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Gary Liu, chief executive of the South China Morning Post, speaks during a Town Hall meeting at the newspaper’s Times Square headquarters in Causeway Bay on October 22, 2021. Photo: Edmond So

Media NFTs: South China Morning Post to spin off blockchain venture after the successful debut of its archival digital collectibles

  • The South China Morning Post will spin off an independent venture to turn historical art, photographs and content into tradeable non-fungible tokens
  • The new venture will be headed by Gary Liu, who will fully transition into his new role after the appointment of a new CEO for SCMP via a global talent search
NFTs

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has launched its most significant transformation in the digital age, spinning off an independent venture to turn historical art, photographs and content from its 118-year-old archives into tradeable non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Artifact Labs, the blockchain venture of Hong Kong’s oldest English-language newspaper, will be headed by SCMP chief executive Gary Liu, who will fully transition into his latest role after the appointment of a new CEO at SCMP to take over. Liu will continue in his current role as CEO at SCMP pending a global talent search for his replacement.

The venture follows Monday’s successful debut of the “1997 Premium Series”, the first batch of NFTs featuring archival content in 1,300 “mystery boxes” generated from 1997, a pivotal year in Hong Kong’s history. The first batch sold out within two hours, giving SCMP the momentum to release the second batch of collectibles in April.
The creation of Artifact Labs “is a transformational step for our 118-year-old organisation,” said Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding and SCMP chairman. “With his experience running a news organisation and extensive expertise in technology, Gary is the perfect person to lead our new effort in Web3 and explore future growth opportunities for SCMP.”
The “1997 Premium Series” NFTs are part of the NFT project ARTIFACTs by South China Morning Post, featuring archival material from 1997, a pivotal year in Hong Kong’s history. Photo: SCMP

The move to create an independent NFT venture will “accelerate SCMP’s revenue and enterprise value growth while allowing the publishing group to remain on its core mission of delivering fact-based journalism … to millions of readers around the world,” SCMP said in a statement.

Blockchain holds great potential for the media industry, and the spin-off of Artifact Labs shows SCMP’s commitment to applying the technology, Liu said. As an independent entity, Artifact Labs can turn the property and assets of other organisations, including museums and schools, into digital collectibles.
Gary Liu, Chief Executive Officer of South China Morning Post, speaking during the newspaper’s China Conference: USA event in New York on December 10, 2019. Photo: SCMP

“We expect millions of people to own ARTIFACTs issued by media, historical and cultural organisations around the world, and that historical NFTs will be the gateway for users into Web3,” Liu said.

Liu has been the chief executive of SCMP since January 2017. He worked at AOL, Google and Spotify before becoming CEO of the news-aggregation start-up Digg in New York. Born in the United States, Liu grew up in Taiwan and New Zealand, before returning to the American Northeast where he lived and worked for 20 years.

SCMP picked 1997, the end of British colonial rule of Hong Kong and the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty, as the starting point of the newspaper’s experiment with NFTs because of the abundance of photographs and news reporting that captured every momentous event throughout that watershed year: the Asian Financial Crisis; the outbreak of avian flu; the passing of China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping; and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in an accident.

A beginner’s guide to minting NFTs on the OpenSea platform

Enthusiasts snapped up the collectibles, each digital “box” priced at 97 FUSD, a US dollar-backed stablecoin issued on the Flow network, for a total haul of about US$126,000 (HK$986,000).

SCMP’s collectibles project, announced last July, was developed using a blockchain metadata standard called ARTIFACT that was tailored for historical and archival NFTs. SCMP’s NFT collection is built on Flow, a blockchain built by Dapper Labs, the creator of the popular NFT series NBA Top Shot.

SCMP, which will be a major shareholder of Artifact Labs, is expected to receive steady licensing fees from Artifact Labs for its intellectual property underlying the NFT products. Artifact Labs will also seek third-party capital to grow its business.

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