Recently, the Japan based e-commerce firm Rakuten, announced the integration of a cryptocurrency based payment system. This system will also act as a cryptocurrency exchange. Rakuten, initially revealed in August of last year, that a few improvements would be incorporated in the company as to improve the accountability and efficiently manage and allocate resources. The entire infrastructure is to be reorganized per the company’s announcement.
Rakuten will be incorporating a brand new subsidiary incharge of handling crypto payments. This is also to be a cryptocurrency exchange, and will be a result of rebranding its loyalty subsidiary, Spotlight Inc., to a brand new branch which will be known as Rakuten Payment. According to the press release, Rakuten exchange will be online for trading purposes by April 1. Upon launching, the platform shall be responsible for providing two operations; namely the cryptocurrency exchange Everybody’s Bitcoin and prepaid card service Rakuten Edy. The cryptocurrency exchange was just acquired by Rakuten only last year in August.
It was mentioned in the press release:
We have been preparing the Group Reorganization through a company split, to clarify accountability, improve management efficiencies and optimize allocation of resources, and thereby further grow and expand the Rakuten Ecosystem and maximize corporate value.
The firm Rakuten has been one of the companies who took an active interest in cryptocurrencies. It started accepting Bitcoin as payment almost 4 years ago.
Cryptocurrencies introduced us to the new era of decentralized payments and transactions. Before cryptocurrencies, the centralized institutions were responsible for carrying out transactions from one account to other. The decentralized currencies can potentially diminish the need of centralized institutions, if it is globally adopted by masses. Blockchain, the underlying technology of Bitcoin, which makes it decentralized, essentially removes the need of the middleman to act as authority over centralized institutions. This is one of the reasons, why it is believed that if blockchain and crypto get regulated and accepted all over the world, it would eliminate the need of centralized banking institutions. Until that happens, the organization that believe in the potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, are trying to incorporate these technologies into their platforms.
There have been a number of other institutions that have taken an active interest in cryptocurrencies, as they should. For now, centralized institutions are still operating and are majorly incharge of the financial system. The financial system however is not without its faults. The financial crisis of 2008 which led to the birth of Bitcoin, showed a better way to handle transactions, in which no centralized authority was to go over your data, for the purposes of protecting it. Rather cryptocurrencies, based on distributed ledger technology was for all people to manage their assets in a way, no other party could tamper with it and mutate any of the information which was stored on the distributed ledger.
The companies which are moving towards initiating crypto related projects are well aware of the potential that blockchain holds, and as time passes they are trying to make minor tweaks in their previously established systems. These changes are essential for these companies which have a centralized architecture, because in a world where people can efficiently manage their assets on their own, theoretically there would no need of institutions that are governed by one single authority.
All that being said, we still have to consider the negative aspect that cryptocurrencies drag around with them. High volatility and lack of regulatory framework in majority of the countries are the major hurdles cryptocurrencies have to cross in order to be taken seriously by the masses. The market has been fluctuating since the beginning of new year and it has yet to be determined whether the governments will provide regulatory framework for them.
