Regardless of the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) warning on metaverse and (NFTs) in November, over 1,000 China-based firms completed submissions for metaverse-focused trademark applications.

Specifically, during a summit taking place in November, Gou Wenjun, the PBOC’s AML and Analysis Center Director, reportedly issued warnings against the associated risks of digital assets.

Per Gou, due to the fact that virtual assets possess no physical basis, they are subjected to false utilization for illegal financial activities, nominally “illegal fundraising, pyramid schemes and fraud.”

Nonetheless, ignoring the PBOC’s warnings, China-based firms reportedly still made haste to finalize the registration for metaverse-centric trademarks, nominally “metaverse satellite” and “metaverse exhibition.”

As revealed by the South China Morning Post, over 1,360 Chinese entities completed the submission for  8,534 trademark applications related to the metaverse by December 19th. 

The majority of the firms submitted applications for the trademark registrations are working in the tech sector, including high-profile giants such as Huawei and Hisense.

The former submitted an application to register “Meta OS” while the latter applied with a variety of trademarks across different fields, such as social services, advertising and science. 

Gaming and tech heavyweight Tencent also did not miss out on the trend, having finalized registration for nearly a hundred metaverse-related trademark applications including “QQ Metaverse,” “QQ Music Metaverse” and “Kings Metaverse.”

Apart from the PBOC’s warning, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, also generated warnings towards the Metaverse back on Dec. 9, specifically warning individuals taking part in crypto asset acquisitions, that property sales within metaverses come with high risks of volatility.