Singer Namewee made RM3.5mil in virtual currency from selling song as NFTs

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Malaysian singer Name­wee, who court­ed con­tro­ver­sy with his satir­i­cal song Frag­ile, has become a mil­lion­aire overnight from the sale of non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs).

Last month, his duet with Aus­tralian singer Kim­ber­ley Chen went viral due to its barbed ref­er­ences to Chi­nese leader Xi Jin­ping and sen­si­tive top­ics such as cen­sor­ship, Covid-19 and the Uighurs. Its pink-themed music video, which fea­tured a pan­da, is seen as a dig at Lit­tle Pinks, or nation­al­is­tic Chi­nese netizens.

The song was sub­se­quent­ly scrubbed from the Inter­net in Chi­na and both Tai­wan-based singers’ social media accounts were blocked.

Rid­ing on the suc­cess of Frag­ile, Name­wee, 38, on Sun­day (Nov 7) released 100 NFTs of a song, Go NFT, which includ­ed 20 pho­tos of bank­ing cor­po­ra­tions and large com­mer­cial enterprises.

They sold out with­in three hours, mak­ing him US$849,880 (RM3.5mil) rich­er in vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy, accord­ing to Malaysi­a’s Chi­nese news­pa­per Sin Chew Dai­ly on Monday.

“I sold out the song in three hours and when I woke up, I was a rich man,” he wrote in a Face­book post. “Hon­est­ly speak­ing, I’m at a loss for words.”

He also released a YouTube video, titled Why NFT? Using NFT To Fight The World, at the same time as the NFT drop.

In the clip, he extolled the virtues of vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy which allows con­tent cre­ators to bypass plat­forms such as YouTube, as well as avoid cen­sor­ship from governments.

He lat­er released 100 copies of Frag­ile on the same online NFT mar­ket­place, OpenSea, and promised anoth­er drop next Sun­day (Nov 14) of 20 copies of a song that he described as “high-pitched”.

Despite now being rich in the Ether vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy, he promised not to con­vert it to cash.

In his Face­book post, he said: “No mat­ter how much mon­ey I make, it will cir­cu­late in the vir­tu­al world for­ev­er. Down with the banks of the world.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network



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