NFTs in M’sia this week: Labuan Investment Bank cashes in on the trend, our film sector too

A handful of new and exciting NFT projects in Malaysia have emerged this week, perhaps finally coming to the surface after brewing in the background during the previous slow week.

In keeping up with our new series to track what sort of local NFT news or activities have been happening, here are this week’s updates:

Roaring into the lunar new year

Labuan Investment Bank (otherwise known as Asia Digital Bank), partnered with Malaysia Comicker Union to create a set of 60-year-cycle (Jia Zi) Fortune Chinese Zodiac NFT.

The comics practitioner group assembled 11 cartoonists from the union to design the artworks based on the 12 Chinese zodiacs beginning from 2022 until 2081. The zodiacs are also established according to the five elements which are gold, wood, water, fire, and earth.

For example, the zodiacs NFTs will include the 2022 Water Tiger, 2034 Wood Tiger, 2046 Fire Tiger, 2058 Earth Tiger and 2070 Gold Tiger.

The remaining 11 Chinese Zodiac NFTs will be revealed at a later date and will be rewarded to Gold Members of the digital bank through a monthly lucky draw.

Meant to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, the initiative is also intended to boost Malaysia’s NFT developments and expose local comic artists to the global scene and digital realm.

Bring out the tigers

For the younger crowd, Pestle & Mortar Clothing (PMC) and Tiger Beer have launched an NFT collection dubbed The Tiger Archives. 

The collection features PMC’s take on Chinese archival tiger artwork, accompanied by illustrations of Tiger Beer’s bottles throughout the years. Each NFT is one-of-a-kind and fully drawn by hand, stored on the Ethereum blockchain.

Costing 0.05 ETH (RM503.35 at the time of writing), the collection will be tradeable on OpenSea. 

Holders of the NFT collection will unlock a series of exclusive perks such as curated experiences in Malaysia and Singapore, as well as limited-edition merchandise by the brands.

The collaborators also claim that 30% of all proceeds from the NFT collection will be channelled to local artists and musicians who were hit hard during the pandemic.

On the screens

Normally, audiences wanting to show their support for a film would purchase a genuine DVD of it or watch it in cinemas. Now, NFTs can serve as a digitalised replacement of the former methods. 

In return, film NFTs can also give users certain ownership of a film, depending on the privileges determined by the publication.

Rompak, a local telefilm (a film broadcasted on TV) that’s scheduled to be screened on Astro First in June will be sold in NFT form to consumers.

It is claimed to be the first telefilm in SEA to be published using NFT technology.

The local film’s NFT will enable Malaysian investors to also assist the production company in producing the film.

NFT owners of Rompak will receive additional benefits that have yet to be finalised. Generally speaking, NFT ownership in this sector will give users access to behind-the-scenes visuals and exclusive photos, amongst other things.

This NFT project can hopefully trigger a new era for artists, especially film producers in Malaysia to diversify the income from the film work produced.

From the heart

This week, we put the spotlight on Wan Tsau, a Malaysian artist residing in Singapore who launched his first NFT project, Chapfans.  

Wan Tsau created 50 types of dishes, 3 types of gravy, 5 types of plates, and 9 background colours. From these items, he’s generated 388 plates of Chapfans, each being sold at a floor price of 0.04 ETH (about RM410 at the time of writing) on OpenSea.

With so many apes, pixellated human avatars, and now bears dominating the NFT space, it’s nice to see something that’s a little closer to home. Sure, maybe it won’t have as much appeal to non-Malaysians or non-Singaporeans, but Wan Tsau is fine with that.

He’s targeting collectors who share similar fond memories of frequenting a familiar economy rice stall. His memory is of a particular stall in Petaling Street that was manned by elderly, maternal ladies.

Affectionately, he and his friends began calling the place kai ma’s (godmother’s in Cantonese), hence the naming of his first NFT collection as “Kai Ma Cooked Food” in tribute to them.

His goal with Chapfans is to hopefully create an exclusive pop art movement similar to Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans. On top of that, he’d like to expand into collectible prints and merchandise.

Up next…

While the majority of us will be on our Chinese New Year break for at least half of next week, we’re still keeping our ears on the ground for anything exciting around NFTs.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll find stories of Malaysians exchanging red packets in some form of NFT or cryptocurrency (which we’re sure probably already happens, but just isn’t publicly shared). 

Whatever it is, we’ll keep you updated in the next instalment.

• If you’ve got something NFT-related to share that’s both exciting and locally-relevant, hit us up with your story at [email protected].
• Read more of our NFT content here.

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