Outside of the game, will the creature Palu issue coins?

The latest open-world game "Palworld" has become the first hit game of 2024, sweeping the internet. Despite some criticism from Pokemon fans, it firmly holds the top spot in Steam's game popularity rankings, with sales exceeding 1 million within 8 hours of its release, 2 million within 24 hours, and over 8 million in less than 6 days.

In the game Palworld, various magical creatures that inhabit different regions are collectively called Palu. Players can capture Palu as partners using Palu balls, and these partners can not only fight alongside players, but also transform into weapons, mounts, and even tools. This gameplay is somewhat similar to the Nintendo game Pokemon, but Palworld does not involve too much in terms of differential evolution, RPG development, and strategic battles. Instead, it emphasizes the sense of companionship between characters and Palu as they live and fight together (players fighting side by side), which is exactly the gameplay that Pokemon fans have longed for.

As the popularity of the game continues to increase, people have become curious about this low-cost game with only four early developers. It was discovered that Takuro Mizobe, co-founder of Palworld's publishing company Pocket Pair, had previously founded a cryptocurrency trading platform. Takuro also referred to himself as the "Coincheck Founder" in the introduction of his X account.

Retrieve the resume of Takuro Mizobe and it is found that he graduated from Tokyo Institute of Technology, one of the top science universities in Japan. After graduation, he joined Morgan Stanley as an engineer. In 2014, he returned to Japan and co-founded Regupress Co., Ltd. as the Chief Engineer. With his technical background and financial knowledge, Takuro Mizobe created network products, managed legal agreements, and launched Coincheck's trading business.

Source: Coincheck Document

Within less than three years, Coincheck's JPY trading volume accounted for about 40% of the Japanese market, making it one of the largest virtual currency trading platforms in Japan at the time. Perhaps you are still unfamiliar with this name, but Coincheck was once one of the most popular trading platforms in Japan.

In January 2018, Coincheck was hacked, resulting in the loss of approximately 500 million NEM token assets (about 530 million US dollars). Along with Mt.Gox, it became a permanent pain in the process of Japanese cryptocurrency. Subsequently, under the supervision of Japanese financial institutions, Coincheck compensated users for nearly 90% of their losses. In April of the same year, Monex Group announced the acquisition of all shares of Coincheck for 3.6 billion yen (about 33.5 million US dollars).

This acquisition allowed Coincheck to be fully acquired, with the founding management team stepping down. Since then, there has been no specific mention of Takuro Mizobe regarding Coincheck. Recently, another co-founder of Coincheck, Koichiro Wada, also posted on X stating that they had almost completely given up on Coincheck due to Pocket Pair.

Takuro Mizobe founded the game publishing company Pocket Pair in 2015, responsible for the planning, development, and operation of Palworld. Given its connection with Coincheck, there may be a possibility of combining Palworld with cryptocurrency. This is not unprecedented, as in September 2020, Coincheck announced a partnership with the blockchain game development platform Enjin to launch Japan's first NFT trading market "Coincheck NFT" by the end of the year and create NFTs for the game "Minecraft".

In March 2022, Coincheck NFT announced its support for Decentraland's NFT land trading in the metaverse. On the virtual land of Decentraland, Coincheck plans to launch a project called "Oasis KYOTO" in 2035, and announced that the project will be used as a place for communication and community development between artists and fans. In October of the same year, Coincheck and Animoca Brands reached a strategic partnership, with Animoca Brands responsible for IP and content development as a blockchain game developer, and Coincheck serving as a distributor and community developer in the Japanese market. Both parties will also create communities for creators and users.

Animoca Brands has always been focused on the gaming and NFT tracks in the crypto VC industry. If the popularity of Palworld can continue, perhaps we can look forward to whether Palworld can enter the crypto field in the future.

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