Blockchain: The Potential for Significant Impact
Rising Tide had the privilege of hosting Mr.Naojiro Hisada, Executive Officer at Rakuten and Global Head of Blockchain at a roundtable discussion at their San Francisco office. In August 2016 Rakuten acquired the I.P. assets of bitcoin payment processor BitNet, and opened a Blockchain Lab in Belfast, Ireland. Then in August of this year, Rakuten announced that they will roll their $9B loyalty program into a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin, and also acquired a Japanese crypto-exchange called Everybody’s Bitcoin for $2.4M.
Presenting at the roundtable were two Rising Tide portfolio companies, Blockstack and Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs, spun out of Axiom Zen, has a goal to bring the benefits of decentralization to a billion consumers through the power of play, fairness, and true ownership. Blockstack is building a new decentralized Internet by giving developers the ability to build blockchain powered applications on decentralized DNS servers. End users of these applications regain control over their own data, bypassing middlemen, passwords, massive insecure data silos, and services tracking users around the Internet.
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