Retired NBA superstar Yao Ming is offering his top Napa wine from his winery through blockchain technology NFT at auction, with part of the proceeds going to support Asian Americans amid the country’s worsening Asian-targeted hate crimes.
The sale of his top wine, The Chop Drop, paired with NFT (Non Fungible Token) makes Yao Family Wines the first winery in the world to offer a wine for auction paired with a NFT digital collectible.
The NFT marketplace allows sellers to layer digital rights management atop physical assets. Each “Chop Drop” NFT is paired with an actual bottle of the Yao Family Wine “Chop”, a Limited Release Cabernet Savignon, leveraging the Ethereum blockchain to protect the rights to a physical good in the digital world. Those rights can be unambiguously verified, transferred, traded, and sold all over the world.
Through NFT and Physical “Twin” ownership, Yao Family Wines provides their customers with trusted provenance and verified transfer of ownership, jumpstarting the removal of fraud in the space, according to the auction website.
According to the press release, 200 paired lots are available for sale.
A special auction will be held for bottle #11 of THE CHOP and NFT #11, a one-of-one offering in homage to the year that Yao Family Wines released its first vintage, and for the number Yao Ming wore during his NBA career.
The Chop 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon is produced from a single barrel of wine from a single vineyard in the famed Rutherford District of Napa Valley. The wine was rated 96+ points by Wine Advocate.
The wine’s name and label design are inspired by the Chinese chop (or seal) used by individuals as a signature on official documents and works of art for thousands of years. The seal featured on each bottle of THE CHOP represents the founder’s family name YAO in ancient Chinese script and has been featured on each bottle of Yao Family Wines since inception.
In addition, part of the proceeds from the sale will be dedicated to Asian American communities to fight anti-Asian hate crimes. During the pandemic year, nearly 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents were reported in the US, a significant increase from previous years, due to Trump administration’s racist use of ‘China virus’ and ‘Wuhan virus’.
“Pairing this exquisite wine with a limited edition NFT should appeal to wine collectors, sports memorabilia collectors, NFT collectors, early adopters and anyone who appreciates the value of one-of-a-kind assets,” Jay Behmke, President, Yao Family Wines said. “As a Napa Valley-based winery with a Chinese founder, we’re also pleased to dedicate a portion of proceeds from THE CHOP DROP to the Asian American community at this critical time.”
“Blockchain is the biggest technology revolution since the Internet. The emergence of NFTs is the first consumer-oriented expression of value creation beyond crypto currency. NFTs are a glimpse into the future of blockchain-powered assets and will become the standard for ownership, trading, provenance and trust,” said Jonas Hudson, Co-Founder of The GFT™ Exchange.
Beneficiaries of some of the sale proceeds include Asian Health Services (Oakland, Calif.), the Chinatown Community Development Center (San Francisco), the Chinese American Museum DC (CAMDC),Lucky Chow (New York, NY), and The Museum of Chinese in America (New York, NY).
