China’s WeChat suspends some accounts linked to NFTs to prevent ‘speculation’

Tencent, which owns the app, says it ‘rectified’ accounts to stop ‘secondary sales of digital collections’

Although NFTs are not regulated in China, buying and selling of cryptocurrencies was banned last year (AP)

Chinese messaging app WeChat has suspended at least a dozen accounts linked to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in a move aimed at preventing “speculation” in digital assets including currency transactions.

NFTs are “crypto assets” which represent a digital item such as an image or video. Prices for some are said to be rising so fast that speculators can sometimes "flip" them for a profit within days.

Although NFTs are not regulated in China, buying and selling of cryptocurrencies was banned last year.

Commenting on the move to suspend accounts, technology giant Tencent, which owns the app, said it had “rectified” a number of public accounts on WeChat to prevent “secondary sales of digital collections”.

It said this was done "according to relevant national regulations, in order to prevent the risk of speculation in virtual currency transactions".

The South China Morning Post reported that the accounts included Spirit Leap and Huasheng Meta, which claimed to have been suspended after “being reported by others”.

The paper said subscribers attempting to access the suspended pages were shown a message saying each had “no legal permit or licence to publish, disseminate, or engage in related business activities”.

WeChat is a Chinese messaging, social media and mobile payment app (AP)

WeChat is a messaging platform which has more than 1.2 billion active users.

The app has a number of functions including messaging, photo hosting, payment methods, ride hailing services and games, and has been accused of censoring information, seemingly at the behest of the Chinese government.

In 2020 it censored words relating to the Covid outbreak, research group Citizen Lab claimed.

China declared last September that crypto currencies were not “legal compensation and should not and cannot be used in the market as money”.

The country’s central bank said that “speculation” in digital currencies was on the rise, and that it was being used for criminal activities such as “gambling, illegal fund-raising, fraud, pyramid schemes [and] money laundering”, warning that this was “seriously endangering the safety of people’s property”.

NFTs act like digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to anything that comes in digital form, such as audio files, video clips or animated stickers.

They are assets that can be exchanged but unlike regular currency or bitcoins – each having the exact same value – an NFT has its own distinct value, like a house or car.