From hometown tax return gifts to the next stage
Regional revitalization through NFT is accelerating
The spread of NFT will be essential for making an impact on the world. We will contribute to increasing tax revenue for local governments and revitalizing local communities through partnerships with large companies.
Several years have passed since regional revitalization was positioned as an important pillar of national strategy. Hometown tax donations have been introduced as part of this effort, and are gaining support as a system that allows users and local governments to build win-win relationships.
In recent years, there have been cases where NFTs are provided as return gifts, and Aryaumu is at the forefront of this. Representative Hiroaki Hatanaka, who has entered into a business partnership with KDDI in 2023 and is accelerating the business, talks about the use of NFTs and the prospects for Web 3.0.
Possibilities and stepping stones for regional revitalization
Works created by art university students are turned into NFTs and sold. In the future, we will expand tourism NFT globally.
Hatanaka: 2022 had a negative impression for the crypto asset field due to the collapse of FTX, but on the other hand, it was a year in which Japan's NFT market gradually began to gain momentum. In the Web 3.0 area in Japan this year, companies specializing in games will launch blockchain games from this year to next. Until now, blockchain games have not been made by professionals, so there aren't many interesting titles. However, if companies specializing in games and companies with blockchain know-how work together to create games, we predict that the blockchain population will increase dramatically. When it comes to NFTs, Japan has surprisingly well-balanced regulations. Considering these environmental aspects, I believe that regional revitalization through NFT will accelerate overall.
Regional revitalization using NFTs involves two steps: getting users to understand NFTs, and then getting them to want to contribute to and support the region.
The population that knows about NFT and Web 3.0 can still be said to be niche. Still, when viewed on a population basis, we have no choice but to include the efforts to popularize NFTs in order to make an impact on the world.
In the future, when NFTs become widespread, I think efforts toward regional revitalization will accelerate in various regions.
We are preparing local NFTs related to hometown tax payments. We recognize that these efforts are important and that there is high demand from users, so we will continue to do so.
In addition, this year we will also create content outside of NFTs. We will collaborate with local communities to create content that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of NFTs and turn them into tax return gifts.
For example, we would like to deliver things that everyone is familiar with, such as Hello Kitty, as ``local x NFT.'' We are also considering turning students' creations into NFTs and offering them as hometown tax NFTs.
The origin of our company ``Aryaum'' is Arabic and means ``today''.
When I thought about doing business globally in the future, I thought it was too simplistic to say, ``Because we are global, we will uniformly use English.'' It's not just Western people who move the world, and I want to be a company that thinks about the world.
As a company, we are developing tourism NFT as a solution, so we may expand globally someday.
Profile
◉Hiroaki Hatanaka
In 2017, while a student at the Faculty of Comprehensive Human Studies at Kyoto University, he discovered Bitcoin through a Nikkei special feature on the Revised Funds Settlement Act, and began arbitrage trading in crypto assets with the 300,000 yen training fee his father gave him. In November 2020, he founded Aryaumu Co., Ltd. and started the goods business. In December 2021, we received investment from Skyland Ventures and others and started the hometown tax NFT business.
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