The cloud business unit of the Chinese market giant Alibaba Group Holdings launched a new non-fungible token (NFT) solution and then promptly deleted all mention of it online.
According to a now-deleted Twitter post announcing the launch on Wednesday, the company’s NFT marketplace solution included “web hosting, digital marketing, and content delivery” infrastructure, but it no longer appears on its website.
There are also no press releases or announcements related to the NFT solution on the Alibaba website.. However, the solution webpage link still appears in Google search results and now redirects to the Alibaba Cloud Solution Index page.
Reason for removal of social media posts and delisting from their website is unclear for now. While cryptocurrency trading and mining is prohibited in China, There is a gray area regarding the regulation of NFTs in the country: the authorities do not see it with good eyes, but they have not yet issued an outright ban.
The short-lived NFT-focused solution was to offer Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and Auto Scaling for market growth, an SMS-integrated digital marketing service for sellers to connect with buyers , and a global delivery serviceAlibaba Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Server Load Balancer (SLB) capable of supporting 100,000 queries per second.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) – which is owned by Alibaba – noted that the solution was intended for customers outside of mainland China, with a representative telling the publication that the solution was only for Alibaba Cloud’s international website.
The SCMP also stated that Alibaba-affiliated companies such as Ant Group and Tencent Holdings have moved to avoid any potential regulatory pushback in the past by marking their listed NFTs as “digital collectibles.” They are also offered on private blockchains and traded/purchased using Chinese fiat money.
Alibaba Cloud still has a new metaverse-focused solution featured on its website that offers remote rendering, data analytics, and AI, along with Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) as part of the Alibaba Cloud Private Blockchain.
Under the metaverse solution, the company notes that NFTs can be integrated into a metaverse built from Alibaba’s services, but the company does not provide any such specific infrastructure.
In April, the China Banking Association, the China Internet Finance Association, and the China Securities Association issued a joint statement warning the public not to invest in NFTs due to the “hidden risks” of these assets. They also noted that companies should not view NFTs like other financial products, such as securities, precious metals, and other financial products.
Cointelegraph also reported in March that Chinese social media giants such as WeChat and WhaleTalk have updated their policies to restrict or remove NFT platforms from their networks, citing a lack of regulatory clarity and fearing a government crackdown. However, Beijing has yet to issue a blanket ban on the sector.
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