Akon wants to run a Senegal city on cryptocurrency
qz.com
qz.com
>Akoin has chosen to only issue 10% of tokens in this public sale. To accomplish this, the remaining token supply will be used to drive adoption amongst merchants/vendors and to bring value to the platform. The total supply of Akoin will be released over the course of 4 years, with 39.41% released after 12 months, 70.12% released after 24 months, 87.25% after 36 months, and 100% at 48 months. This is subject to change with Escrow tokens being placed back into Escrow if they are not needed in the month they are released.Each token allocation is subject to vesting and lock-up periods except for Public Sale tokens which are available immediately.
This sounds sketchy as hell.
Trading volume $55k Fully Diluted Market Cap $162bn
And have a pilot use going shown here https://youtu.be/sxBw2SQ5dCE?t=13
In the white paper they allocate 15% of coin supply to team and advisors so I guess that's a theoretical $24bn worth of tokens for their trouble, not that they could sell many at those trading volumes.
I agree it sounds pretty sketch.
Especially coming after https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9g2szHsoz0 IMHO.
The only philanthropy stories I am interested in are the ones where dedicated people of character start from the ground, consider the needs of actual human beings, and work with their representative governments to bring change. Not this technology-will-fix-everything glitzy renders cryptocurrency-upgrades-society hubristic bullshit. People give that crap way too much airtime. Plus, the singer involved seems to have a sketchy history, which makes his intent here even more dubious (probably not doing this out of the kindness of his heart...)
On the other hand, have you seen Will.i.am's smart watch? It's... Horrible https://youtu.be/5BRbMatqN3c
At least for Songdo in South Korea, it turns out that employers have no interest in rolling the dice on a brand new city with no proven track record, and residents don‘t really want to move to a place with no jobs. Plus cities designed from scratch in ivory towers tend to be very poor places to live nicely.
And asses the impact! So many projects that meet even this excellent definition of philanthropy still fail to have a tangible positive and verifiable output.
The play pump comes to mind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout_PlayPump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akon#Early_life
He (and his mother) have been doing philanthrophic work in Senegal for over 10+ years.
All the other things you say make sense of course, but he's not some random person coming to Senegal.
I also recommend the recent WaPo article on his move in Uganda, I found it revealing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/06/akon-city-ug...
Paywalled.
[0] https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2020/05/26/welcome-to-celebr...
https://mises.org/library/free-money-miracle
If you don't like the Mises Institute there are many other descriptions. The Austrian National Bank forced the end of the experiment.
you buy phone credit and that phone credit it's money
you don't need crypto for that
mobile payments have been a thing in Africa since the 2000s
a digital currency doesn't have to be crypto to work
I would say that it works better if it isn't
People already use telecom minute as money in Africa as a whole. The African diaspora does it abroad as well. ( I’m aware that Africa is a continent, I think it’s a broad practice. Idk, I can only speak for the Maghreb)
The use case here is :
You cousin pay you back some debt worth 50$ in telecom minute X. You accept, spend some of it. Then realize you need to pay back someone else.
That person has no interest in telecom minute X and can only use the Y company.
You have to buy brand new Y minute. Few mécanism exists to convert one in another.
That particular crypto aims at providing that.
If that work and the fee are not outrageous. That would be massively useful.
Hope it’s help.
«Bitcoin: Fake Elon Musk giveaway scam 'cost man £400,000'»
> OxyContin, introduced in 1995, was Purdue Pharma's breakthrough palliative for chronic pain. Under a marketing strategy that Arthur Sackler had pioneered decades earlier, the company aggressively pressed doctors to prescribe the drug, wooing them with free trips to pain-management seminars and paid speaking engagements. Sales soared.[26] The drug was marketed as "smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night" when taken on a 12-hour schedule and as having lower abuse potential than immediate-release oxycodone because of its time-release properties, even though there was no scientific evidence backing that conclusion and the addictive nature of opiates had been known for thousands of years.
> In August 2019, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family were in negotiations to settle the claims for a payment of $10-$12 billion. [55] The settlement would include a Chapter 11 filing by Purdue Pharma, which would be restructured as public beneficiary trust and the Sackler Family would give up any ownership in the company. Addiction treatment drugs currently developed by the company would be given to the public cost-free. All profits of Purdue would henceforth go to the plaintiffs in the case. On top of that, the Sackler family would contribute $3 billion in cash. The family would also sell Mundipharma and contribute another $1.5 billion from the sales proceeds to the settlement. However, the Sackler family would remain a billionaire family and would not be criminally charged for contributing to the opioid crisis.
I hope people are keen to weed out all corruption even though sometimes it is not possible but I think we should try.
If you go to the doctor and their “remedy” might cost you $100,000 in lost time chasing the wrong cure so they can make an extra $50 that day I’d say something smells off.
But again pure worldview. Some people would say it’s up to the individual to gain the knowledge of the doctor (could be via a proxy eg a friend) and let the free market decide. And that’s fine that’s probably how we lived before large governments existed.
not where I come from!
> You don't see people protesting doctors being corrupt?
You don't? Really?
> Quite the opposite, people praise them
Because the vast majority of them help people in dire times.
And also because if they save people or don't, they get paid anyway, so what would the vested interest be, except it's their job?
My prediction: if it even becomes a successful community, China will eventually take ownership of it. Probably by leveraging Bitcoin, too. Isn’t Bitcoin effectively CCPCoin at this point?
Usually what works in Africa and the like is a slightly cheaper and more rugged or simplified version of what works in the west. If they manage to run a Californian city on cryptocurrency and then launch a simplified version in Senegal that might work but it doesn't seem the plan here.
I know this goes agains the general sentiment of HN readers, who seem to dislike cryptocurrencies.
And when you see someone creating a new coin without creating new innovative technology around it, it makes you feel they just want to capitalize for their own profit.
So in cases like this I think the devil is in the details. It's possible Akoin is pushed as a fair decentralized, efficient currency that isn't designed to make Akon richer, but it might also turn into a hot mess used to make Akon richer and providing no real advantage to people using it.
To me, at least, it's that blockchains are being shoehorned into use cases that are better suited by other technology. In many cases, the blockchain solution is a worse choice technologically and economically.
For example, Bitcoin is a poor substitute for electronic payment networks because the network can only handle a few dozen transactions per second.
It's also a poor choice economically, because the transaction fees are more than $25 right now. I've seen posts claiming that Bitcoin would be a great choice for people in 3rd world countries, but they don't acknowledge that the fees alone would cost many multiples of whatever goods they're using BTC to buy.
I don’t know how this will play out, but his best, IMHO, song is aptly titled “Locked Up”.
But then they do invest heavily in a company managed by a single person
You realise that "a country's jurisdiction" is defined by the very same "corrupt politicians" that you rally against, do you?
Besides, let me quote you to you. Emphasis mine:
"""
Being under a country's jurisdiction also seems to give the project legal accountability. I really wish this project success, and hope everything they do is audited properly to prevent corruption.
"""
Oh, look, cryptocurrencies are running into a real worl now. The project needs those "corrupt politicians, judges, lawyers, economists etc." to provide it with jurisdiction, legal accountability and auditing.
Notice how you still need:
- jurisdiction (provided by "corrupt people")
- legal accountability (your words, not mine. Laws are provided by the very same "corrupt people")
- auditing (the laws and processes of an audit are also written by the very same "corrupt people")
A government that has the power to destroy everything also has the power to create everything.
Just like church and state haven been separated in most civilized places, there is absolutely no reason to allow governments to manage or control the means to exchange value between economic entities.
If you need proof of that last assertion, all it takes is looking at the history of currency in the last 2000 years, starting with the Romans.
Governments can never resist the appeal of the infinite money faucet.
Every single mistake they make, every single problem they face, can seemingly be fixed short term by opening the faucet a little wider.
Until it all goes to shit, of course.
The story of currency debasement leading to societal collapse is as old as money and has repeated itself countless times over the course of history.
Cryptos take the sharp tool out of the hand of the retarded child.
It's certainly not fixing the fact that the child is retarded, and he can and will certainly find other ways to cut himself, but at least not with that particular tool.
And give it to what? The magical hand-of-the-market? An effect that is more or less akin to turning on a firehose and letting it thrash around wildly. The fire doesn’t get put out, but hey, at least that “retarded child” as you so eloquently put it isn’t involved anymore.
how is a cryptocurrency made by an American singer after his name, to run (quoting) "a residential and commercial hub, complete with resorts, towering condos, recording studios, a stadium, and e-commerce franchises" better than a stable economy made on decades of political and social progress, that benefit every Senegalese citizen?
Wouldn't it be better to finance that progress directly instead of building the SoDoSoPa of Senegal?
genuinely curious.
for example I've read that Akon financed renewable energy plants in Senegal.
That's a great way to help!
Building an entire new residential city founded by a single person in his own name for rich people? not so much IMO.
Well, if you are building one where
The economy of Senegal is driven by mining, construction, tourism, fishing and agriculture, which are the main sources of employment and 75% of the population lives in chronic poverty, maybe there is something more urgent that could be done.
Unless you think that UAE and Dubai are a good example of development.
Plus, foreign aid did not exactly work well in africa; maybe it is better to teach people how to fish this time
USA military intervention is what did not work if you ask me.
Also USA support to Riad regime is not exactly for the good of middle east.
Having said that, Senegal learned to fish a long ago, it's politically stable with a stable (growing) economy and a stable currency shared with other countries and tied to euro.
A startup city would still be inside Senegal territory and be subject to Senegal immigration's laws.
Instead of spending 6 billions to build a one man vanity project, use those 6 billions to open a fund that guarantees loans requests by those people that do not have enough bank guarantees to access credit.
That's how you teach people to fish, IMO.
I cringe at the fact many people blame 'tHE SyStEm' when it will actually never change. A small investment in one of the established cryptocurrency coins, may even go a long way in the future.
It's all about what 'tHE SyStEm' doesn't tell you and cryptocurrencies is some how just one of them.
There have been a number of “systems” throughout history, many of which no longer exist. What makes you so sure that whichever current one you’re referring to will be permanent?
If there are trustworthy and competent leaders in Africa, then why haven't they been voted into power? It will have the same effect.