to bubbles, and the Dutch tulip bubble is a lesson to be learned. Pan Helin, a researcher and co-director of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center at Zhejiang University's International United Business School, reminded that digital collections cannot only focus on "scarcity", because the value of such collections is not a "value" recognized by the majority of the market, but is extremely subjective. "For the average working class, poor families, or even some ordinary investors, a digital collection is nothing more than a game of code or capital, and it doesn't make any sense."
According to the research report of Cinda Securities, the industrial chain of the digital asset industry is composed of an infrastructure layer, a project creation layer and a derivative application layer. Among them, the infrastructure layer and the distribution platform are closely bound, and its value capture comes from the minting and distribution of digital collections, and the platform charges a certain percentage of the total amount of the issuance and shares with the blockchain technology provider. That is to say, the more digital collection projects are released, the higher the total amount of distribution, and the higher the revenue of the infrastructure layer and platform.
So, does the digital collection just look beautiful? Can the digital asset market, which is oscillating in the warming and receding tide, become a connector in the ecological space of the homogeneous universe? In this regard, Tianfeng Securities believes that the decline in the heat of pure digital collection trading marks the deepening of the exploration of digital asset applications, and in the long run, in the decentralized meta-universe system, digital assets are expected to be used as value carriers. At present, most digital collection projects do not have scarcity in the sense of investment, and the overall development dividend period is limited, on the contrary, the projects behind the economic ecology are more sustainable and will have more long-term development space.