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The 88Minds Blog

Plain-spoken guides to crypto, forex, payments and property — written by people who build the products, reviewed by the people accountable for them.

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Crypto

Silence of the naysayers

There’s a lot of gloating going on in the bitcoin community, with reminders of famous (and embarrassing) predictions that it would go to zero.

80eight Team1 min read
News

South Africa, we have a gambling problem

Thanks to some good reporting by amaBhungane , we have learned that gambling accounted for 17% of GDP in 2024 – a turnover of R1.14 trillion.

80eight Team4 min read
Crypto

MicroStrategy’s Book Value Versus Its Market Value

MicroStrategy and the Accounting Dilemma MicroStrategy (MSTR) has a book value per share of $12.62, which is what each shareholder would theoretically receive if the company went…

80eight Team2 min read
Crypto

Sore losers

We reported last week on the stunning accuracy of online betting site Polymarket in predicting the outcome of the US presidential election far better than most polls.

80eight Team2 min read
Crypto

Stablecoins versus The Banks (stablecoins are winning)

An interesting piece of news over the last week may have missed the financial headlines, but it did not escape our attention.

80eight Team2 min read
News

Is it true that SA’s unemployment rate is 33% or 10%?

Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie recently claimed SA’s unemployment is closer to 10% than the official 32.9% if we count the enormous informal sector which, by some accounts, represents…

80eight Team2 min read
News

Macro Monday

Market Recap Looking back at last week, we saw a mixed bag of figures, the main highlight being the U.S. Federal Reserve Minutes and elections in the United Kingdom and France.

80eight Team3 min read
News

SA’s evaporating manufacturing sector

The chart below is concerning on so many fronts. It shows manufacturing as a percentage of South Africa’s GDP falling from 25% in 1980 to less than 13% today.

80eight Team1 min read
News

Scam city

Most of us in the financial sector have had family members who fell for a scam of some sort.

80eight Team4 min read
Crypto

Signs of a bull market in its infancy

The chart below from Crypto Quant shows something quite extraordinary. Pay attention to the blue line. It shows reserves on crypto exchanges falling… and falling.

80eight Team1 min read
Crypto

Is it time to abandon exchange controls?

South Africa has had exchange controls since before any of us were born. Why do we still have them? USDZAR – have exchange controls protected the value of the rand?

80eight Team4 min read
Trading

Japan, the canary in the coal mine

Japan, as you can see below, is the world’s largest holder of US debt. What happens if, and when, it has to call up that debt?

80eight Team3 min read