On Amitabh Bachchan’s Birthday, Here’s A Look At His Investments In NFTs, Crypto

Movie lovers are celebrating the 80th birthday of Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan.

Bachchan, who is also known as Big B , is incredibly vivacious and keeps himself active with many initiatives even years after leaving the silver screen. He is among those celebrities who firmly believe that “age is just a number”.

Bachchan has taken a keen interest in new emerging technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and cryptos, and has also invested in them as part of a smart business strategy.

NFT Journey Of Big B

In November 2021, Bachchan’s NFT collections of ‘Madhushala’, autographed posters, and collectables received bids worth $520,000 (approx Rs 3.8 crore) on the initial day of the auction. It was conducted by Beyondlife.Club with a joint venture between Rhiti Entertainment and GuardianLink.io.

Amitabh Bachchan had then said: “In this world of digitisation, NFTs have opened a new realm of opportunities to engage with my fans even more than before. The successful auction of my NFTs, some of the most treasured and personal moments of my life and career were so well received and invested in by my supporters. This was indeed a very proud moment for me, and also paves way for my industry folks too to come on board and engage with their fans with this new-age technology.”

Says Kameshwaran Elangovan, COO and co-founder at Guardianlink, an NFT platform: “The fact that Amitabh Bachchan was releasing his NFTs made people curious about what NFTs really were. This created a lot of awareness and we would call an epoch-making moment for India when it comes to its transition into the Web3/NFT space.”

Recently, in March 2022, Bachchan had paid around Rs 1 crore in taxes after authorities sent a notice for his NFTs. The Hyderabad division of India’s Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Intelligence was investigating the platform, and found discrepancies.

After a follow-up notice was sent, Bachchan paid the tax due on the sale of NFTs worth around Rs 7 crore, according to various media reports.

Notably, these days, the non-fungible token (NFT) market is a complete mess. Data from Blockchain analytics company Dune Analytics shows that the market fell 97 per cent from its peak of $17 billion in early 2022 to $470 million in September of that same year.

Bachchan’s Affair With Crypto

In October 2021, Amitabh Bachchan was roped in by crypto exchange CoinDCX for an endorsement. The crypto exchange hoped to spread the word about cryptocurrency as a new asset class by associating with a well-known and recognised public figure like Big B.

A report published by Economic Times in 2017 alleged that in 2015, Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli’s Meridian Tech Pte in Singapore received an investment of about $250,000 (about Rs 1.6 crore) from Amitabh Bachchan and his actor son Abhishek Bachchan. The father son duo’s investment generated $17.5 (Rs 112 crore) million in value in 2017.