In Anti-Crypto China, Shanghai Residents Turn To NFTs For Capturing Their Covid Lockdown Ordeal

In China, a country where cryptocurrency is banned, its Shanghai city¡¯s residents are turning to NFTs to capture their month-long Covid lockdown ordeal, as per a report in Reuters today.

On the blockchain, they are preserving the memories by minting videos, photos and artworks as NFTs to ensure they can be shared and avoid deletion.

Unable to leave their homes for weeks, many of Shanghai's 25 million residents have been unleashing their frustrations online, venting about the lockdown curbs and difficulties procuring necessities like food. The residents also shared stories of hardship, such as patients being unable to get medical treatment.

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Also Read: Cryptocurrency Fundraising In China Can Now Land You In Jail For Over 10 Years

All this has intensified the cat-and-mouse game with Chinese censors, which have vowed to step up policing of the internet and group chats to prevent what they describe as ¡®rumours¡¯, as per a Reuters report.

While some people have continued reposting such content, others are turning to NFT marketplaces like the world's largest, OpenSea. There, users can mint content and buy or sell it using cryptocurrencies, somewhat attracted by the fact that data recorded on the blockchain is unerasable.

The height of Shanghai's lockdown minting moment is rooted in April 22, when netizens battled censors overnight to share a six-minute video titled "The Voice of April", a montage of voices recorded over the course of the Shanghai outbreak.

As of Monday (2nd May 2022), 786 different items related to the video could be found on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, alongside hundreds of other NFTs related to the lockdown in Shanghai.

A Shanghai-based programmer told Reuters that he was among those in the city who viewed their effort to keep the video alive as part of a "people¡¯s rebellion¡±.

He has himself minted an NFT based on a screenshot of Shanghai¡¯s COVID lockdown map, showing how most of the city has been sealed off from the outside world.

Simon Fong, a 49-year-old freelance designer from Malaysia who has been living in Shanghai for nine years, began creating satirical illustrations on life under lockdown. His work includes scenes dramatizing PCR testing, as well as residents' demands for government rations.

The Twitter & Crypto Ban

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Like most major foreign social media and news platforms, Twitter is blocked in China, although residents can access it using VPNs.

While China has banned cryptocurrency trading, it sees the blockchain as a promising technology and NFTs have been gaining traction in the country, embraced by state media outlets and even tech companies including Ant Group and Tencent Holdings, as per the Reuters report.

Also Read: Countries Where Cryptocurrency Is Currently Banned

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