I was recently reading some crypto news and stumbled across the news that rapper Akon is releasing his own cryptocurrency called Akoin. The details seem murky at this stage but the idea is that Akon will create a city in Senegal with the economy being based around using Akoin as the currency. Akon is clearly the face behind this new venture and it seems as though he is open about not knowing the logistics of it all:

Akon - I come up with the concepts and let the geeks figure it out.

I know Akon (and other celebrities who endorse crypto) mean well, but are they helping or hindering long term mass adoption?

Celebrity endorsements of crypto

Other than Akon, many celebrities have dabbled in, and spoken about crypto to their masses of fans. Digital Trends reported that Rapper 50 cent accepted Bitcoin for his 2014 album Animal Ambition. 50 Cent evidently forgot about this until late last year when the price of Bitcoin exploded - and I remember alot of media coverage about how 50 cent owned millions of dollars in Bitcoin.

One of the other major celebrity to share with their fans about crypto was Katy Perry. In late 2017 (at the height of the crypto boom!) Katy Perry shared with her fans her nails that had been painted with different cryptocurrencies.

My problem and concern with celebrities buying into the crypto craze is that they are sharing crypo with millions of people - and a large number of them probably don't even know the difference between Bitcoin and blockchain. This is what happened late last year when the prices didn't seem to stop rising - every man and his dog wanted in on the latest craze. This has led to a massive overvaluation of cryptos (Dogecoin had a $1 billion market cap!), and now the market has declined hugely.

Mass adoption takes time

I truly believe that there will be mass adoption of blockchain technology, but this might take 10, 15 or 20 years. It is similar to what happened with the internet - mass adoption takes time! With the dotcom bubble it was similar - everyone wanted in on the internet, and the majority of the websites of that era didn’t last, but some did - most notably Amazon, which has gone on to become the largest online retailer.

The crypto market as a whole is still in its infancy, and I believe it is going to take some time to move forward after the current market dip - many (probably the majority) of the coins will not make it to mass adoption. There are so many scam coins that it will take time for the market to establish itself. If we take Steem as an example it is only 2 years old, and has attracted over 1 million unique accounts, however user retention is low and remains a problem.

If celebrities endorsed Steemit

Imagine if tomorrow Tom Cruise announced to his social media following that he was done with traditional social media (Facebook,Twitter, Instagram) and was joining Steemit. I think the next day Steemit would go crazy with new account creation. But would we maintain those new accounts? I would venture to say probably not - Steemit is still in Beta, and only two years old and has its own set of problems. I think (hope!) that over time Steem fixes its bugs (and ethical issues), and becomes a bit more user friendly and we can increase the user retention rate. What do you think?

Conclusion

Akon is the latest celebrity to jump on the crypto bandwagon, announcing he will be creating a new cryptocurrency called Akoin. However, as I have discussed I believe that celebrities endorsing crypto has contributed to the crypto market exploding in late 2017, and the subsequent dip we are in now. I am a huge believer in blockchain technology and think it will see mass adoption but that this will take many years.

I would love to hear your thoughts as usual!

References:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/rapper-akon-creates-akoin-cryptocurrency-for-use-in-senegal-s-akon-crypto-city
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/celebrity-cryptocurrency-endorsements-bitcoin-ethereum/