Alibaba Group Holding, a Chinese multinational e-commerce firm, has successfully established a new non-fungible (NFT) token marketplace allowing trademark holders to sell tokenized licenses to their intellectual property.
In an August 17 South China Morning Post report, Alibaba confirmed that it is launching a new NFT marketplace, dubbed “Blockchain Digital Copyright and Asset-Trade,” which will be accessible via the Alibaba Auction platform. The new marketplace aims to cater to writers, musicians, artists, and game developers.
Alibaba will issue newly established NFTs at the “New Copyright Blockchain,” a distributed ledger technology platform centrally operated by the Sichuan Blockchain Association Copyright Committee.
The marketplace is now live hosting several NFTs set for an official auction next month. In that context, bidders must pay a deposit of 500 yuan or roughly $77 to participate in auctions. Each upcoming auction has a set reserve price of $15.
Interestingly, buyers can view their collections via the crypto portfolio application, Bit Universe, which integrates WeChat. While commenting about the new marketplace, Josh Ye, a proficient reporter at SCMP, tweeted:
“Although the technology itself does not prevent unauthorized copying. Sales include complete ownership of works purchased through the platform.”
Nevertheless, many NFTs that are currently on display do not indicate which rights purchasers are offered, with one NFT even appearing to depict unlicensed Star Wars fan art. Although the marketplace NFT announcement is the biggest up-to-date, Alibaba has subsequently embraced non-fungible tokens on several occasions.
In July 2021, reports emerged that Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Taobao unleashed its NFTs for the first time at the annual Maker Festival, which celebrates Chinese arts and entrepreneurship. The event hosted the sale of NFT-based real estate created by Chinese artist Huang Heshan.
In the same month, South China Morning Post, an Alibaba-owned news publication, launched an NFT project dubbed “Artifact” that included tokenized historical moments reported from its 118-year-old archive. Such historic moments included the official handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China in 1997.
