Background & Biography
Mikitani founded Rakuten in February 1997, after a career that included joining the Industrial Bank of Japan in 1988 and receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1993. Rakuten’s current management biography identifies him as Representative Director, Chairman, President and CEO. His career combines company formation with the development of a group spanning online commerce, financial services and communications.
The digital-asset connection is best understood through that wider business. Rakuten already had customer accounts, payment relationships and a loyalty program when its crypto services developed. Integrating a new asset into those existing relationships creates a different route to users from launching a standalone exchange. Mikitani’s influence lies in group strategy and the resources and partnerships supporting it; the operating companies remain responsible for their own products.
Rakuten’s corporate disclosures place its head office in Tokyo and identify Mikitani as its representative. His other leadership positions are broader than digital assets, and the existence of a group service does not establish that he personally designed or manages its technology.
Notable Contributions
Mikitani articulated an early blockchain-related vision at Mobile World Congress in 2018. Rakuten’s account of his keynote described plans to connect its ID and points system across services, including a slide headed Rakuten Coin. CTech independently reported his announcement and recalled an earlier interview about applying blockchain to Rakuten’s financial assets. The account described a proposed direction, without establishing a subsequent token launch or the reach he envisaged.
A more concrete milestone came in August 2019, when Rakuten Wallet announced the launch of spot trading in bitcoin, ether and bitcoin cash. The service was offered by Rakuten Wallet as a group company. Its importance to Mikitani’s profile is the entry of an established consumer-services group into crypto access, rather than an assertion that the group chief executive became the exchange’s day-to-day operator.
In December 2019, the wallet added a route from eligible Rakuten Super Points into those three crypto assets. The launch allowed exchanges starting from 100 points, subject to the program’s eligibility and usage limits. This joined a familiar consumer reward to a financial product with a different risk profile. Earning points through ordinary purchases and choosing to convert them into a crypto asset are separate activities; the latter exposes the resulting holding to market-price changes.
The February 2021 Rakuten Cash integration connected the other end of that process to spending. Users could sell supported crypto in their wallet and use the proceeds to charge Rakuten Cash, which could then be spent through participating Rakuten services and payment channels. The merchant-facing payment was e-money after conversion. It was not evidence that shops were receiving bitcoin directly or settling purchases on a blockchain. That operational distinction is central to understanding the adoption channel.
CoinDesk reported a further extension in April 2026, describing XRP’s integration with Rakuten Wallet, points and the Rakuten Cash spending route. The report relied in part on a Ripple executive’s explanation of the rollout. It illustrates the expansion of supported assets within the existing consumer network. The network’s potential audience should not be equated with active XRP purchasers, observed transaction volume or merchant demand for holding the asset.
Rakuten also launched an NFT marketplace and sales platform in February 2022. The initial proposition combined digital collectibles in sports and entertainment with tools for intellectual-property holders to issue and sell content. Purchases could use Rakuten ID and earn or spend points. This extended the group’s account and loyalty infrastructure into another digital-asset category, with a different purpose from the fungible assets traded through Rakuten Wallet.
That product strategy subsequently narrowed. A February 2025 service notice said primary sales of NFTs other than tickets would end by 13 March, as Rakuten NFT concentrated on ticketing and closer links with Rakuten Ticket. At the time of the notice, previously purchased NFTs could still be listed on the peer-to-peer marketplace.
Mikitani’s direct advocacy provides a separate, person-specific connection to crypto policy. In September 2022, the Japan Association of New Economy, which he leads as representative director, submitted crypto-asset tax proposals to the Japanese government. The association sought changes affecting corporate token holdings and separate taxation for individual trading gains. Its release also cited Mikitani’s concern that taxation of unrealized gains and legal uncertainty could encourage startups to move overseas. These were the association’s requests and his assessment, rather than a statement of enacted law.
Why Katharos.ai Follows Hiroshi Mikitani
Katharos.ai follows Mikitani because digital-asset distribution can be shaped by the leaders of established platforms. Rakuten’s combination of commerce, points, wallet services and payments creates several possible entry points for customers. The relevant question is how those connections work in practice, including where conversion happens and which company supplies each service.
His public advocacy adds another dimension: a corporate founder can influence discussion of the conditions under which domestic blockchain businesses operate. Following both the policy arguments and the product record allows the editorial assessment to distinguish expressed ambition, implemented functionality and subsequent changes in business direction.
Areas to Follow
Future coverage will track the assets and functions actually available through Rakuten Wallet, how crypto-to-e-money conversion is presented to customers, and evidence of usage beyond a platform’s potential reach. It will also follow the evolution of NFT ticketing, the relationship between rewards and financial products, and Mikitani’s attributable statements on crypto-related business conditions. New announcements should be assessed against later operating evidence.
Reporting Scope
This profile covers Mikitani’s public professional leadership and selected Rakuten initiatives that explain his digital-asset relevance. Product announcements and partner claims remain attributed and dated. It does not treat Rakuten Cash as a cryptocurrency, imply that a proposed Rakuten Coin became an operating token, or assign subsidiary executives’ decisions to Mikitani without direct evidence. Tax advocacy is described as advocacy, without implying that a requested reform was adopted.
Areas of Influence
His principal influence channels are company building, consumer distribution, exchange access, payment integration and public business advocacy. The documented payments connection is the conversion of supported crypto assets into spendable e-money, while his policy role concerns the conditions for digital-asset businesses in Japan.
Katharos.ai publishes this profile for information, based on the sources listed. Inclusion is not an endorsement of the individual, their organizations, or any investment product.
Source notice: Information and images are attributed to the external sources listed. Katharos.ai does not endorse the subjects or claims described and does not independently certify the authenticity of every source statement or image.
Photo attribution: Hiroshi (Mickey) Mikitani at MWC Barcelona, 4 Mar 2025. Xuthoria, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MWC_2025_-_Mickey_Mikitani_01.jpg). Downsampled and pillarboxed; original and derivative CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).