In the past year, Cryptocurrencies have captured the attention of big name celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled and Paris Hilton. All of who are looking to capitalize on ICO’s and fulfill the fantasy of printing money with their name and face on it.
Akon recently launched a new coin with the not so surprising name – ‘Akoin’, which he plans to use for “cryptonizing daily human and business exchanges” in his home country of Senegal.
However, there’s been an obvious disconnect between how celebrities perceive the opportunity in crypto, and what the actual opportunities are for people with large fan-bases.
Security tokens are the latest growing trend in the crypto space. Unlike utility tokens, which are primarily used to pay for goods and services within a blockchain ecosystem, Security tokens more closely resemble traditional stocks that pay dividends and require companies to register with the SEC before issuing them.
The massive opportunity that people are excited about with security tokens is the ability to effectively ‘tokenize’ any sort of physical or digital asset, and sell it as a security for which people can invest in and earn dividends from. This includes tokenizing real estate, artwork, or even ETFs (exchange-traded funds).
Why does this matter to celebrities? Well if you’re an actor, musician or an athlete, your personal brand is your business. When you’re first starting out and are not a well-established name, your brand (like a company) has a low valuation, but as you become more popular, you start to attract endorsement deals and command higher salaries, which in turn will boost the value of your brand, and therefore your business.
Security tokens offer the unique opportunity for celebrities to tokenize a percentage of their current or future earnings from touring, endorsement deals, etc.
Through this tokenization process, a rising artist like 070 Shake, or a 20 year old NBA rookie like Jayson Tatum could effectively launch an ICO that would allow fans to invest and own a piece of their brand, and collect dividends off of future earnings as they develop their careers and become more established over time.
Security tokens are the future, and for celebrities, they’re a great way to build a stronger community of fans who are actually financially invested in their success, and will therefore be more willing to support them throughout their careers.
This article was first published on: Jun 21, 2018