NFT project celebrating Hong Kong Olympic champion Cheung Ka-long and foil team partners with local Bored Ape collectors

GOLD4HK announces advisory link-up with one of the city’s biggest collector clubs ahead of delayed drop and programme ‘reboot’
Tokyo gold medallist Cheung praises project’s ‘great’ investment in following team around as they ‘focus on training and bringing back gold again’

Cheung Ka-long

Andrew McNicol

Published: 5:53pm, 8 Apr 2022

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GOLD4HK, the NFT collection project based on Hong Kong Olympic gold medallist Cheung Ka-long and some of the men’s foil team, announced a partnership with local collector giants Elite Apes ahead of its much-delayed drop this month.

Considered one of the city’s biggest NFT collector clubs – its more than 150 members own and manage assets from the renowned Bored Ape Yacht Club worth 30,000 Etherium (about HK$767 million) – Elite Apes will be helping as an “honorary adviser”.

GOLD4HK said it would work “hand in hand to keep educating the Hong Kong market about NFTs”, while the partnership will also include a collaboration between their Olympic-themed fencing NFTs and Elite Ape’s Bored Ape commercial rights.

It also teased a “real life exhibition” to be set-up in Hong Kong in the future.

Initial mock-ups include images of star foilist Cheung during last year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games with a Bored Apes-themed face replacing his mask.

They are not for sale but considered a commemoration of the partnership, though organisers are planning official ape-athletes crossover artwork “later this year”.

Cheung Ka-long and Hong Kong Olympic fencers join NFT project

GOLD4HK hopes that such projects would help “put Hong Kong on the map for global NFTs innovation” as it prepares to release its much-delayed first collection to be dropped and minted this month.

“After winning gold in Tokyo, we were overwhelmed by the passion for fencing [in] the city and [learned] about how NFTs can help create sports memorabilia while offering new ways to engage with our fans. I thought it was a great idea,” said Cheung, who earlier this year became the first Hong Kong male fencer to win a World Cup gold.

Cheung also took part in Instagram live-streams last month with teammates Lawrence Ng Lok-wang and Shawn Cheung Siu-lun to preview some GOLD4HK updates for prospective owners and fans.

The Hong Kong foil team is currently training in the National Institute for Sport, Expertise and Performance in Paris, France – where coach Gregory Koenig is from – between World Cup and other regional competitions.

World No 2-ranked Cheung is eyeing his discipline’s top spot, while the team is looking to lay the foundations for the next Olympic cycle.

“GOLD4HK will accompany us through our journey to [Paris] 2024 [Olympic Games] and it’s great that [the] team will be able to invest resources to follow us around … while our team can focus on training and bringing back gold again,” Cheung said.

Teammate Ng added, “I have seen a lot of amazing NFT projects in the US within sports, like the NFL and basketball, and we thought that fencing also deserved to enter this space, especially after seeing thousands of fans in Hong Kong looking for new ways to engage with our team.

“The [NFTs’ art] will be amazing and I love that it is focused on promoting our sport and helping fans learn more about us as a team.”

Touted as the first NFT-led community for fencing champions around the world, top Hong Kong Tokyo Olympics foil team members including the two Cheungs, Ng, Koenig, and world No 7 Ryan Choi Chun-yin, were set to feature in two collections slated for last December and January.

However, GOLD4HK postponed its drops multiple times, citing an influx in local NFT projects becoming ripe targets for hackers and phishing scams and other reasons “which were not [dependant] upon us”.

According to its updated White Paper, it has since deviated from its “original road map” in a programme “reboot”, which will include assets and content from both the Tokyo 2020 and the journey to Paris 2024, while adding two more fencers in Nicholas Edward Choi and Calugi Yeung Chi-ka.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Fencing Association (HKFA) had already distanced itself from the project in a “solemn declaration” released in December.

Oleg Vorontsov, founder of both the GOLD4HK project and NFT Elite Studio, acknowledged the HKFA statement at the time, adding that the organisation is in ongoing talks with the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI).

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are blockchain-verified tradeable vouchers that guarantee the authenticity of a digital asset. Each asset has a unique ID tag that is traceable back to the original creator, and is “minted” on the blockchain to introduce value and exclusivity, to be traded like physical assets.

Blue chip projects (well-established with high investment quality, stability and public confidence) such as Yuga Labs’ Bored Apes reportedly saw nearly US$130 million in profits last year from both its initial release and on the secondary OpenSea market.

In March, Elite Apes also announced a collaboration with South China Morning Post’s own ARTIFACTs NFT collectibles to celebrate the launch of Hong Kong’s first metaverse experience in the Sandbox game.

Other local projects such as “HolyShxxt!!”, the football management simulation GameFi (a combination of gaming and decentralised finance referring to the integration of blockchain to monetise the gaming sector) also announced a strategic collaboration with Elite Apes.