WISeKey’s WISe.Art and the
China Museum of Finance
announced during Art Basel
their cooperation to
auction a historical Jiaozi NFT of the world’s
first government-issued paper currency created in 1024
Geneva, Hong Kong: June 17, 2022 – WISeKey International Holding
(“WISeKey”, SIX: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a Swiss global cybersecurity,
AI, Blockchain, and IoT company, has joined forces with The
China Museum of Finance to offer Trusted NFTs with the launch
of WISe.ART NFT platform. The WISe.ART NFT Platform is an
Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development and available with
Ethereum-compatible blockchains. To launch this cooperation, the
WISe.ART platform will auction a historical NFT of the world’s
first paper money created in China in 1024.
The Jiaozi NFT is the digital twin of the world’s first
government-issued paper currency featuring elements of modern paper
money for circulation management and reserve payment. The paper
currency was issued on January 12, 1024, in Chengdu, Sichuan, China
by the Jiaozi Affairs, the earliest central bank. The bank operated
for more than 400 years. It would be almost 200 years later that
Marco Polo introduced the concept of paper money to Europe, and 250
years more before Sweden issued modern paper money in 1661.
China’s creation of paper money drew upon two of their other
well-known inventions – papermaking and printing. Today, paper
money is a core instrument of the global and national financial
systems. Cryptocurrencies and NFT are also innovative developments
in the history of 1,000 banknotes.
The China Museum of Finance has been promoting the spread of
cross-border communication in China and the global financial
industry, setting up Jiaozi exhibition halls and Jiaozi monuments
in Chengdu, holding Jiaozi forums, and promoting applications for
non-material cultural heritage.
About the design of Jiaozi NFT
- Design and issue the first NFT from
China belonging to the global financial heritage will bring great
attention benefits and investment wealth effect;
- China Museum of Finance will
simplify the design making it more beautiful and stylish, determine
the NFT copyright, with a full entrusted professional NFT team to
make the transactions on line and auction;
- Establish the China Financial
Heritage Fund, which will use all NFT exchanges for the discovery,
certification and protection of China’s financial heritage;
- A total of 10,000 NFTs were issued
worldwide, with 8,000 issued to financial collectors and
individuals. 1,000 of these NFTs are run by the China Financial
Heritage Foundation for future development, and a 1,000 are jointly
operated by the China Museum of Finance and NFT distributors, such
as gifts to international financial institutions, museums, and key
industry leaders.
About the China
Museum of FinanceThe ChinaMuseum of Finance was
registered in 2009 in Hong Kong, a consulting and management firm
to promoting financial literacy and education in Asia. Working with
several local government and financial institutions, it has helped
creating and running over 11 financial museums in mainland China
and Hong Kong, including the Tianjin Museum of Finance (2010),
located on the site of the former French Club, a century-old
European building, in Tianjin. Exhibits in the 2,400 sq. m. main
hall included handwritten manuscripts by acknowledged father and
founder of contemporary economics Adam Smith, Thomas Edison’s first
light bulb, documents relating to the establishment of the Shanghai
Stock Exchange, including directives from former premier Zhu
Rongji, bonus stocks from the “cultural revolution” period, over
200 currencies from various historical epochs in China and
overseas, financial bills, and financial artifacts. Many
distinguished guests were present at the museum’s opening ceremony,
and well-known Chinese financial celebrities. The success of this
venture inspired Mr. Wang Wei to carry on in this vein. He has
since built nine more financial museums within the past decade in
Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Suzhou, Ningbo, Shengyang, Chengdu,
Zhengzhou and Jinggangshan.
The first known examples of paper currency as we would
understand it today were created in China during the Song Dynasty
(AD 960–1279). Promissory notes known as “Jiaozi”
were printed by a group of merchants in Sichuan during the reign of
Emperor Zhenzong (AD 997–1022).
“Paper money was the first form of Chinese printing met with by
European travelers, was independently discussed by at least eight
pre-Renaissance European writers, and so far as is known, is the
only form of Chinese printing described in European writings of
pre-Gutenberg days. Marco Polo’s description is the most detailed”
(Carter, op. cit., 109).
WISeKey’s strategy in China is to integrate the combined
technology stack for making WISe.ART available as a platform to
build white-label marketplaces for different luxury collectibles
and artwork. Part of this technology stack is the storage of the
digital twins created as NFTs on the blockchain to enable the
trading of these NFTs. To ensure KYC that still allows anonymity
and the necessary exclusivity, all marketplaces created under the
WISe.ART platform will allow the trading of NFTs.
Mr. Wang Wei has been a member of Shanghai Stock Exchange
Corporate Governance Advisory Committee since 2007. He founded the
China Museum of Finance in 2009, an organization that currently
runs 11 museums across China. He was founding Chairman
of China Mergers & Acquisitions Association which has over 200
financial institutional directors and 6000 dealmakers manmber
crosss boarder. He was also founding Chairman of Asia Mergers &
Acquisitions Association (AMAA) and Co-chairman of International
Federation of Finance Museums (IFFM) in November 2015. In January
2017, he became a director of the Board of the Global Blockchain
Business Council (GBBC), founded by 25 countries.
Carlos Moreira, Chairman and CEO of WISeKey, commented, “We
are delighted to join forces with the Beijing Museum of Finance and
Wang Wei. We look forward to working closely with him and
benefit from his expertise as we expand our operations in China and
among the NFT Metaverse community. WISeKey’s offering will allow
brands, artists, fans, curators, owners, potential customers and
liquidity providers investing in digital assets, to interact and
grow on a secure, digital and scalable platform, thoroughly trace
provenance, diminish counterfeiting on the digital sphere and
integrate physical chip technology into real objects. Hence,
WISeKey provides highly secure integration of the physical objects
and their digital twins coined in NFTs. WISeKey is following a
multichain strategy for its WISe.ART platform through a partnership
with leading Chinese blockchain companies.”
Wang Wei added, “I am excited to work with a highly respected
group of experts in the NFT. As WISeKey is currently
expanding its footprint to China, I am looking forward to assisting
the team by bringing my knowledge and expertise in the Asian
markets.”
About WISe.ART: WISe.ART is a
fully-fledged marketplace. It can connect all actors of the arts
industry. Our white-labeling options and special NFT designs ensure
that besides an authenticated and signed version of the actual
digital asset, creating an irreversible link to the physical
object, providing proof of ownership, provenance, and a set of
smart contracts describing future use and monetization streams.The
WISe.ART NFT platform is fully secured by WISeKey’s innovative
security technologies enabling the authentication of digital
assets, in a safe end-to-end process based on our experience and
proven expertise in this domain.
About WISeKey:WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss
Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently
deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and
objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the
Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the
pervasive computing shaping today’s Internet of Everything. WISeKey
IoT has an install base of over 1.6 billion microchips in virtually
all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural
sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers,
mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.). WISeKey is uniquely
positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a
huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial
Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the
failure of their equipment before it happens.
Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey’s Swiss based
cryptographic Root of Trust (“RoT”) provides secure authentication
and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for
the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The
WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity
of online transactions among objects and between objects and
people. For more information,
visit www.wisekey.com.
Press and investor contacts:
WISeKey
International Holding Ltd Company Contact:
Carlos MoreiraChairman & CEOTel: +41 22 594
3000info@wisekey.com |
WISeKey
Investor Relations (US) Contact: Lena CatiThe
Equity Group Inc.Tel: +1 212
836-9611lcati@equityny.com |
Disclaimer:This communication expressly or
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WISeKey International Holding Ltd and its business. Such statements
involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other
factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition,
performance or achievements of WISeKey International Holding Ltd to
be materially different from any future results, performance or
achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking
statements. WISeKey International Holding Ltd is providing this
communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any
forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new
information, future events or otherwise.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a
solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not
constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of the Swiss
Financial Services Act (“FinSA”), the FInSa’s predecessor
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must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities,
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is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the
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