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Open USD - the Stripe stablecoin and the commoditisation of money
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
8 min read


ZAR stablecoins by the numbers
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
6 min read


I made a ZAR stablecoin tracker
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
2 min read


South African Stablecoin Landscape
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
18 min read
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