When Grammy Award-nominated singer Akon tried to convert some of Senegal’s currency to euros during a trip from Dakar to Paris a few years ago, he was met with resistance. An employee at the currency exchange counter in France told him: “Unfortunately, we don’t take those.”
“I’m like, ‘What?’” Akon said in a telephone interview.
He did not have time to convert one currency to the other before he left for his trip and was stuck with a pocketful of CFA francs — the currency used in many French-speaking West African countries, including Senegal — and nowhere to spend them.
“It really just opened my eyes,” Akon, 47, said. “That really catapulted the energy to say: ‘We have to have our own currency. I don’t care what it takes — we’re going to fix this.’”
The encounter served as a catalyst for one of his newest ventures, Akoin, a cryptocurrency that would also be the local currency in Akon City, an 809-hectare development in Senegal.
While some other coins have promised, but failed, to upend the system of fiat currencies, the hope is that people across the continent and beyond would adopt Akoin, with a launch likely to happen early next month, Akoin cofounder and president Jon Karas said.
The US-born artist, who has sold more than 35 million albums globally, spent his early childhood in Senegal before relocating to New Jersey. He rose to prominence in the early 2000s with his debut album Trouble.
He has had 27 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and has collaborated with Lady Gaga, Eminem and Gwen Stefani, among others.
Although his career spans more than a decade, some of his earliest hits, with titles like Locked Up and Lonely, saw a resurgence in the past few months, becoming anthems for hordes of masses locked down in their homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Events around the outbreak only acted to further sharpen his focus on the need for digital currencies, given that millions were hunkered down, unable to use cash and forced to shop online for necessities.
“It just goes to show the relevancy of why digital currency is such a futuristic event and how this is the future as we’re moving forward,” said the artist, whose full name is Aliaume Damala Badara Akon Thiam. “There are going to be digital currencies that will float through the whole universe that allow us to trade in a way that we’re already accustomed to — but now it’s going to be the norm.”
Akon says he has been a crypto fan for years (he invested in bitcoin in 2014).
He last year announced potential plans for Akon City and earlier this year finalized a land agreement with the Senegalese government — although the government is not providing funding for the project nor does it have a stake in the coin, Karas said.
When it comes to Akoin, 10 percent of the total float would be issued initially through a public sale, an amount that might change depending on demand. Company executives, advisers and directors would hold another 10 percent, according to the white paper.
Company representatives declined to disclose what percentage of the coin Akon would hold.
The coin’s three founders — Akon, Karas and Lynn Liss, who also serves as chief operating officer — are subject to a six-month lockup period and are released slowly thereafter.
“We’re building a big ecosystem,” Karas said by telephone. “We’re in this for the long run.”
Digital currencies — of which there are more than 5,000, by some measures — have been cited as a way to open up financial systems and incorporate a greater mass of users, especially those who currently might not have access to banks.
There is a debate about how best to do this: Some have proposed digital tokens backed by central banks as a possible solution, while others argue for private company involvement.
To be sure, the conversation is fraught and many prior undertakings have been called out for shortcomings and outright fraud.
A lot is at stake, and the debate is likely to intensify as more institutions attempt to define their involvement. The Chinese government, for instance, already has a pilot program for an official digital version of its currency, while other governments have been loath to relinquish the sovereignty of a national currency to the blockchain.
Akoin is built to be a utility token (meaning one that has a specific use), not an investment tool, Karas said.
Akon said he understands crypto’s tumultuous history — and cautions against blindly jumping into investments.
At the height of crypto mania, thousands of tokens were in circulation — and many have since been weeded out.
“Whoever is interested, don’t just move on the hype,” he said. “Do your proper due diligence, understand who you’re getting into it with, know the market that you want to invest in and have a plan of action as to what suits your benefit.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”