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.

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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
Brave Samurai
This is the second collaborative piece that I have created with the very talented Dutch artist, @eattheart23. Here, a samurai warrior stands guard, honour bound to protect his master even to the death.
Alien
There are infinite worlds in the Universe with infinite sentient beings inhabiting them. Master autonomously updates once a day at 12am with one of 366 original artworks, showcasing some of the rarest beings, their cities, transport, technology and nature.
Metarift
∾ 2160 x 2160 px, Video (46.5 MB)
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By OthersideDeployer
Wolves of the Sea.
Every winter here on the Ningaloo Coast we see this same family of Killer Whales aka Orca. They show up around the same time as the Humpback Whale migration starts arrive. These Orca are known as transient Orca which means they don't live in one place, researchers are trying to find out more about them but the reason they arrive at the same time as the Whales is because they like to feed on the Humpback Whale calves. On the day that this photo was taken they were hunting, they tried for about 40minutes to separate the calf from its mother. She did everything in her power to protect her young keeping it on her back and using her giant tail and long pec fins to keep the group of 4 Orca away, this was the end to a happy story for the Humpback and her calf as they managed to hide in the swell, shallow enough that Hook and Elle (in photo) gave up and moved to find the next. A not so happy story for the Orca. There are always a lot of mixed emotions when we see the Orca hunting, on one hand we know this family and we want them to have food and on the other hand the Humpbacks most defiantly grieve the loss of their young but that is just nature and I feel so lucky to be able to witness such events. Hook (on the right) is the matriarch of the group and Elle (her daughter pictured on the left).