Hi- not my first post here but something happened today in a fandom I'm in today that is so wild I felt the need to share:
The Background: A.C.E is a 5 member Boy group who debuted back in 2017 and have had a pretty average career so far. The members went on competition shows, have done acting and have done multiple tours. They also have 3 international collabs under their belt. While they are still pretty small domestically, they have a pretty big international following. About a year ago they started working with the US based Management group Asian Agent for promotions in the West.
The Event: So earlier today in a Financial Post article where it is revealed that A.C.E will be producing and selling NFTs. NFTs are defined as “A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable. NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio and other types of digital files.” From what I understand these NFTs will be like photocards and there will be a type of drawing situation that would lead to a fansign very similar to an album fansign.
The Reaction: Well, initially some Choice (fans of A.C.E) were excited about the NFTs. However, it was soon spread throughout the fandom that perhaps NFTs are not the best thing. The biggest issue that I have seen about the NFTs from my own personal research is that they are very environmentally toxic in the sense that they cause exuberant amounts of emissions due to the blockchain breaking system. Additionally NFTs have had issues in the past with people recreating and reposting artwork and overall don't seem to be a very secure way to distribute digital artwork. That being said a lot of fans were also not comfortable with the idea of paying money for a photocard selfie that they basically get for free on Twitter from the members of A.C.E themselves.
But wait there's more...
Fans soon realized that the recent western artist collabs that A.C.E had have all been with people who are well-versed in NFTs. For example A.C.E did a remix of their song “Goblin” retitled “Fav Boys” with Steve Aoki and a rapper named Thutmose- both of whom have released NFTs. Even more recently than that, A.C.E have worked with a duo called Grey for a new English single called “Down”- a cute easy listening song. But if you can see where this is going...Grey also are big fans of NFTs :).....now some fans are holding the theory that Danny Hyunjin Lee- the CEO of Asian Agent-met all these people through NFT/Bitcoin trading and that's how those collabs actually came to be. This would also be backed up by the fact that fans connected A.C.E with artists like Steve Aoki but also helped them connect with other artists that we never heard about having a collaboration with Ace with even though the artist said they were interested in making one.
So in conclusion as a Choice, I have very mixed feelings about this but my major feeling is that this is a negative because it doesn't really stand for what A.C.E is known for from their fans perspective. Beat Entertainment, their management company in Korea, has always been very good at listening to fans wants and needs. They also have prided themselves on making their company and the group of A.C.E as socially conscious as possible- so seeing them make a move that would be bad for the environment is kinda bizarre and frankly something that I don't think any fans saw coming. That being said it is K-pop and today's events remind me that we can never trust anyone in management because they're always going to make the choice that makes more money and not necessarily the choice that is environmentally conscious nor fan conscious as well.
TLDNR: K-Pop group announces and if they will be selling photo cards and other items as NFTS and a fandom collectively creates a conspiracy theory that every collaboration this band has done has been through connections their management holds with Bitcoin traders.
What do you all think? Would you buy Kpop NFTs?
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