Famous Chinese Celebrities Enters NFT World to Increase Fans Engagement
Nowadays, the world was filled with technologies and new ideas. In this trendy world majority of the people are aware of the term cryptocurrency. And now non-fungible tokens (NFT) also becoming popular among celebrities, actors.
Accordingly, many Chinese movie stars, directors, singers, pop stars, and celebrities are entering the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) world. NFT can store on a digital ledger, to engage better with their fans and to tap a new idea of making money.
More so, this month, some of the famous personalities in Hong Kong’s entertainment world such as Wong Kar Wai, Gigi Yim, and Hins Cheung have been disclosed their respective NFT projects.
Hong Kong Celebrities NFT Projects
On October 6, Hong Kong’s famous film director Wong Kar-wai sold a non-fungible token (NFT) based on behind-the-scenes footage from his movie namely In the Mood For Love, fetching HK$4.3 million through a Sotheby’s auction.
Eventually, after a few days, the famous Hong Kong singer Gigi Yim, revealed that her first music video will enter into an NFT, which fans can own. The single music video-based NFT is currently worth over HK$4,095. Yim also declared that the proceeds of the NFT sales will go towards charity.
And this week, a veteran singer Hins Cheung joined the NFT frenzy as he disclosed his recent concert on Tuesday. Hins Cheung has recorded a mystery video in the lead-up to the December concert. The NFT related to the video will auction at a starting price of HK$100,000. As Yim, Cheung also declared proceeds from NFT sales will go towards charity.
Currently, Hong Kong has emerged as a popular and famous destination for NFT launches by Chinese celebrities, as regulators in mainland China remain wary of blockchain-enabled digital tokens, which have gained the attention of speculators. Many mainland-based celebrities, including singers A Duo and Gao Jiafeng, also joined the trend and issues NFTs.
Henceforth, Hong Kong is a top place for art auctions, and Shawn Yue Man Lok, a Hong Kong Movie star who starred in Infernal Affairs II. Shocked the city in September when he sold his collections of 14 NFTs. They compromised the famous art pieces such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club and fetched about HK$120 million at an auction organized by Christie’s, marking a new Asia record. Even Yue mentioned the part of the proceeds will go towards charity.
(source of news: https://thenewscrypto.com/famous-chinese-celebrities-enters-nft-world-to-increase-fans-engagement/)
Time magazine unveils ‘TIMEPieces’ NFT collection
Time magazine President Keith A Grossman has unveiled the landmark ‘TIMEPieces’ NFT collection – a community initiative that features original artwork from more than 40 artists.
The collection of TIMEPieces will consist of 4,676 unique NFTs curated from 37 pieces of original artwork. The prestige collection is part of the Build a Better Future series.
The artists for the genesis collection of TIMEPieces were organised by Time Creative Director DW Pine, who originally invited 19 artists to participate in the collection.
From Thursday, September 23 at 12pm ET, collectors will be able to purchase TIMEPieces via a randomised, blind drop on nft.time.com. Each TIMEPiece is priced at 0.1 ETH to attract a broad spectrum of potential collectors and enable long-time readers of the magazine to participate.
Collectors of the TIMEPieces will be eligible for invites to future events and access to a variety of ‘exclusive digital experiences’.
Additionally, the collection will be turned into a commemorative hardcover edition over the holiday season and be displayed at Dreamverse – the World’s First NFT Art and Music Festival, in NYC on November 4.
Time magazine has worked to deliver cryptocurrencies to its audience, including introducing crypto payments in leading assets such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin via crypto.com and auctioning limited-edition front covers as NFTs.
Time also included Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin in its ‘100 Most Influential People of 2021’ list.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian spoke of Buterin’s importance to the internet and Web3 technologies for Time, saying: “I’ve never been more excited about the potential of the Internet, and that’s largely thanks to Vitalik Buterin.”
The magazine additionally included Digital Currency Group – the parent company of Grayscale – and leading exchange Coinbase in its 2021 Top 100 Most Influential Companies list.
(source of news: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/time-magazine-unveils-timepieces-nft-120250872.html)
Cathay Pacific’s Rewards Programme Happy with its Blockchain Port
In May last year, the Cathay Pacific Group, via its rewards programme Asia Miles, launched an app utilising smart contracts via blockchain.
The campaign at the core of the new platform was a newly launched Asia Miles dining promotion in Hong Kong. Asia Miles members will have their miles credited to their accounts the following day, an unusual move from the usual months-long process for calculating miles before.
Today, it’s now close to a year since Asia Miles has incorporated blockchain into its operations, and it has been an interesting journey of melding the regular call center-style operations Cathay Pacific had been doing until recently, with the tech-forward blockchain-based operations.
Seemingly to commemorate their now almost 1-year-old dalliance with blockchain, Forbes held an interview with Micheal Yung, the Head of Digital Product and Technology at Asia Miles. According to Forbes, Micheal has helped grow the company and helped it continue its evolution into becoming a digital leader in the loyalty space for 5 years now.
The Asia Miles loyalty programme was launched in 1999, accumulating over 11 million members, and about 700 partners around the world to serve those members.
As a 20-year-old programme that previously primarily operated via newsletters and call centers, making the shift to blockchain requires a partnership team that is able to work with its extensive partner list to ensure that targeted members are channeled to the partners so they can grow their business.
There is also the issue of providing the right offers, products and services to members so that they see Asia Miles as something of value.
As a result, of the blockchain port, the typical several-month wait for bonuses to arrive at the consumers has been shortened to mere hours via smart contracts—as this removed the need for real-life teams to make the calculations, data retrieval, and reconciliations before awarding bonus hours.
Yet, Micheal reports that they still have members who have been around for more than a decade that still prefer the call center.
Then, it is all about finding a better way to sell their offers to the right members: which Asia Miles attempts to do so by tabulating their persona, their lifetime value and their stage in life.
Looking ahead, Micheal is now eyeing self service technologies like chatbots and robotic process automation. For one thing, these technologies improve back-office efficiency and allow them to link legacy systems together.
As such, they continue to be deeply interested in blockchain and smart contract technology, as with their loyalty program, Asia Miles can save time and effort in reconciliation, data integrity and other important areas.
Asia Miles has its contemporaries across the globe. Malaysia’s AirAsia, around the same time, announced that it was mulling a cryptocurrency-based rewards program as well, and Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer, was set to launch a new digital wallet app, powered by blockchain.
(the source of news: https://fintechnews.hk/9231/blockchain/cathay-pacific-asia-miles-blockchain-rewards-program-smart-contracts/)