01/09/2021 Major sports sponsor Rakuten with 1.4 billion users to launch NFT platform

rakuten sponsor barecelona football

Today Japans’s Rakuten announced plans to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) platform. The company might best be described as a digital conglomerate. Its roots are in retail where it operates online shopping sites, runs online rewards and loyalty programs around the world, and is also heavily involved in finance. Apart from rewards, for NFTs one of its most relevant activities is the company’s involvement in sports.

Rakuten is the shirt sponsor and key partner of FC Barcelona, one of the world’s biggest soccer clubs and former home of Lionel Messi. It also sponsors the NBA team Golden State Warriors, the Tennis Davis Cup and Tokyo Open, as well Japanese baseball team Rakuten Eagles, and ladies golf in Japan.

It’s a big company with 100 million registered users in Japan and 1.4 billion globally.

In the spring of 2022, Rakuten plans to launch a marketplace for users to buy NFTs in various fields, including sports and entertainment such as music and animation. 

And it intends to bring together various aspects of its business with NFTs, such as the ability to use rewards points, accumulate more points, and pay with a Rakuten ID. It explicitly mentions NFTs being awarded as prizes.

It wants to expand the NFT audience beyond the cryptocurrency crowd. “We aim to ‘democratize the NFT market’ so that a wide range of users can feel the value of owning NFTs by changing the market environment of NFTs,” said the company in a statement.

The Japanese firm started exploring blockchain back in 2016. In 2019 it partnered with Chinese blockchain startup Techrock, which authenticates goods. Meanwhile, Rakuten Securities is a founding member of the Japan Security Token Offering Association, which boasts most incumbent securities players as participants.

Fun fact: As of 2012, Rakuten changed its working language from Japanese to English. The CEO said this allowed the company to hire top talent and engineers globally. “I think this was one of the biggest success factors of Rakuten to become a truly global company,” said CEO Hiroshi Mikitani.

Arts

https://www.ledgerinsights.com/major-sports-sponsor-rakuten-with-1-4-billion-users-to-launch-nft-blockchain/

Interesting NFTs
#79026
By OthersideDeployer
Crypto Bubble
Realize what you really want. It stops you from chasing butterflies and puts you to work digging gold. Digital Artwork by Sandro Ieva
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier Arrés’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, Arrés, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, Arrés uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, Arrés elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. Arrés presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, Arrés freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier Arrés: https://javierarres.com/about.html
Mother Alien
*hissing noises*! I'm Mother Alien. My friends describe me as hairy and tantalizing. My great-great-great-great-great-great grandkitty lived with Mother Theresa. Purrhaps this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time... a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.