Tencent’s Huanhe Stops Distribution of Digital Collections
On August 16, Huanhe, a digital collection platform under Tencent, announced that it had stopped the distribution of digital collections, as the company turns to focus on core strategies.
From now on, all users who have purchased digital collections through the Huanhe platform, including the Tencent News Digital Collection, can either hold on to them or initiate a refund request at their own choice.
Huanhe is one of the very few digital collection platforms in the market that does not open the transfer function and prohibits secondary transactions. Chinese media outlet Sina Tech quoted an insider as saying that this adjustment does not involve team members.
Huanhe was launched less than a year ago, in August 2021. Currently, no digital collection is on sale in the Huanhe app. The latest digital collection on sale was Birds Nesting in Greenery Branches series, by Italian missionary Giuseppe Castiglione, and was launched on July 8. This series has 10 works, and they have not sold out.
Wang Shimu was transferred from Tencent News in May this year, and is in charge of the Huanhe business. He joined Tencent in August 2021, then became the general manager of Tencent News, reporting directly to Tencent COO Mark Ren. On May 23 this year, Tencent issued a document appointing He Yijin as the head of Tencent‘s news business. He reported to Zeng Yu, the vice president of the company, while Wang Shimu was transferred to PCG social platform and application business, in charge of innovative businesses such as Huanhe, which was incubated by his team.
Earlier, Jiemian News learned from company insiders that Tencent intended to abolish the Huanhe business, and this decision was conveyed within low-level managers in Tencent.
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The policy environment in China has not been particularly relaxed regarding digital collections lately. In April this year, the National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association and the Securities Association of China jointly issued the “Initiative on Preventing NFT-Related Financial Risks,” including not providing centralized transactions for NFT transactions and setting up disguised trading places in violation of regulations.
On June 20, Tencent’s WeChat clearly pointed out in the platform specification that its digital collectibles business and virtual currency belong to the same category of illegal business behavior, and the public account providing digital collectibles secondary trading service may be blocked.
