J-pop Deepens Crypto Links as Nogizaka46 Star Talks Investment on TV Show

Tim Alper
Last updated: | 2 min read

Not only American music stars are playing in the crypto market, as a Japanese pop music star has spoken out about crypto on a major TV show also, while a hit music band continues its non-fungible token (NFT) drive.

Source: Adobe/sakkmesterke

Nakada Kana, a former founding member of the Oricon chart-topping girl group Nogizaka46, made comments on crypto and trading tokens on a program broadcasted by TBS, one of Japan’s biggest broadcasting networks.

Per Modelpress and Daily.co, Kana was appearing on the January 31 episode of the long-running chat show Sunday Japon, which airs on TBS every Sunday evening. She stated that she was a crypto investor, adding that she had recently sold some of her holdings as she “thought prices would be going down.”

The 26-year-old was asked if prices could continue to rise as the Tokyo Olympics – slated to take place this summer – approached.

Kana added that she had “made a profit” on her trades.

She left the group in October last year.

But the link between the group and crypto is growing increasingly strong: Last year, another Nogizaka46 member, Asuka Saito (still a member of the group), featured in an advertising campaign from the Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer, where, in a making-of film, she spoke in detail about crypto and the art of making commercials in the age of the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, pop rival group and fellow chart-topper SKE48 has released another batch of NFT digital trading cards featuring the members of the musical act.

As reported last year, the first batch of SKE48-themed NFT cards sold out “instantly,” in the words of the group’s blockchain partner, the Japanese firm Coinbook.

Per an official update on a dedicated website, the new trading cards, which went on sale late last week and are only available until February 2, featuring the group members wearing traditional Japanese attire, ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations later this month.

The tokens were built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain network using the ERC-721 NFT protocol.
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