Hong Kong – The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has announced the launch of its inaugural NFT collection called ‘1997 Premium Series’, which gives Hongkongers, history buffs and NFT enthusiasts the opportunity to own a piece of history–all from Hong Kong’s historic year of 1997.
The year 1997 has been a pivotal year for Hong Kong, primarily because of the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese authorities on July 1, 1997. Other notable events in 1997 that shaped Hong Kong’s history include the Asian financial crisis, the deaths of Deng Xiaoping and Princess Diana, the Avian flu outbreak, among others.
The first drop of the NFTs will release more than 1,300 unique mystery boxes, with each box containing five random NFTs of the Post’s front pages from 1 January to 1 July 1997. An upcoming second drop will release a further 1,300 boxes covering 1 July to 31 December 1997.
As part of the NFT release, SCMP has named portto, the company behind Blocto, as its exclusive wallet partner for the ‘1997 Premium Series.’
For Gary Liu, CEO at SCMP, the publication has witnessed many historic moments as Hong Kong’s newspaper of record and the launch of the ‘1997 Premium Series’ is significant as the city marks the 25th anniversary of the handover this year.
“ARTIFACTs by SCMP brings together collectors and history enthusiasts, and we’ve been delighted by the growth and enthusiasm of our community in the lead-up to the launch. We look forward to releasing more of the Post’s 118-year-old media archives as NFTs as well as partnering with other guardians of history to preserve historical assets on the blockchain,” Liu said.
Meanwhile, Hsuan Lee, CEO of portto, commented, “Blocto has a lot of experience in the deep blockchain having cooperated with large enterprises, from Vault by CNN, MotoGP Ignition and the South China Morning Post. We have been continuously focusing on co-creating an easy-to-use experience that is intuitive to both users and the companies we work with.”
The new NFT launch by SCMP is part of ‘ARTIFACTs by SCMP’, the first NFT collection released using the ARTIFACT metadata standard, serving as the foundation upon which history can be discovered, connected, and collected on the blockchain. The project aims to seed a community of collectors and eventually produce an ecosystem around the preservation of historical accounts and assets.
