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
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 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.
“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.
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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.