Although still in its nascent stages, the cryptocurrency space has seen plenty of celebrity involvement. The latest such example is R&B star Akon launching a new alt-coin known as Akoin.
Akoin is part of the singer’s plans to build a new city in Africa. Akon is a native of Senegal.
“AKoin is a new cryptocurrency from Akon, the global artist and change-maker who founded Akon Lighting Africa (providing scaled solar power solutions throughout Africa), created to empower youth entrepreneurship and economic inclusion through an exclusive suite of sustainability and growth building crypto-based apps that offer immediate and ongoing new revenue generating opportunities to stimulate micro-exchanges and financial stability in Africa and beyond,” according to the Akoin website.
The new digital currency is being launched in partnership with ICO Impact Group.
“ICO Impact Group helps your company get access to Mandated Capital. Family offices, public and private foundations, endowments, ultra high net worth investors, and institutional investors have mandated capital – a percentage of the corpus (main funds) that has been designated by the asset owner to be invested in socially impactful or sustainable organizations,” according to the firm’s website.
Not The First Unique Crypto
While many investors have at least heard of bitcoin, ethereum and some of the other large digital currencies, the alt-coin space is populated by over 1,500 tokens, leaving plenty of room for some unique and obscure concepts.
Coins such as Dogecoin, PotCoin and TrumpCoin are among the more unique offerings on the market. Akon is not the first singer to try his hand at cryptocurrencies. Kanye West introduced Coinye four years ago, but that coin has since disappeared.
Akon “admitted that his technical knowledge of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is limited, saying, ‘I come with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out,” reports the Independent.
For more information on the cryptocurrency market, visit our Bitcoin category.