Much has been written about Open USD, or OUSD, the new stablecoin announced by Open Standard. Most of it seems to focus on the 140 businesses - including massive global banks and payments businesses - among them FNB, Nedbank and Absa - who have signed up as Open Standard partners. This seems to me to be missing the point. What I think is underplayed is Stripe's role and the bigger picture, and that's what I want to unpack. There are four things to think about here. First is t

I have done some more work on the ZAR stablecoin tracker and some simple analysis. First the updates: The tracker now has transaction volume as well as supply - summarised by week. There are still 10 ZAR coins covered, but I have added LZAR, a loyalty focused coin, and dropped CZAR, which is inactive - it looks like the project has been abandoned or mothballed. I have attempted, with Claude's help, to remove wash trading and rebalancing from the volume, and to ignore large st

https://tracker.blockhouse.ltd/ Combining two current hot topics, I have been using Claude to do some coding. One result is this ZAR stablecoin tracker. It includes the ten stablecoins that I know and shows current supply. I will try to keep this up to date, and I hope that it will be a useful reference for those working in this field. Some comments, and changes from my previous list: xZAR is greyed out by default. Although it does show some transactions, it has not been audi

Note that details above are based on websites, blockchain data and discussions with the leading projects. On chain data such as supply and holders are gameable, and in the case of holders is understated – potentially significantly – where the coin is held by customers of an exchange. Summary Stablecoins are a very significant topic in financial services globally, and South Africa is no exception. By my count, there are ten ZAR stablecoins. This includes one that is backed by

Money used to be issued and enabled by single entities: your bank creates money by lending against fractional reserves, it controls your experience with it, and facilitates its use. With stablecoins, this whole stack is getting unbundled. The problem is that version 1 of stablecoins had everything bundled together, and so that – and our acquired instinct for how banks work – has shaped how we think about stablecoins. This gives us a set of intuitions about stablecoins and the

(boring pie chart) When my father dropped me off at college, just before he left for the drive home, he said to me “I wish I was where you are now, knowing what I know now”. I am sure it is a sentiment that anyone over a certain age has experienced, but it occurred to me that this is a pattern in everything, not just personal experience. Take finance. It is obvious now that financial services will be tokenised. Consumers may not see it, or even know it, but the financial prod

We make sense of the new by relating it to the familiar. This is a great approach for user interfaces, but when you are trying to...

Tokenisation of financial assets provides a new transaction layer on top of the nation state stack layers of governance, regulation, and financial infrastructure. These layers underpin our financial and economic systems, and the implications of this technology will be felt all the way down. The Nation State Stack Paul McCartney once said that when he came up with the tune for Yesterday, he wandered round for a month wondering where he had stolen it from. I have been using the

On Monday night I went to see “ A Complete Unknown ”, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been reading the avalanche of reviews and...