American rapper Akon unveiled white paper of his own digital currency Akoin, designed for entrepreneurs in a growing economy in Africa and beyond.
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The coin is a Stellar blockchain utility token designed for atomic swaps between cryptocoins, digital assets and fiat. Users will be able to store tokens through the multi-currency wallet of the same name or in the Stellar wallet.
The special fund will also invest in decentralized applications to create a single ecosystem.
The document says that the goal of this ecosystem is to create a single scalable platform that will provide token holders with access to many DApps.
The first partner of the platform was the BitMinutes payment gateway, whose token is used to pay for telephone communications.
In addition, an IEO is planned for the second quarter of this year. A total of 45 million Akoin tokens (10% of the total) will be distributed at $0.15 per coin. Residents of the United States and Canada will not be able to participate in IEO.
According to the document, about 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24 live in Africa, and by 2045 the inhabitants of the continent will become the largest category of the working population in the world.
Nevertheless, inflation, lack of access to financial services and lack of stability impede the development of the business and the region as a whole. The ecosystem that Akon seeks to build will supposedly help deal with these issues.
The musician announced the launch of its own digital currency in 2018. He also intends to build the “world's first crypto city”, the rapper received permission to build it from the government of Senegal.
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This is not the first time that rappers take advantage of crypto. In January British rapper Zuby said that he could receive BTC payments for his services and goods. He mentioned that he is not going to convert the cryptocoins into fiat instantly and will prefer hodling it.
Zuby is operating with Coinbase Commerce to make crypto payments available for his merchandise and other services. You can read more about this in our article.
Rappers are not the only ones who decided to use cryptocurrency to sell their own goods and services. Football teams also took advantage of this. For example, the fan token of the Paris Saint-Germain top soccer team (PSG) is available for sale on the Socios blockchain platform from January. You can read about this here.