Chinese Users Submitted around 60,000 NFT-related Complaints in 2022

The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) of China said that Chinese users submitted 59,700 NFT-related complaints in 2022.

According to SAMR’s recent data, this number represented a 30,000% increase compared to the previous year, which witnessed less than 200 complaints related to the NFTs.

The Chinese users mainly complained about the non-delivery of purchased NFTs, charging high fees, non-refunds, strange growing prices, and random banning of consumer accounts. The report pointed to the difficulty of supervising a new field, such as digital collectibles.

Earlier on November 29, the Hangzhou Internet Court ruled that the NFT collections are online virtual property that should be protected under Chinese law. The court said that the NFTs have the “object characteristics of property rights such as value, scarcity, controllability, and tradeability” which should be protected by Chinese law.

The court noted that the NFTs have the value of related intellectual property rights as it reflects the creator’s original expression of art.

Although cryptocurrency exchange is banned in China since 2021, the ownership of crypto is recognized as a virtual property protected by the law.

China was expected to debut its first regulated national marketplace of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in Beijing on January 1, Coin Telegraph reported.

Titled “China Digital Asset Trading Platform”, the NFT marketplace will act as a secondary market for the exchange of NFTs. It is created by the state-owned Art Exhibitions China, state-owned China Technology Exchange, and Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd.

The state-backed NFT marketplace will contribute to facilitating the trading of copyrights related to digital collectibles in addition to regulating and avoiding excessive speculation in secondary NFT markets. The specific trading commodities and trading rules are still under study and discussion.

The Chinese project aims to promote the deep integration of blockchain technology applications and cultural digital copyright protection.