China's first national NFT marketplace launches next week

According to a report by Sina News, China will introduce its first regulated platform for NFT trading on January 1, 2023. The state-owned. Chinese Technology Exchange, the state-owned Artna, and the private corporate entity Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd, as a secondary market for trading NFTs, founded this company. Copyrights for digital assets will be tradable on the platform alongside NFTs. According to a source familiar with the matter, the project's goal is to “regulate and avoid the excessive speculation in secondary [NFT] markets.” Yu Jianing, a preeminent Chinese expert on digital assets and metaverse innovations, made the following observation in an interview:

"In terms of industry supervision and regulation, digital assets represent a new form of commerce, and much regarding laws, regulations and supervisory policies remains to be refined. Therefore, a deal of uncertainty exists. Platforms have a clear responsibility for the listing and trading of digital assets. Relative to intellectual property rights and digital copyrights, digital assets face a greater risk of regulatory soundness."

Previously, on November 29th, the Hangzhou Internet Court, a Chinese court of law specializing in internet-related legal disputes, ruled that NFTs are legally protected virtual property because they “have the object characteristics of property rights such as value, scarcity, controllability, and tradeability.” China has outlawed cryptocurrency exchanges as of 2021, but citizens possessing crypto are considered legal owners of their holdings.