Rapper Akon Partners With Social Crypto Platform Roll

Rapper and crypto entrepreneur Akon today announced a partnership with social money platform Roll.

His entourage will provide support to the African influencers who create their own cryptocurrencies on Roll; new creators can also choose to donate some of their token supply to Akon’s business ventures.

Roll, founded by Bradley Miles, a former CoinDesk analyst, is a social money platform that lets content creators, influencers, celebrities and athletes mint cryptocurrencies in their own name. It claims its social tokens sum up to a quarter of a billion dollars in value; it launched last summer. 

Roll’s influencers can distribute this crypto to their own communities, who in turn can use it to buy anything peddled by the influencer or HODL the coin as a kind of speculative bet on the influencer’s success. 

Crypto marketer Alex Masmej and Instagram ASMR influencer Laurel Driskill are among its 260+ signups. Masmej released a rap song with Ja Rule, the rapper who co-founded Fyre Festival.

Akon is big into crypto. He has his own cryptocurrency, Akoin, which will power Akon City, a plush residential area near the capital of Akon’s native Senegal. He hopes this coin, which is based on the Stellar cryptocurrency, will become the financial backbone of all of Africa; among services offered are crypto remittances, salaries and an exchange. 

Through the Akon partnerships, new signups to Roll—hand picked by Miles himself—can “allocate a percentage of their newly-minted social money to help develop and launch more UN-backed Akoin-Effect Opportunity Hubs.” 

Akon will use the money to run centers in Kenya, Senegal and Ghana that offer “access to AI/blockchain-based online work” and crypto training courses. The Kenya center is expected to open later this year. 

Sid Kalla, CTO of Roll, said in a statement, “It’s important to reach beyond the immediate crypto-native audience and start thinking deeply about how everyday people will really use and embrace Ethereum and other blockchain technology.”