Topic: Japanese E-Commerce Giant "Rakuten" is going to launch its own cryptocurrency (Read 250 times)

I made a summary from various articles i've read and what i can tell you i that there is still no release date for the project, but here is what we know so far:

Japan’s largest e-commerce company Rakuten, with a market capitalization of over $12.5 bln (last year revenue was $8.8 billion), is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin based on Blockchain technology, implementing the "actual rakuten super points loyalty program". What does this mean? There have been over 1 trillion Super Points awarded to users since the program was launched 15 years ago, equivalent to $9.1 billion, and the idea will be to now give users more ways of applying those loyalty points to more purchases, as a way of driving more purchasing to collect them in the first place.
Points currently are collected each time you buy — or, in certain markets where Rakuten runs marketplaces, sell — items or services on the site. As with its rival Amazon, Rakuten has a payment also has an MVNO mobile service with plans to launch its own full-blown mobile carrier — all of which become ways of spending more money as part of the loyalty program.

The announcement was made by Rakuten CEO and founder Hiroshi Mikitani during his speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 27.
Mikitani referred to his newly announced asset as ‎a “borderless currency,” underlining Rakuten’s vision of differentiating itself from its online retail rivals, like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay and "recreating" the relationship between retailers and merchants.

There are two main points that Mikitani wants to reach:

1) the company wants to see if it can drive more transactions from people internationally by cutting out some of the exchange rate fees and other issues if they buy in fiat currencies.
2) there is simply the buzz of crypto today: people who might not have been all that interested in loyalty programs before might turn on to them if they see their reward as blockchain buy-in.

There are some 44,000 merchants selling goods on Rakuten in Japan, its biggest market. Other holdings include PriceMinister in France (which is now rebranding to Rakuten) and Ebates, the rebates website operator in the US that Rakuten acquired for $1 billion in 2014. The logic will be to add Rakuten Coin to all of Rakuten’s businesses — some of which today have loyalty programs, and some of which do not.

The quote that i can report as read in various articles is the following:
“Basically, our concept is to recreate the network of retailers and merchants,” he said. “We do not want to disconnect [them from their customers] but function as a catalyst. That is our philosophy, how to empower society not just provide more convenience.”

BULLISH NEWS in my opinion, the more people get to know the cryptocurrencies, the better. Curious on what we will see in the next months in this market.

How we can cross check that the company only will be launching some crypto currency. Because now a days, lots of scammers coming in the name of big established companies and launching their own shitcoins which will be ending up scamming innocent people is hard earned money.

Unless otherwise we are getting prompt proof that bitcoin is coming from those reputed company's, we should not decide to invest with them.

In Wednesday, Wall Street`s Tom Lee considered that the launch of  "Rakuten Coin"  is a good example of positive developments in crypto in 2018, and Rakuten announcement will help the whole crypto market to recover and double by midyear.

I made a summary from various articles i've read and what i can tell you i that there is still no release date for the project, but here is what we know so far:

Japan’s largest e-commerce company Rakuten, with a market capitalization of over $12.5 bln (last year revenue was $8.8 billion), is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin based on Blockchain technology, implementing the "actual rakuten super points loyalty program". What does this mean? There have been over 1 trillion Super Points awarded to users since the program was launched 15 years ago, equivalent to $9.1 billion, and the idea will be to now give users more ways of applying those loyalty points to more purchases, as a way of driving more purchasing to collect them in the first place.
Points currently are collected each time you buy — or, in certain markets where Rakuten runs marketplaces, sell — items or services on the site. As with its rival Amazon, Rakuten has a payment also has an MVNO mobile service with plans to launch its own full-blown mobile carrier — all of which become ways of spending more money as part of the loyalty program.

The announcement was made by Rakuten CEO and founder Hiroshi Mikitani during his speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 27.
Mikitani referred to his newly announced asset as ‎a “borderless currency,” underlining Rakuten’s vision of differentiating itself from its online retail rivals, like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay and "recreating" the relationship between retailers and merchants.

There are two main points that Mikitani wants to reach:

1) the company wants to see if it can drive more transactions from people internationally by cutting out some of the exchange rate fees and other issues if they buy in fiat currencies.
2) there is simply the buzz of crypto today: people who might not have been all that interested in loyalty programs before might turn on to them if they see their reward as blockchain buy-in.

There are some 44,000 merchants selling goods on Rakuten in Japan, its biggest market. Other holdings include PriceMinister in France (which is now rebranding to Rakuten) and Ebates, the rebates website operator in the US that Rakuten acquired for $1 billion in 2014. The logic will be to add Rakuten Coin to all of Rakuten’s businesses — some of which today have loyalty programs, and some of which do not.

The quote that i can report as read in various articles is the following:
“Basically, our concept is to recreate the network of retailers and merchants,” he said. “We do not want to disconnect [them from their customers] but function as a catalyst. That is our philosophy, how to empower society not just provide more convenience.”

BULLISH NEWS in my opinion, the more people get to know the cryptocurrency, the better. Curious on what we will see in the next months in this market.

I think this is just the start we need, few big companies here and there, joining the crypto world, and if it's successful, then more and more well reputed company will come ahead and launch their own crypto currency. So overall it's good news. Can't wait the day when Amazon, Facebook, Twitter etc join

Only a matter of time before we see Amazon doing something similar. There is a good article in techcrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/27/rakuten-will-roll-its-9b-loyalty-program-into-a-new-blockchain-based-cryptocurrency-rakuten-coin/

There are two main points that Mikitani wants to reach:

1) the company wants to see if it can drive more transactions from people internationally by cutting out some of the exchange rate fees and other issues if they buy in fiat currencies.
2) there is simply the buzz of crypto today: people who might not have been all that interested in loyalty programs before might turn on to them if they see their reward as blockchain buy-in.

Yes, Rakuten ia a good platform for trading. This news is enticing. I will also be on the wait, to expect more from them. I will e very much interested on what comes out of the project. If it succeeds, it will be a good development not just to Rakuten alone, but also to Japanese E-commerce industry in entirety, because this will make it easy for others to follow suit.