Ant, the fintech group controlled by Jack Ma, put up for sale two images of NFT-backed apps through its payment platform Alipay and the items sold out quickly on Wednesday.
Ant’s adoption of non-fungible tokens created confusion on social media where they were linked to virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, which have the same underlying technology. The price of Bitcoin in India stood at Rs. 24.2 lakhs at 11am IST on June 24.
"Alipay sells NFT products. Isn’t that an illegal transaction?” a comment posted on Twitter like Weibo said.
Ant, who is undergoing a government-ordered restructuring after its mega-IPO collapsed last year, said on Wednesday that non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrencies are two different things.
NFTs have exploded in popularity this year, with NFT artwork sold for millions of dollars.
"NFT is not interchangeable, nor divisible, which makes it inherently different from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin,” said a spokesperson for AntChain, the Ant unit which develops blockchain-based technology solutions .
He said NFTs can be used to create a unique signature for digital assets.
Winston Ma, assistant professor at NYU Law School, also pointed out the confusion over the nature of NFTs.
"Are NFTs virtual currencies? Or, are NFTs certificates for virtual currencies? And more importantly, are NFTs securities? These are questions that no digital economy legislature does? ‘never responded,’ Ma said.
In addition to app images, NFT digital artwork is also auctioned on Alibaba’s platform, accessible through Ant’s Alipay app. AntChain has stated in the product agreements that it provides blockchain technologies to NFT products.
The artworks are copied to a storage space designated by AntChain and are marked with separate blockchain-based certificates that define the ownership of the digital assets.
Over the past month, China has stepped up its campaign against cryptocurrency trading and mining, as part of efforts to counter financial risks.
© Reuters
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