Terry Crews Has Launched a Social Currency Of His Own

Actor Terry Crews is launching a social currency called $POWER, with the help of crypto start-up Roll.

According to TechCrunch, Crews’ ultimate goal with his $POWER social currency is to empower artists. “That’s our long-term plan, to become this thing that this community can live and exist in,” Crews said.

Roll allows individuals to create “social currencies”, allowing them to own, control and coordinate their own value and get closer to fans and consumers. Described as the “blockchain infrastructure for social money,” Roll is powered by the Ethereum Network. That means that any Roll social currency is minted and distributed as a standard ERC20 token.

Bitcoin Lending Firm BlockFi Raises $350 Million in Series D Round

Bitcoin lending firm BlockFi has raised $350 million in its largest funding round to date, according to a press release. The Series D fundraising round will help the firm to continue its core product offerings of high interest earning accounts. New investors led this wave of funding, namely asset management firm Bain Capital Ventures, partners of investment firm DST Global, Pomp Investments—owned by Morgan Creek Digital partner Anthony Pompliano—and investment firm Tiger Global. The round follow...

Roll might be a start-up, but its market is growing significantly. Its social money has a market cap of $1.2 billion, and sees a 24 hour trade volume of $2.7 million.

Getting closer to fans

The concept of actors, musicians, and influencers getting closer to their fans by decentralizing their content is gaining traction in the crypto industry.

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...

World-famous rapper Akon is also getting on board with Roll. He partnered with the start-up in order to provide support to African influencers that create their own currencies on Roll. In turn, creators can choose to support Akon’s various business ventures.

Souja Boy, best known for his hit single “Crank That”, has considered creating his own cryptocurrency, too. He publicly opined on the subject on Twitter earlier this year. “Thoughts on me creating my own crypto?” he asked.

Elsewhere in the industry, a social token incubator called Seed Club is trying to make sure the social currency industry truly takes off. In October of last year, Seed Club held a hackathon to engage the Ethereum community in the growing social token industry. The hackathon itself gave up $10,000 in awards.