Rapper Akon kicks off construction for world's first "crypto city"

[ChrisPop]

I hold huge respect for Akon both a singer and as an entrepreneur and most importantly as a noble human. He didn't forget where he left from - Africa and now he is trying to bring last generation tech to Africa which to my knowledge is the most under-developed continent.

Not even speak about theth awareness he's generating for the cryptocurrency space. A crypto city would attract the world's eyes to Africa and hopefully we'll see much more investments made there.

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[Darker45]

Senegal has given the green light to build Akon City—a 2,000-acre metropolis that will trade exclusively in a digital currency called Akoin.

Read more: HERE

Here are a few things noteworthy on this project:

• The 2,000-acre land is a donation from the president of Senegal himself.
• There is now an existing Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) between Akon and a state-owned tourism company. Both the token and the project have yet to launch, though.
• The project will cost around 2 billion USD. Akon and his project will never be able to shoulder everything. My hunch is that there must be a significant portion coming from the government or at least from a few top officials who are sitting there enriching themselves from the government coffers.

And yet Akon is saying that crypto and blockchain are good, in fact, "the savior of Africa", "because it brings the power back to the people." And that both "enables people in Africa to advance themselves independent of the government." Well, this early, the project is already indebted to the government and the person wielding the most power in the country.

[omone1]

I hope this project will be beneficiary to Senegal and West Africa nations. I hope Africa leaders will accept this and eventually accept the blockchain in their work processes in other to build the economy and greatly reduce fraud in governance.

[Eugenar]

Imagine, if all transactions would take place using cryptocurrency in the said crypto city, this will be the testing place for the cryptocurrency to be implemented worldwide and accepted as a unifying currency. I believe with this, upon testing, allot of regulation will be implemented, and allot of protocols should be followed, people might be confused at first but I do think with the growing technology we have, it could be easily learned and absorb by the community. The challenge will be, to test how reliable crypto is, to handle all transactions.

[airdnasxela]

Things like this are possible if there's someone who really wants to make it into a real thing. And Akon is doing a great job, doing what he likes while also promoting cryptocurrency in their place. I just hope that this "Akon City" will not only benefit him from investing to his coin, but it's much better if the community, people, and even his country could benefit from what he's making. If this will make a great impact to Africa, there's a higher possibility that they can adopt crypto but if it will only benefit him, I don't know...

[lixer]

Senegal has given the green light to build Akon City—a 2,000-acre metropolis that will trade exclusively in a digital currency called Akoin.

Read more: HERE

Lol, it’s good but kinda funny. It’s a very good idea as he is trying to promote the idea of using cryptocurrency, but it’s funny because some celebrities and influencers are now diving into cryptocurrency and instead of promoting the use of Bitcoin, they just creating their own cryptocurrencies and the way I see it they are just doing business with their followers, you can’t tell me that they are not going to benefit from people making use of their coins, of course they will make lots of profit so these are all just business. We already have lots of cryptocurrencies and most of them have ended up failing and becoming a disappointment .

[Fundamentals Of]

Senegal has given the green light to build Akon City—a 2,000-acre metropolis that will trade exclusively in a digital currency called Akoin.

Read more: HERE

Akon has been a light in his home country. I am all out in wishing this good soul the best of luck in this new endeavor of his.

It is clear that this one project is very ambitious. I just hope that this will not be derailed by useless red tapes and corruption issues.

And my opinion is that this crypto city will become even more successful if it will not require everything within it to be using Akoin alone. It should be open to Bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies. More freedom, less limitations.

[romero121]

Very few people who are popular take initiative to support the people in need. Akon is one among them, because he came crossing several obstacles and he remembered from where he started his life. Already he's known well to the world, and recently supported cryptocurrency on a radio show as well as explained about the launch of his own crypto. Now a separate City that operates through his cryptocurrency is really a step ahead in advancement. Whatever he does, he does it for the people which makes him the best in all.

[Mike Mayor]

I thought this might have been fake or some sort of clickbait. If a rapper knows crypto is good what the hell is wrong with the rest of people? Good for Akon and being from an African country it is so nice to hear things like this are finally happening. I will keep up to date with this. How cool would it be if he ran an ICO? A bounty? Wow an actual none shitcoin. xD

[NotATether]

Nice idea, that will go wrong all the way.

The bad part:
First, the name...you don't name the city after you or your pseudonym.
Second, a metropolis is not 3 square miles or 8 square kilometers. For example, Disneyland Paris is 3 times that Berlin 100 times.
It's more the size of a village than a metropolis.
Third, using a brand new token because...why not use bitcoin? Oh yeah, we need an ICO!

The good part is that they actually plan on building something real, not just vaporware but again I don't understand the need to build a new village from scratch rather than using the coin/token to improve what is going wrong in the current cities.  It's not like we're going to tear apart all the old towns and all of us move to brand new crypto cities.

Let's see how this one will end:
We had a project for a bitcoin city in Nevada, one in Malaysia ...

I've seen villages, this initiative can probably support only a few hundred people. I'm not sure where he will get transportation links, water and electrical infrastructure from, especially electricity. Africa is known for having cities with regular power outages and those kind of things will prevent people from using cryptocurrencies (internet companies use a lot of mains power).

Developed cities already have enough trouble finding stores and merchants which accept bitcoin as a payment method, so where is he going to get a bunch of merchants from who will happily accept bitcoin, let alone an unknown cryptocurrency like Akoin?

Even if he does find stores and sellers who will do business in bitcoin, there is still the issue of wholesale suppliers. He can't just force suppliers of the stores in this city to accept Akoin. Most of them are established companies which do business with paper money. Without suppliers no goods come in and there's nothing to sell.

Then again, we're talking village size here so there probably won't be many stores in the first place.

I wonder if he is aware of these issues.

[Chlotide]

Nice idea, that will go wrong all the way.

The bad part:
First, the name...you don't name the city after you or your pseudonym.

Why not ? If anything it would provide some marketing push and his name will remain in the African history books and on the blockchain

Second, a metropolis is not 3 square miles or 8 square kilometers. For example, Disneyland Paris is 3 times that Berlin 100 times.
It's more the size of a village than a metropolis.

It's a proof of concept. I doubt there are vast lands with all facilities (power, water, etc) just waiting for someone to claim them, regardless of the country.

Third, using a brand new token because...why not use bitcoin? Oh yeah, we need an ICO! ... I don't understand the need to build a new village from scratch rather than using the coin/token to improve what is going wrong in the current cities

It all comes down to decentralized - scalability - secure.
I would assume they want to keep the scalability and maybe security (my guess) and needed a type of coin to fit perfectly in the future created mini-metropolis ecosystem.
Also a city need facilities like water plants, electricity, services, public institutions etc THAT WOULD ALSO USE CRYPTO! Might be better of building from scratch than move all businesses and public institutions on crypto. Maybe if they see it's better, they will follow...who knows?
Let's see if a crypto utopia is feasible! I really hope so

[Murat]

That's a piece of good news for the cryptocurrency system so far in this new year, I think it doesn't add or increase the value of Bitcoin but this type of initiative attracts the new investors to Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, It's an awesome project that a huge land will be used for this purpose and for the long run it will bring something special for sure both Akon and Cryptocurrency world, I Hope many celebrities will follow the footstep of Akon and in this way, Cryptocurrency will get credible and acceptable to the people, Obviously it will influence people to do more thing regarding this platform for the long run purpose.

[xvids]

A huge salute for Akon for being a big supporter of crypto currency.
This rapper has been one of the early celebrity that have shown  it's strong support on crypto and now he is making a huge move to promote a crypto city,
Good luck and I hope it would go well.