What is the next step and the future of Web 3.0 as seen by Melcoin's young CEO? │ Interview with Keita Nakamura

2024/07/28 16:36 (Updated 2025/04/02 18:35)
Editors of Iolite
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メルコインの若きCEOが見据える次のステップと、Web3.0の未来とは。│ 中村奎太 インタビュー

Why did Mercari decide to enter the crypto asset and blockchain business?

The 30-year-old CEO of Melcoin, a crypto asset and blockchain business in the Mercari Group, talks about the company's past and future.

Mercari, which has been involved in flea market apps and payment services, why did you decide to get involved in the crypto asset business?

Keita Nakamura (Nakamura): Because we saw great potential in technologies such as crypto assets and blockchain. At the same time, I also had a sense of crisis that these technologies might be disruptive to the business that Mercari had built up.

What were the potentials you sensed?

NAKAMURA: Firstly, there was the expectation that cryptographic assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) would come to be handled as the native currency of the Internet in the future, and that the financial world would undergo major changes. If this happens, the Mercari Group, which is involved in payment and financial businesses centred on Melpay, will not be able to remain unaffected by this change.

Another is that the decentralised worldview of blockchain will give rise to new ecosystems and business models.

As you know, Mercari is a marketplace for customers to buy and sell things, so we are in the middle of a centralised business model. That's why we had a sense of crisis that our business would one day be shaken to its foundations if we didn't follow the paradigm shift of a decentralised worldview expanding in the future.

So, at the time when we set up an internal research and development organisation called mercari R4D in 2017, we began to treat as a major theme how the Mercari Group handles and can utilise technologies such as crypto assets and blockchain.

▶︎ Decentralised
meaning de-centralised, decentralised or distributed, is one of the characteristics of blockchain. Opposite of ‘centralised’, which means centralised.

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日本暗号資産ビジネス協会 Japan Cryptoasset Business Association
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MAGAZINE

Iolite Vol.15

September 2025 issueReleased on 2025/07/30
Interview Iolite FACE vol.15 Avery Chin, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs PHOTO & INTERVIEW Tester Special feature: "How to master workplace relationships! Using MBTI", "Riding the waves of the 'first year of AI agents'!", "Is Bitcoin the savior of companies? The forefront of treasury strategies", "Management strategies learned from villains" Crypto Journey: "The intersection of Web 3.0 and social contribution" Interview with Gracie Chen, CEO of Bitget Series: "Expert perspectives on interpreting the fluctuating cryptocurrency market" Virtual NISHI Series: Tech and Future Toshinao Sasaki, etc.