three hot takes + one analysis
DODO, BSC, MEITU and your favorite NFTs!
Hi, I’m Shuyao Kong 孔姝尧. Da bing is my weekly rumination of worthwhile news happening in China’s crypto ecosystem.
I’m still experimenting with the newsletter format. DM me what works for you so far and what you found absolutely annoying.
If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all.
Meme of the week:
This meme, which comes from a popular TV drama “Romance of the Three Kingdom,” has been widely used by the Chinese crypto community as an indication of anything that’s going upward. That includes:
Your shitcoin bag
Your TSLA shares
Oh, and central bank money printer going brrrr
Three Hot Takes:
1. DODO Pool Incident Postmortem: With a Little Help from Our Friends
Need a quick episode of Netflix but also want to learn a few things? This post-mortem of DODO’s recent hack combines everything from complex personalities, twisted plot, and more importantly a happy ending.
But what really drew my attention is how intricate the dark forest is, and how, even though we all live in the crypto world, real-life connection comes to save at the end.
Sit back and enjoy.
2. “Farmers’ Association” Formed on Binance Smart Chain
No one wants to be “rug-pulled” including the farmers on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). After the incident of Meerkat Finance, a group of farmers, security auditors, media, and exchanges informally established a “ Farmers’ Association” to vet out the scammy projects.
Is this the beginning of BSC having a non-Binance initiated ecosystem?
3. Meitu buys more BTC and, way more ETH
It hasn’t even been a month since Meitu, the popular photo-shop application, announced their purchase of BTC and ETH. On March 17th, the firm announced another round of coin shopping extravaganza.
Biggest takeaway? They bought more ETH and BTC.
One Long Analysis:
NFTs: Made in China
Bubbling up in China like Bubble Tea
“I’ve cut out all my NFT sales for the next three months and rejected all interviews (other than yours) because I think there’s such a bubble in the market, and my work has been pushed up too high,” Ting Song, one of the most active crypto artists in China, told me, flatteringly.
Song is among a number of artists who saw their NFT work rocket to the moon. Just like in the west, NFTs have penetrated every corner of the Chinese crypto community. Crypto WeChat is full of hashmask equivalents, and for those who love cats, mooncats have become a favorite topic.
Perhaps a leading indicator of any type of bubble is our good, old friend Binance. Undaunted after getting into trouble with its knock off of EulerBeats, a music-NFT project, Binance is venturing deeper into the NFT space, and giving away free NFTs.
Colin Wu, a crypto journalist in China, told me that he participated in a Binance NFT activity where Binance drew him a carrot and turned it into an NFT. Now that little carrot is worth 1.5 BNB, around $300.
NFT exuberance in China is just as real as it is everywhere else. But no one there is paying lip service to investing in great art. The Chinese crypto community is pretty much interested in the speculative aspect of it all. They’re more curious about the next platform token to purchase than the next great emerging artist.
Still early but growing
“NFT art is still too early in China,” Yin Cao, Managing Director of the Digital Renaissance Foundation, told me, “There are two reasons why we are too early. First, the Chinese art market has an extremely poor understanding of crypto art. Second, Chinese NFT artists have a lot of catchup work to do compared to its western counterparts.”
The second reason explains why the majority of the UCCA Labs exhibition will be internationally-famed artwork such as Robert Alice’s “Portraits of a Mind,” a series of 40 paintings composed of Bitcoins source code, and Beeple’s “Everydays—The 2020 Collection”.
Still, there are plenty of Chinese crypto artists that have experience with the new medium.
“The early Chinese crypto artists have a diverse background ranging from traditional art to cognitive science and cryptography. This is slightly different from western practitioners,” Song told me.
But more importantly, crypto art—like all art in China—has a unique value proposition, given the country’s special political landscape.
Said Song: “There are two core values of Crypto art: it’s an innovation that is based on open-source principles, and it’s largely driven by the cyberpunk culture.”
In other words, for the first time, artists can plug into a permissionless network that allows them to freely express sensitive topics such as power, regulation, subculture, authority, individualism, and collective vulnerability. They are not restricted by physical space nor censorship. This might be a norm in the western world, but quite precious in China.
Handicapped or leapfrogging?
NFT Art is fundamentally political. For Chinese artists, crypto is the perfect weapon to guarantee free expression. But such a weapon comes with risk; one might well wonder whether the Chinese government will be happy to see permissionless art on the blockchain.
What’s worse, since China officially banned crypto exchanges in 2017, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to turn fiat into crypto; neither entrepreneurs nor artists want to make a Beeple-like splash of their artwork, knowing that they could be easily banned one day.
That’s why NFT art in China has a tougher route to grow compared to their western counterparts. yet, Song remains positive. “We are seeing these early adopters unite forces and educate the younger generation. I think if we do this well together, we could build a more solid foundation than western artists,” Song told me.
Perhaps, just like the way China leapfrogged the western world in terms of digitalization (I’m thinking here of how Alipay revolutionised the Chinese payment system) NFTs could also leapfrog in China. Maybe not in the same format as their western cousins, but if any of the tech giants decide to get into NFTs—with Chinese characteristics, of course—1.5 billion people will be impacted.