Salman Khan to launch his NFTs as Blockchain craze grips Bollywood

Bollywood star Salman Khan seems to be following in the footsteps of the legendary Amitabh Bachchan — albeit unwittingly. Nearly a month after Mr Bachchan announced plans to launch his Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Mr Khan too followed suit.

Salman announced on his Twitter handle by stating: “Aa raha hoon main, NFTs leke, Salman Khan Static NFTs coming on @bollycoin.”

Even his younger brother Arbaaz Khan also joined the same platform for his NFTs. The younger Khan put out a tweet saying “Arbaaz Khan Production NFTs are coming on @bollywcoin.”

BollyCoin is an NFT marketplace that would auction Hindi film industry’s digital assets. It will offer Hindi cinema’s digital art works to fans and enthusiasts.

The website of this marketplace declares its partners as Arbaaz Khan Production, Sohail Khan Productionz, Salman Khan Films and Reel Life Production Pvt Ltd (run by Salman’s brother in law Atul Agnihotri).

A non-fungible token is a unit of data stored on a publicly distributed digital ledger called blockchain. These tokens are not mutually interchangeable, and hence the name ‘non-fungible’. The unique ownership of an NFT can be verified via the distributed ledger.

In other words, if a fan buys a digital poster of Salman Khan through a blockchain platform in the form of an NFT, she can prove her ownership through the digital ledger. If she further sells the ownership to someone else, the new owner’s name will be added to this digital ledger.

The NFT craze picked up in March 2021 after a digital artist Beeple sold an NFT in an auction at Christie’s for nearly $69 million. Since then, the celebrities have been trying to capitalise on their brand by selling their digital art via blockchain. This year, a number of digital assets in art, cinema, sports and music are being commodified via NFTs.

With the top two Bollywood families making their foray into NFTs in a short span of time, the blockchain market of Bollywood is geared to grow fast.