AKB48 and Morning Musume are so yesterday. The real sign of our times is Japan’s new all-girl pop group Kasotsuka Shojo, each of whose eight members represents a different cryptocurrency. They’re holding their first cryptopop concert in Tokyo this Friday.
The group, whose name translates to Virtual Currency Girls, was recently launched by Japanese entertainment company Cinderella Academy, which also manages several other popular groups, to educate the public about the crypto world, in song. Each girl in the group represents a different currency such as bitcoin, ethereum or ripple, which can be identified from their fuzzy masks. It isn’t clear how French maid outfits symbolize cryptocurrency or blockchain technology—but they’re popular costumes in Japan’s anime and cosplay circles.
“We want to promote the idea through entertainment that virtual currencies are not just a tool for speculation but are a wonderful technology that will shape the future,” said the group’s leader Rara Naruse, 18, in an online statement. Naruse symbolizes bitcoin cash.
Payment for the Virtual Currency Girls debut concert Friday (Jan. 12) in Tokyo will only be accepted via cryptocurrencies, according to the band’s official site (link in Japanese). The group’s first song, “The Moon and Virtual Currencies and Me,” appears to take its inspiration from the warnings issued by various regulators in recent weeks—it’s a lecture on online security and watching out for fraudulent crypto businesses. Listen for yourself:
Bitcoin has been recognized as a legal form of currency in Japan, which, at one stage, accounted for the biggest share of global bitcoin trading. Tokyo-based BitFlyer is one of the world’s largest crypto-exchange operators. The dramatic rise in bitcoin’s price this past year will boost Japan’s GDP growth by 0.3%, according to a recent research note from Nomura.
Warren Buffet warned this week that bitcoin would “will come to a bad end.” Hopefully that won’t be the case for this bitcoin bubble band.