Economic Daily: Don’t treat digital collections as “money-making” products

Recently, Guangyi Digital Collection, a digital collection platform, has quietly "resurrected" after being attacked by hackers, which has attracted the attention of the industry. After its comeback, the digital collections on the platform continued to soar, with most of the increases exceeding 100 times, and a few collections even exceeding 1,000 times. There must be something wrong when things are abnormal. This wave of growth inevitably makes people wonder whether there is speculation and hype, which in turn leads to greater financial risks. It seems that restricting the hype of digital collections urgently needs to become the core consensus of the industry's high-quality development.

First of all, it needs to be made clear that digital collections cannot be equated with foreign NFTs. The concept of digital collections has been popular for a while. From a technical point of view, it is very similar to NFT, but it is not the domestic version of NFT. The full name of NFT is Non-Fungible Token, which is a non-fungible token issued based on blockchain. Token means token in English. The domestic digital collection market has always emphasized the de-"T", that is, weakening the financial transaction and investment attributes of digital collections, and emphasizing the combination with the real economy.

Secondly, we should correctly understand the value of digital collections. Digital collections can be understood as a kind of cultural and creative product based on new technologies. The collections reflect art, aesthetics and creativity and have certain cultural value. For example, the "Thousand Palaces" series of digital collections released by Daming Palace National Heritage Park can be appreciated from all angles by sliding the screen with your fingers, which is vivid and interesting. Using information technology to show the value of artworks or cultural relics has given new life to traditional culture and cultural relics, enhanced young people's sense of identity and belonging to traditional culture, and contributed to the development and revitalization of traditional cultural resources.

Digital collections are also a new marketing tool. As the concept of digital collections becomes popular, this popularity has also spread to the consumer market. Not only McDonald's, Xiaopeng, Lancome and many other commercial brand marketing want to catch the express train of digital collections, but also "national" enterprises such as China Post and China Telecom have also joined the game. From the perspective of amplifying brand IP and conveying brand culture, digital collections can give brands new value and establish a benign interaction with consumers. For example, the "National Treasure Panda Mailbox" series of digital collections launched by China Post not long ago brought more exposure and attention to the company. From this perspective, the development of domestic digital collections should be fully combined with the real economy and take the path of using virtual to support the real. Platform companies should better play their positive value and let digital collections truly empower the real economy.

For ordinary consumers, digital collections are a novel cultural experience that can satisfy both social and aesthetic needs. However, collections should be based on love for artworks and recognition of brands. Compared with traditional collections, digital collections have only changed in media form. Whether they have collection value still depends on their essence, that is, aesthetic value, social value and contemporary value. In the long run, only those digital collections with deep cultural connotations and creative content will have a more lasting vitality.

For those who want to use digital collections as a way to "make money", hyping digital collections is not a good business. On the one hand, digital collections are still in the early stages of development, with varying quality and relatively vague value. Take the Xu Beihong digital collection that has recently caused heated discussions in the industry. The Xu Beihong Art Museum has publicly questioned that some digital collections are counterfeit works, and some cannot provide complete traceability evidence. If the digital collection platform cannot guarantee the uniqueness and scarcity of digital collections, their value will be greatly reduced.

On the other hand, digital collections are new things, and market regulators have not yet made clear regulations on their development. It is very easy to have problems such as abuse of technology, copyright theft, fictitious value, and irregular transactions. The "Digital Collection Industry Self-Discipline Development Initiative" recently launched by the industry has a certain effect on risk prevention and control, but it is not legally binding. Market development will inevitably go through a process of great waves washing away the sand, and some platforms and collections will also face the survival of the fittest. Similar to the logic of previous speculation on shoes and blind boxes, once the game of passing the parcel is over, consumers will only be left with a mess.