It All Starts in Africa

We’re excited and proud of the work that the Stellar Organization and its nonprofit, the Stellar Development Foundation, have already begun in Africa. Like Akoin, Stellar sees the potential in Africa and has dedicated resources to improving remittance services on the continent. The Stellar Development Foundation has also established a wide network of charities that accept Stellar Lumens as a form of donation — and philanthropy is at the core of the Akoin ethos and the Akoin Foundation. These factors, coupled with its work with Saldo on providing solutions for migrant workers to send funds back to their families, and impressive developments they’ve made with IBM Worldwire, make Stellar an obvious choice for Akoin.

As Crypto News Flash already reported in April of this year, the crypto-savvy rapper Akon has launched a project that has recently made great progress. In Mwale Medical and Technology City (MMTC) in Kenya, there is a hospital with 5,000 beds and accommodating over 35,000 people. To ensure that all patients have access to financial services, the Akoin was created. The Akoin is based on the Stellar Lumen blockchain.

At the MMTC, the companies will also be connected to the new network so that they can pay with Akoin in the supermarket as well as at the gas station. In a new update Akon announced that a first test run will be carried out, where selected residents of MMTC and companies will be able to pay for goods and services with the Akoin. In addition, salary will also be paid in the form of the AKN token.

Julias Mwale, founder of MMTC and entrepreneur, presented his vision for the $2 billion project at last month’s “BlockDown 3.0”. All transactions can be executed in near real-time and can be used for immediate currency conversion through Atomic Swaps. In addition, there will be Akoin credit and debit cards.

By the end of next year, more than 20,000 workers should be connected to the network and all retail stores should be able to accept the Akoin. Also airports, gas stations as well as institutions of the public life are to use the new cryptocurrency. According to Akoin co-founders Lynn Liss and Jon Karas, more than 30,000 transactions are expected to be processed via the network by the end of November:

We’re ready for this. We’ve been working week in and week out with the Akoin team. We’re expecting an initial 30,000 transactions next month (November).

Liss goes on to say that the number of transactions per month is expected to rise to 1.5 million:

We want to scale it up to 1.5 million transactions per month. We expect the city to complete fully by the end of this year. We’re working on utility and bill payments. It will be an explosive cryptocurrency city.

Akon as well as its supporters want to improve development and access to financial services in Africa. The decision to choose Stellar (XLM) was easy because the blockchain is equipped with smart contracts and is much more scalable than the competition, the press release says. In the following video you can watch the big vision of founder Mwale and Akoin:

AKN token listed on Bittrex

Yesterday, the AKN token was listed on one of the world’s largest stock exchanges, Bittrex, and has already started trading with a volume of more than $500,000.