JD Relaunches Digital Collectibles Business, "SpiritRare" Platform Launches New Digital Asset Transfer Service

BlockBeats News, December 17th, according to The New Consumption Daily, Lingxi, a digital asset platform under JD.com, today (December 16th) announced the opening of its gifting function, stating that the new issuance of digital assets officially began offering gifting services on December 15th, with the opening time for existing assets to be determined. This action comes just one day after Lingxi started its public beta. Earlier in December 2021, Lingxi launched on the JD.com APP mini-program, and the first batch of digital art pieces designed based on JD.com's mascot "Joy" officially went on sale. However, as policies have tightened, Lingxi, which has not enabled secondary trading, once experienced a "halt."

2021 was the first year of digital collectibles. Tencent's "Huanhe" APP and Ant Group's "Whale Exploration" platform quickly rose, leading the first half of the digital collectibles industry. In the second half of 2022, the digital collectibles industry cooled down. The China Internet Finance Association and two other associations issued the "Proposal on Preventing NFT-Related Financial Risks," clearly stating to curb the financialization and securitization tendencies of NFTs and prevent illegal financial activities. In July of that year, Tencent News first suspended its digital collectibles-related business, in August, Huanhe released a notice on purging users, and in November of the same year, Tencent Music's digital collectibles business was shut down.

A turning point came in December of this year when the two Chinese national standards, the "Asset Management Culture Digital Asset Trading Implementation Guide" and the "Culture Digital Asset Value Evaluation Guide," officially took effect, ushering the digital collectibles industry from a stage of "voluntary exploration" to "regulated guidance." The "Trading Implementation Guide" specifies the qualifications of participants in culture digital asset transactions, risk control, and other process norms, while the "Value Evaluation Guide" establishes a unified culture digital asset valuation system.

Zhu Youping, Rotating Chairman of the Blockchain Special Committee of the China Communications Industry Association, stated, "The restart of JD Lingxi confirms a core logic, that the essence of digital collectibles is a digital equity certificate, a commodity rather than a financial asset."