Yusaku Maezawa, founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retailer Zozotown, tweeted about turning a photo he took in space into a non-fungible token (NFT), saying it may be the very first NFT to be issued from space.
Fast facts
- Named “Rendezvous,” the NFT includes a photo that Maezawa took while the Russian Soyuz MS-20 he onboarded docked at the international space station (ISS). The picture, taken with Maezawa’s iPhone 12 Pro Max, shows the ISS floating above Earth, the islands of the Caribbean Sea in particular. The NFT includes other videos, such as the inside view of the Soyuz ship.
- The NFT was minted with Japan’s own blockchain Palette, and published by ART TODAY, an NFT art company that is an affiliate of Maezawa. ART TODAY plans to provide a platform for converting works into NFTs, under the theme of “Earth taken from space.”
- With the nickname “Japan’s Elon Musk,” Maezawa joins the list of billionaire space tourists such as Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. In the past, Maezawa had carried out extraordinary operations in and out of his business, such as handing out thousands of dollars to randomly picked Twitter followers, and implementing a 30-hour work week for his employees.