原声播报89：一张照片爆火的背后，NFT价值几何

How a Caixin Photo Starts Debate on the Value of NFTs
一张照片爆火的背后，NFT价值几何

【文中生词】
viral 病毒性的
fungible 可取代的
chuffed 高兴的
cryptocurrency 加密货币 
authenticate 鉴明
 
 
【词汇延展】
bitcoin 比特币
blockchain 区块链
ethereum 以太坊
bot 机器人程式
general equivalent (in value) 一般等价物
credit default swap 信用违约交换
 
 
【单词详解】
palatable
adj. 可意的；可口的
pleasant or acceptable to sb; having a pleasant or acceptable taste
 
palatably adv. 称心愉快地；美味地
palate n. 味觉；上颚
 
词组
to make something palatable 提味
 
例句
Some of the dialogue has been changed to make it more palatable to an American audience.
有些对白有所修改，以适应美国观众的口味。
 
Various other pome fruits can produce palatable drinks.
其他各种梨果也可以制成可口的饮料。
 
 
hijack
v. 抢劫
take over (something) and use it for a different purpose

近义词
rob of 抢走
spoliate 掠夺
chantage 敲诈
extortion 勒索
 
例句
Every minute during the hijack seemed like a week.
劫持过程中，每一分钟都像一个星期似的。
 
The front page is devoted to the continuing saga of the hijack.
头版是对劫持事件的连续报道。
 
 
How has a photo taken by a Caixin photographer gotten picked up in a discussion about a cutting-edge tech sector?
 
No idea, because most of the photos we have are of logos on the walls of company headquarters, and it’s pretty hard to go viral with something like that, I would think.
 
Yeah, those logo photos. Well, this is not about a logo photo. So last month, we published a photo gallery on bitcoin mining in Sichuan which included an image of a woman grasping a bunch of cables and equipment, and the gallery highlighted the human aspect of the mining industry which has been subject to a crackdown that hit rural parts of the country especially hard. 
 
But the image has had an afterlife, as it got turned into a non-fungible token and was then uploaded to OpenSea with a price tag of a whopping $6 million. Now, this would have made its creator, who actually was a second-hand creator, immediately richer than our very own photographer.
 
And while Caixin was not all that chuffed, it did start a conversation about the technology of copyright, and how tech can be put to different uses over time. 
Who says copy-paste can’t make fortunes? But let’s step back a bit. What exactly is a non-fungible token?
 
Alright, so non-fungible tokens, let’s just call them NFTs, because that’s much easier to pronounce. So these are digital certificates used to clarify ownership and usage rights over certain assets. 
 
So with NFT technology, you get a unique encrypted certificate that can be transferred, and can retain commercial value. To make the technology even more useful, the original owner can even claim a share of the profit for every subsequent transaction. I should add that NFTs cannot be duplicated or divided. 
 
Okay that sounds particularly applicable to photos and digital works of art that can be very easily copied. So what’s the official stance on the non-fungible ehh – mushroom-sounding tokens? 
 
Alright, so the big point is that has changed over time as priorities have shifted.
 
You just have to look at what NFT has been called in Chinese to get a sense of this. So an early translation described them as a kind of cryptocurrency, but since then, they’ve been renamed as sort of certificate or token, which is much more palatable to the authorities as they have been engaged in taming – of course – crypto over the last couple of months.  
 
And I thought non-fungible tokens was a strange term.
 
Yeah, it’s not very non-fun – well, that doesn’t make any sense but let’s continue. So financial regulators have got NFTs in their sights. Okay, according to a piece by Wang Yongli, a former vice president of the Bank of China, NFTs cannot be used as the general equivalent, or unified unit of account, due to their nonfungible and indivisible nature.
 
But while the authorities are not keen on the exchangeable aspect of NFTs, they are interested in exploring NFTs for their copyright protection. 
 
So in other words, NFTs could be very useful in the age of fakes and carefree digital reproduction. 
 
Well yes, but they’re also not in the clear yet. NFTs are supposed to be used for copyright protection, but their role in authenticating copyright can be hijacked, and of course this was the case of the Caixin photo. In other words, if someone grabs the NFT of a work, it may prove hard for the original owner to then get it back. 
 
And NFTs are still a bit too hot in speculative terms. So, in the absence of a key pricing mechanism, the market has the potential to go crazy. For example, a pair of socks on the Uniswap platform has been sold for $150,000, while the first five words posted by Twitter’s founder were sold for $2.5 million.
 
And if you want to check out more examples of how NFTs are taking form in the 
Chinese context, then take a look at Wei Wuhui’s opinion piece on the Caixin Weekend Longread section of our website or our app. Wei is a tech blogger and lecturer at Shanghai Jiaotong University.