Pokémon: arriving in crypto and NFT markets?

A number of job ads from The Pokémon Company related to NFTs, crypto, and metaverse have recently been posted online. This suggests that the company may be making a move into the crypto markets.

Pokémon embraces crypto and NFTs

The Pokémon Company is the Japanese company behind the very famous Pokémon video game, which also uses trading cards.

The company was born as early as 1998, and in 2000 it adopted the name Pokémon.

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Specifically, The Pokémon Company internationally manages the brand, licensing, marketing, Pokémon trading card game, animated TV series, home entertainment, and the official Pokémon website in territories outside Asia.

The use of NFTs in conjunction with trading cards is more than plausible, as NFTs are a perfect technology to enable the exchange of digital collectibles.

For now, however, the Pokémon Company’s approach to the crypto and NFT markets seems to be only an intention, although there may already be some definite project behind it that is not yet publicly known.

The company is looking for people who specialize in identifying, evaluating and executing useful investments within a long-term company growth strategy.

In fact, the figures sought would not appear to be technical developers to be hired to make something, but to monitor at this stage technologies and new trends in the entertainment industry and especially in gaming.

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However, precisely in the gaming sector, NFTs, metaverse and cryptocurrencies are for all intents and purposes a major trend at this moment in history.

The company plans to create new platforms in the future, but for now there does not seem to be anything concrete yet.

For candidates the required experiences include working in technology, gaming, media or entertainment, excellent business sense, and above all deep knowledge and understanding of Web3, and in particular blockchain, NFTs and metaverse.

The problems of the crypto and NFT markets

From a strictly financial perspective, the crypto and NFT markets are still in the midst of winter.

After the resounding boom of 2021, and the heavy bear market of 2022, the crypto winter in fact is not yet over, although at least the slump now seems to have stopped for a couple of months.

It is enough to think that on Friday, with the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, the overall capitalization of the crypto market fell from $1 trillion to $916 billion, although it then climbed back above $1.070 billion yesterday.

The current level is in line with that of June last year, but far below the peak of nearly 3 trillion in November 2021.

Current NFT trading volumes are also only a fraction of those touched at the peak in January 2022.

However, in December the situation was far worse, as crypto markets fell below 800 billion in capitalization, and NFT trading volumes hit annual lows.

However, there are not a few who believe that this crypto winter may be coming to an end, so Pokémon Company’s interest in these markets does not turn out to be particularly strange, just now that they have suffered a very sharp decline from the heights they reached just over a year ago.

Then again, crypto markets are following Bitcoin‘s four-year cycle, and NFT markets are following closely behind.

Given that the next halving will take place in the spring of next year, it is not at all absurd to imagine that in the coming months the crypto winter may come to an end.

At this point, it is possible to imagine that The Pokémon Company is trying to get a bit ahead of the curve so that it will eventually be able to seize the next bull run by arriving prepared well in advance.