LINE Launches Blockchain Development Platform, Digital Wallet
- LINE’s Blockchain Developers and BITMAX tools will ease the development of blockchain services, and the management of digital assets.
- While the development platform has been released in both English and Japanese, the digital assets wallet is available only in Japan.
Illustration from Freepik
Japanese messaging giant LINE has launched two new products – a digital assets wallet and a blockchain development platform for dapps and services, the firm said in a press release on 26 August.
According to the announcement, the two new products were unveiled on Wednesday by the firm’s crypto and blockchain subsidiary, LVC Corporation, and Line Tech Plus PTE. Called BITMAX and LINE Blockchain Developers respectively, the products will enable developers to create dapps and services for the LINE Blockchain, and allow users to manage their fungible and non-fungible digital assets.
Although LINE’s development platform will be made available in both English and Japanese at launch, its digital assets wallet will only be released in Japan, where the messaging giant is well known. BITMAX will enable its users to send and receive digital assets from their LINE contact list, as the wallet will be directly connected to their LINE IDs.
The LINE Blockchain Developers tool is aimed at cutting the costs and complexities involved in the development and deployment of blockchain applications, monetization of data and tokenization of assets. The platform will also leverage LINE’s existing network of users, numbering more than 84 million, to jumpstart its token economy, as well as accelerate the adoption of dapps and services built for the LINE Blockchain ecosystem.
LINE started developing its own proprietary blockchain, and also issued its own LINK (LN) token (unrelated to Chainlink’s LINK), back in 2018. At the time, LN was made available for trading against several major crypto assets on the firm’s own cryptocurrency exchange, Bitbox, which LINE launched in July 2018. The firm later launched the Bitmax crypto exchange for its Japanese citizens, after it received regulatory approval from the country in September 2019, and eventually made LN available to its Japanese customers earlier this year.
- Japanese messaging giant Line had decided to close down its crypto exchange business, and focus on its other blockchain and crypto initiatives.
- New signups and credit card payments have already been shut down, additional services will be suspended mid-December, while trading and open orders will be canceled by the end of the month.
Shutterstock
- The firm aims to support the development of a “customized CBDC”, which would be able to reflect each bank’s requirements.
- Some “major” Asian countries are reportedly in discussion with Line over the application of its CBDC platform.
- Though originally issued in 2018 by the messaging giant, LN is now available to Japanese traders for the first time.
- LINE’s native token was listed by BitMex, the messaging giant’s own cryptocurrency exchange, launched at the end of 2019.