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Bitcoin Technology

Rapper Akon Created His Own Cryptocurrency City In Senegal Called 'Akon City' (cnn.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the cautiously-optimistic dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: It's official, Akon has his own city in Senegal. Known as "Akon City," the rapper and entrepreneur tweeted Monday that he had finalized the agreement for the new city. Akon, who is of Senegalese descent, originally announced plans for the futuristic "Crypto city" in 2018 saying that the city would be built on a 2,000-acre land gifted to him by the President of Senegal, Macky Sall. The new city would also trade exclusively in his own digital cash currency called AKoin, he said. The official website for the city said at the time it would be a five-minute drive from the West African state's new international airport. According to a video posted to the project's Facebook page, "all transactional activity" in Akon City will be conducted using AKoin.

"What's worrying is that, at this stage, there doesn't appear to be any white paper for Akon's cryptocurrency, so it's hard to gauge exactly what we're in for," reports The Next Web. "The associated website does however hype the release of a white paper and an 'explainer video' sometime before February this year."
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Rapper Akon Created His Own Cryptocurrency City In Senegal Called 'Akon City' More

Rapper Akon Created His Own Cryptocurrency City In Senegal Called 'Akon City'

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  • It sounds kind of scammy to me.
    If it really is on the up & up, I hope it succeeds, but I wouldn't put any money in it at this point, crypto or otherwise.

    • It's probably just a weird blend of ignorance of and interest in crypto-currencies. They probably don't know what they're doing, but that probably means they'll just end up with a basic ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum network, which is probably just fine. This is pretty much the exact use case that ERC-20 was designed for.

  • Fascinating (Score:3)

    by Retired ICS ( 6159680 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @08:17PM (#59621628)

    Though the fact that it is cryptocurrency is irrelevant. It could just as well be Canadian Tire Money, or casino chips. The interesting thing of course is that all trade in and out of the city will require conversion to "real money" and I am sure that the "appointed converter" will take a not-insignificant fee for the conversion, just like all currently existing money fiefdoms do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      This is more of a longer term con. What you are seeing is the establishment of extreme anything goes market capitalism in Africa, not colonialism based but internal, with more players trying to become the dominant corrupt financial hub of Africa. All about the ruthless exploitation of everyone not with the in group, whom ever that may be on a corporate/organised crime basis, similar to the US, just far more extreme.

      As organised crime is embedded in the corporate schemes, things will become quite extreme whe

    • Which money fiefdoms would that be?

  • Can I pay with my Coinye? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As a fellow rapper, I presume I can bring my own coins?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    If not I have to consider trading my wife for a few cows.

    Kanye

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

      If not I have to consider trading my wife for a few cows.

      Is she even worth a cow anymore? Maybe you'll get a couple steaks for her.

    • If not I have to consider trading my wife for a few cows.

      You will get exactly 1 cow for this is the current exchange rate of a hobbit.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Still, the Vatican City is only 100 acres and they put fear into the hearts of small children everywhere...
    • According to Google it's 8 KM2 - around 80 city blocks

      • Yes. 8 sq km is about 2.8km by 2.8km.

        • It feels like you're obfuscating the size. 80 NYC city blocks. In other words double Manhattan's upper est side. It's not huge for a city but neither is it small.

          • I'm not the original poster. And nobody is obfuscating the size. I'd say you're just overestimating it, perhaps because of where you live.

            8sqkm may seem "huge" for people who live in an area measured in city blocks. Akon isn't going to be able to replicate lower Manhattan on his land.

            For people not from ultra dense city centres, walking across areas this size counts as visiting the neighbours. Heck, here in Australia I have friends who have single properties larger than this, and they aren't even too far ou

            • Akon isn't going to be able to replicate lower Manhattan on his land.

              Of course not. You won't be able to build a Manhattan level of density without sufficient economic incentive to develop it. He's going to have a bunch of buildings in Akon city that are 2-3 stories at best. Helena, Montana (31,000 population) is roughly 10,500 acres which is five times the size of this proposed city. Bill Gates dropped millions to purchase 25,000 acres for a smart city.

              This crypto city is going to be incredibly small and isn't going to have a large population and it is really going to be no

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cederic ( 9623 )

            Looking at it another way, Manhattan has a single park that's 40% of the total area of this proposed city.

            Sure, you can pack people in like sardines but even a moderately sized town would be around ten times the size if you wanted it to be nice to live in.

  • Shutup and TAKE MY MONEY!

    I mean, who wouldn't want to plow all their hard-earned dough into this totally non-sketchy shit?

  • Like with Arts. Owning an original or a copy is not the same. Forking the Bitcoin code, without following the protocol, does not generate something valuable.Indeed the only innovation is decentralization, and you can't copy the decentralization:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitco... [reddit.com]
    https://medium.com/@jimmysong/... [medium.com]
    https://www.whatbitcoindid.com... [whatbitcoindid.com]

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by soundbtc ( 6312548 )
      F.A. Hayek in 1984: "I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop."

      Bitcoin matters.

    • This will almost certainly not be based on Bitcoin's code. Bitcoin doesn't scale well for small rollouts because it's too susceptible to attack when there's no one mining.

      This will probably be an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network. ERC-20 tokens are like their own crypto-currencies, but they take advantage of the security of the larger underlying Ethereum network. In addition, they support swaps with other ERC-20 tokens, so it's easy to move money in and out without building an exchange infrastructure. Th

      • You should read the articles written by Jimmy Song. Bitcoin scale very well, because Bitcoin is the only one supporting layers.

        You should stop listening to marketing people. The incentives are very important, and the incentives work only on a hard monetary system. Ethereum is a huge database. Ethereum is fully centralized, the incentives are incompatible with any decentralization. With centralization, you don't have any innovation.

        You can fork the code, but you can't copy the only thing that matters: de

        • Did you even read my comment? Did you read what Jimmy wrote?

          He says in that second link that altcoins are shit. He's talking about the Bitcoin NETWORK, not the Bitcoin SOFTWARE. The software is nearly worthless without the network. Bitcoin Cash was the first fork, then Bitcoin SV. Each time it's forked, the new fork is worth less than the last one.

          If the market for your currency is a single town in Africa, then how many miners do you think you'll have? The security of Bitcoin is provided by the miners. Anot

  • Fairly easy to deal with (Score:3)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @09:00PM (#59621760)

    What's worrying is that, at this stage, there doesn't appear to be any white paper for Akon's cryptocurrency, so it's hard to gauge exactly what we're in for

    You aren't "in for" anything if you don't give him your money. Seriously people can make such stupid "investment" decisions sometimes.

  • Hopefully all the rappers in the world will move there and will keep their 'music' contained within, along with their craptocurrency... A big Win-Win for the rest of the world...!

  • Why did Senegal give Akon 2000 acres? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @09:23PM (#59621838) Homepage

    I know Akon does good charity work in Senegal, but maybe charity wouldn't be so needed if the Senegalese president wasn't giving away the nation's land to wealthy expatriates.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      Maybe because they're in on the scam? 2,000 acres is basically a large business park (just under 3km square), so not a huge fraction of Senegal which is just under 200k square km. Assuming all goes to plan, Akon builds the business park, businesses come, fiat money gets converted to/from AKoins, and profits get made. What's in it for them? Foreign investment (and if it all fails, a good chunk of the money they'll have blown stays in Senegal), jobs for Senegalese, taxes on profits, and potentially a comm

      • That's not correct - 2000 acres is 3.1 square miles, or 8.1 square kilometers.

        The capital of Senegal has over 1 million people in 83 square kilometers, so "Akon City" could theoretically hold about 100,000 people - more than most business parks.

  • Me too! (Score:3)

    by porky_pig_jr ( 129948 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @09:32PM (#59621868)

    My hamster Dopey created its own cryptocurrency known as Dopey's currency.

  • Is this an Underpants Gnome variation? (Score:3)

    by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @09:51PM (#59621938)
    1) Be a rapper.
    2) Build a new city on land the government gave you for free.
    3) Use a brand new crypto coin in that new city.
    4) ?????
    5) Profit!
  • But set in Senegal instead of the Sultanate of Kinakuta.

  • Apart from the cryptocurrency snake oil, I think everyone here who wants things to run differently, dreams of doing something like this.

    I say good on him. At least he's trying to improve the world, with what he got.
    Unlike most other bickering cowards.

    • Bitcoin is very real. Having real digital scarcity is a breakthrough! If you put aside Bitcoin, everything else is snake oil. Decentralization can't be imposed by a leader. Decentralization is not, a from top to bottom process. Decentralization can't be copied. Decentralization is an unforgeable costliness event. It happened one time, and one time only, with Bitcoin.

  • Nothing of value will be lost in this one.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Investing with a guy named "Akon" sounds like it should go about as well as working with a guy named "Madoff".

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