TL;DR Breakdown
- LINE Corporation announces its NFT Marketplace LINENFT.
- The platform is operational in Japan only.
- This is also another crypto investment by the messaging enterprise.
Japanese messaging company, LINE Corporation announced the launching of its Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) Marketplace via a Twitter post yesterday. The NFT platform named “LINENFT” will run on the LINE blockchain and is to be regulated by the LVC corporation, the company’s subsidiary in charge of its cryptocurrency and blockchain businesses.
LINENFT is designed to offer services in Japan only and the platform will make available a wide variety of digitized content for NFT collectors and traders. This crypto venture is launched in conjunction with entertainment giant, Yoshimoto Kogyo. As a result of the partnership, the NFT marketplace is to also offer unique NFT videos from the company, tagged under the name “Yoshimoto NFT Theater”.
News of the platform was first released last month by LINE. According to that statement, the NFT Marketplace is expected to offer up to 100 types of NFT collections. In addition, one of these collections is expected to be a set of digitized characters from the vintage Japanese animation, Patlabor the Mobile Police.
The NFT marketplace is LINE’s latest crypto investment.
The NFT industry witnessed a massive boost last year. According to data from DappRadar, the industry generated a trading volume of 22 billion – a massive increase from the previous value of $100 million in 2020. This thriving market has attracted major Japanese brands.
LINE Corporation has been one of the “champions” of cryptocurrency in Japan. In 2018, they launched the “LINE Blockchain Labs”, a firm tasked with researching and exploring the uses of blockchain technology.
In the same year, LINE designed and launched its own blockchain technology and token, named “LINE blockchain” and “LINK(LN)” respectively. The following year – 2019 – the company backed its investments in the crypto sector by releasing a crypto-asset exchange platform “BITMAX”, which can be easily accessed through the LINE messaging App. The unveiling of LINENFT only signifies an expansion of LINE’s corporation in the crypto space. Users of LINENFT will be able to store their NFTs in the BITMAX Wallet.
Furthermore, LINE corporation is not the only major Japanese company that is a fan of crypto assets in Japan. In 2020, Konami Holdings Corporation, a world-renowned video games studio, released the Castlevania-themed NFT collection in celebration of its 35th anniversary. In addition, along with LINE Corporation, its parent company, Z Holdings, is expected to launch its NFT marketplace “DOSI” this month also. The platform is set to be available in over 180 countries around the world.
