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The good news is that nearly half of all South Africans (47%) own cryptocurrency in some form or other, while the bad news is that for a quarter of those people, the value of the crypto they hold is somewhere between R10 and R100.

What does this mean? ‘Th research indicates that the bulk of South African crypto investors are experimenting and dabbling without making a significant financial commitment,’ according to KLA’s Tessa Nowosenetz. 

In addition, the study shows that 36% plan to invest in crypto in the future, and that there is huge potential for companies who can tap into this curiosity and deliver on it. 

It’s no surprise that citizens are awake to the potential benefits. After a year in lockdown glued to our devices, and with the stability of the economy seeming to always be on shaky ground, people start looking for alternatives and safe havens. Add to that the fact that millions of South Africans are obsessed with Elon Musk and follow his every utterance on Twitter with a passion that borders on religion.

So when Elon started talking about DogeCoin and Bitcoin late last year and the fact that Tesla began accepting payments in Bitcoin, I imagine that was the moment when thousands of people finally accepted the fact that cryptocurrency is here to stay.   

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers that KLA uncovered: 

• 13% of the respondents are holders of cryptocurrencies that are valued between $70 and $700.
• 3% three percent of the respondents said they own digital currencies whose value is in excess of $3,400.
• 20% of those that are dabbling into cryptocurrency are doing so because they want to diversify their portfolio. 
• 16% of the respondents said they are interested in using or trading cryptocurrencies because “everyone can do it.” 
• 36% plan to invest in crypto in the future. 

These numbers are significant. “This marks the second-highest percentage globally, said Nowosenetz.They are substantially higher than Luno’s estimate of 15% of South Africans being HODLers, and it would be good to take a look at who KLA made contact with in the survey, given the fact that so many South Africans scrape out a meagre existence just above or below the poverty line. For the record, it should be stated that the South African Treasury estimates that there are at least two million retail investors in the country, with R2 billion in transaction volumes recorded each day, according to BusinessTechZA. “Crypto-assets have become too big to ignore and pose a number of risks for consumers if not sufficiently regulated,” it said.

But for many South Africans, there are important and valid reasons why they are going into crypto that go beyond just hoping for incredible, once-in-a-lifetime gaims. Those people are happy to build up their portfolios slowly and see how the industry unfolds.

Nowosenetz provided the following list of reasons why many people are getting deeper into crypto. 

• It allows you to diversify your investments/portfolio (20%)
• It’s easy and accessible – everyone can do it; you just need a smartphone, a bank account, and some money (16%)
• It’s an exciting currency to invest in (8%)
• You can send it to people in other countries (4%)
• It’s not regulated (4%)

And what about for us at Cape Crypto? For us it’s simple – it is the clearest path to Financial Freedom. That is why we have thrown everything at it, and why we support independent movements that lead to Financial Freedom.

If you’re ready to diversify your portfolio and get into Crypto, then look no further than Cape Crypto, the fastest and easiest way to use your phone to start trading cryptocurrency. Download the app today. 

It’s been an exciting week in Cryptoworld and one that reinforced the idea that it’s never boring when you’re watching a new economic model taking shape in real time. 

The market correction caught many folks off guard as the price has been moving upwards steadily since the May correction, and was deeper than many expected. Bitcoin dropped from a high of $52,000 (R780,000) on Monday to a low of $45,334 (R 680,000) before stabilising around that mark. That action was matched by Ethereum who also dropped around 7% to $3,400 (R50,000) and the rest of the market followed suit (interestingly Solana weathered the storm and came out relatively unscathed – having been up 20% from the previous 12 hours, it returned to where is was and has since regained that 20% to its price at writing of $200 (R3,500) per SOL)  

For those wise souls who see a drop in price as another chance to accumulate future wealth, the dip was a welcome buying opportunity.

Just to prove that there is never a dull day in Crypto, the timing of the correction was striking. 

It happened on the same day that El Salavador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender after a long and well-publicised run up to the launch day.
The government had been installing ATMs that can handle Bitcoin and making sure that all businesses in the country would accept payment in Bitcoin.

The drop in price didn’t seem to worry the government of El Salvador at all. They announced that they had purchased an additional 150 Bitcoin worth around $7 million (R100 million). This is to add to the 400 bitcoins that the government purchased ahead of the launch earlier this year. 

Reuters reports on President Bukele’s plan; ‘Promising $30 of bitcoin for each user, Bukele has pushed for its adoption, saying it will help Salvadorans save $400 million a year on commissions for remittances, while giving access to financial services to people with no bank account.

“We must break the paradigms of the past,” Bukele tweeted. “El Salvador has the right to advance towards the first world.” The vision of this President is remarkable – seeing the future and the benefit that Crypto can bring to the people is a rare unicorn these day, where most governments are dead set on holding all the keys to the vault, and having the power to make the financial decisions for the country they administer as they see fit, instead of letting the free market flourish.

There is tremendous interest to see what benefits it brings to a country where the current financial system is not working for millions of people living in poverty with no real clear financial solution to their problems in sight. Give this president a Bells.

It’s a welcome break from the past and the whole world is waiting to see what effect it has on the price and the stability of Bitcoin in the coming months. We at Cape Crypto look towards it only with positive sentiments and excitement for their future and the butterfly effect it is sure to have on the rest of the world, we can only hope those ripples extend to our beloved country.

Image: The flag of El Salvador © Design_Bank/Shutterstock.com

The news that Cuba is drafting legislation to regulate cryptocurrency comes in the same week that Afghanis have been buying up Bitcoin in record numbers, as their country goes through the convulsion of the American withdrawal and a new Taliban government. 

The crypto revolution is reaching into the most far-flung nations and bringing revolution. 

It begs the question of how many people who are living under countries under sanction, or where the currency is failing, have already turned to crypto markets for financial survival? 

Probably many more than we realise. 

It’s already clear that, in more stable African economies like Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, crypto trading is booming.   Experts have assessed that Nigeria is the ‘top peer-to-peer bitcoin trading nation on the continent’, while the South African government has sensed an impending boom in crypto trading and has already deemed cryptocurrencies as a taxable asset.

According to the online QZ blog, “Daily crypto asset trading values in South Africa were “exceeding $145 million for the first time” in January 2021.”  

But in African countries that are struggling, there is a distinct lack of transparency into the adoption of crypto. It stands to reason that in places where inflation is spiralling out of control, where the currency is losing value every day and where there are no solutions in sight, people look around desperately for somewhere stable to put their money. And for many tech-savvy people, that means working outside of the government structures, using mobile software and distributed assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

To people in stable economies, that may seem risky as the prices of cryptocurrencies are famously volatile, but when you find yourself in a conflict zone or with a collapsing economy, then a cryptocurrency like BitCoin is actually the stable option. 

This holds true in Venezuela where Reuters reports that cryptocurrency is emerging as a way to provide services handled elsewhere by the traditional banking system, and is probably the same in places as far apart as North Korea and Zimbabwe, or anywhere else where the traditional economy is barely functional. 

Of course, it’s not only the citizens of these countries that understand the facts on the ground. Often the government does too. There are allegations that the North Korean regime is ‘rumored to be involved in cryptocurrencies as a way to accumulate assets that can circumvent sanctions and restrictions currently in place.’

As the world’s financial systems limp towards a digital, more integrated future, it’s inevitable that governments will step forward and try to regulate the emerging currencies that are a direct threat to their economic control over people’s lives. 

The move by the Cuban government to regulate cryptocurrencies is a tacit acknowledgement that the people of Cuba have already made their decision on cryptocurrency. This widespread digital adoption took off because of how difficult it has become to get dollars in and out of Cuba in the wake of recent sanctions by the US government. 

Last May, in Cuba ‘President Miguel Díaz-Canel said his government was analysing the appropriateness of using cryptocurrencies in the economic operations of the country, whose GDP plunged by 11 per cent in 2020 due to the tightening of the US embargo and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,’ according to EuroNews. 

Bloomberg reports that the ‘central bank said Friday’ it is drafting legislation to regulate cryptocurrency in commercial transactions and to issue licenses for providers of services connected with virtual assets.

Latin America is ahead of the rest of the world in this regard, although it’s relatively new everywhere. But Paraguay, Mexico, and Panama have in the past expressed interest, while El Salvador has already taken the first regulatory steps. 

What are the implications for a country like South Africa where so many citizens live outside of the traditional financial system? Will there be some kind of breakthrough utility that makes crypto the default for large, unbanked populations like ours?

What’s happening right now in Cuba is an interesting test case for any country thats seeks financial independence, and the results will reverberate far and wide. 

By: Jeremy Daniel

Bitcoin believers found something to celebrate this week as the original cryptocurrency briefly touched US $50,000 for the first time since the middle of May this year. During the intervening quarter the coin took a bit of a battering, falling below $30,000 at one stage so this was great news for Bitcoin. 

It didn’t manage to hold on to 50k but has consolidated around $48,000 and there is reason to believe it could break higher soon. 

As usually happens, Ethereum behaved in much the same way as Bitcoin, climbing steadily upwards, then spiking on Monday before settling back to a higher, stable level around the $3,200 mark. 

But the big story of the week was no doubt Cardano (ADA). If you see people out there walking around looking smug and very pleased with themselves, it’s probably because they bought Cardano a month ago. If so, they’ve enjoyed a 124% rise in value of their coin since then. In the last seven days alone, it added approximately 35% in value to land on $2.73 at the time of writing. Around midnight on Tuesday, the Cardano price nearly hit $3 which is a big milestone for them. 

All this activity has made Cardano the third biggest coin by market cap behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. IOG is the tech company that develops the software for the Cardano protocol, and on Friday, the marketing and comms director, Tim Harrison, tweeted this bullish statement , “I think what many people don’t understand about #Cardano is the sheer scale of our ambition. And our absolute determination to make it happen. But those who know, know”

That’s definitely one to watch closely. 

Of course, the price of coins is one of the most important indicators of the health of the market, but if one is able to zoom out a little you start to see how much positive activity is going on behind the scenes. New products, new wallets and a better user experience are announced almost every single day as the cryptocurrency industry starts to mature and become more mainstream. 

UNDERSTANDING NFTs. 

Some of the most interesting work in the crypto space is happening around NFTs or non-fungible tokens. If you’ve spent any time watching the industry lately, you will have come across this term and perhaps you’ve wondered what it means. 

In a nutshell, an NFT is basically data is accounted for in a ledger on a blockchain which represents something specific, such as an artwork or a piece of music etc…It cannot just be swapped for another token. For example, Bitcoin is fungible. You can swap one coin for another and you’ll still have exactly the same thing. But when it’s non-fungible, it’s the only one in the world and therefore will have to be swapped for something else. 

That’s the technology behind it, and as a result, it’s turning out to be well suited to specific ‘pieces of digital art which are sold on digital exchanges, or auction platforms, for crypto. Deals are being announced all the time now. The Verge magazine reports that ‘Grimes is the latest artist to get in on the NFT gold rush, selling around $6 million worth of digital artworks after putting them up for auction yesterday.

A series of 10 pieces — some one of a kind, others with thousands of copies — went up for sale on Nifty Gateway on February 28th. The highest-selling piece was a one-of-a-kind video called “Death of the Old” that involves flying cherubs, a cross, a sword, and glowing light that’s set to an original song by Grimes. The winning bidder took it for nearly $389,000.’

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT. Rock band Kings of Leon sold their latest album as one. The most expensive NFT ever sold cost a staggering $69 million dollars! Even Jay Z bought a Crypto Punk and used it as his new Twitter icon, which is surely a sign that it will go mainstream soon. Crypto Punks is a fascinating concept, they are ‘10,000 uniquely generated characters. No two are exactly alike, and each one of them can be officially owned by a single person. CryptoPunks was released in June 2017 as one of the first non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.’

I saw an explanation about NFT’s which really helped me understand it better. Remember going to the zoo and seeing a sign that said an animal had been adopted? Which meant that someone was paying for the costs of the animal and had a right to claim it as theirs. Of course, everyone else can see and enjoy the animal in the zoo, but technically, it belongs to one person. 

That’s how it is with NFT’s. You buy a piece of artwork, and you have the original of it. Everyone else can share it and enjoy it but you own it and you can see it on to a collector for a handsome profit if you choose to do so. This is one of the first breakthrough applications that take use of blockchain and cryptocurrency and could not happen without them.

Author: Jeremy Daniel

The second week of August was a good one for the crypto markets. Social media was immediately full of people calling it ‘officially a bull market’, although we think it’s still a bit too soon to say that.

But after a long, frustrating period of inaction, Bitcoin has managed to firmly rise above the $45,000 price tag for most of the week (even clipping above R 700,000 for a while). That’s a solid 13% gain over the week before, and there are hopes and expectations of more to come. 

Nearly all coins had a good week but Ethereum in particular is showing its true class and pedigree. Not only did the value of Ether climb by 16.75% at the time of writing, but it executed a vital hard fork on the Ethereum protocol that experts are speaking of as a ‘game-changer’. 

Author: Jeremy Daniel

A hard fork is an unchangeable permanent modification on the blockchain, which is a backward-incompatible upgrade, meaning that miners have to download the London Hard Fork if they want to continue using the Ethereum network. 

CNBC explains that ‘If you think of Ethereum like a highway, London is adding a few lanes to tamp down traffic and is standardising toll prices.’ 

The takeaway from the London upgrade for casual viewers is that it is fixed to the blockchain that involves destroying or “burning” ether coins. Many assumed that the name London must be associated with the famous bridge of the same name that ‘is burning down’. In fact, all the hard fork names come from the cities where the Ethereum Devcon international developer’s conference has most recently been held. Next up will be Shanghai hardfork. . 

Nevertheless, the burning of ether is a significant change and is meant to provide a deflationary mechanism that will provide price stability. 

From this point on the transaction fees will be determined automatically according to supply and demand trends, in the hope that this will lessen the volatility in the current system.

“What will happen is that the base fee will be burned. Since this fee is paid in “ETH, more ETH will be burned as transactions occur. It is good news for ETH holders as this fee burn could lead to ETH inflation. But this doesn’t mean ETH will go deflationary. It is just a new theoretically deflationary mechanism, something Ethereum has lacked till date,” says Hitesh Malviya, the founder of itsblockchain.com.

SENATE HEARINGS ON CRYPTO

In the first real acknowledgement from US authorities that cryptocurrencies are not just a fad that will disappear sometime soon, the Senate held a fiery date over the first set of legislative ideas that seek to ensure a structure for government taxation of crypto assets in the United States. 

It was part of the larger bi-partisan Infrastructure bill that recently passed the senate, although that particular crypto amendment was blocked for obscure Senate procedural reasons that involved $50 billion in unrelated military spending someone else was trying to add to the bill. 

But it was the first real attempt at defining what is set to be a long relationship between the crypto community and the United States government. 

The New York Times brilliant columnist Ezra Klein wrote a long, thought-provoking article on the events of the past week and he had some insightful comments around what the future of cryptocurrency is starting to look like. He believes that crypto has moved beyond currency and into the kind of infrastructure that could potentially be the next digital economy: Web 3.0, as some are calling it. 

“Once you have crypto networks up and running, with currencies pulling in users, you can build all kinds of things on top of them. So the second phase of crypto has followed from the first: Now that there really is digital money, where anyone can verify the transactions, shouldn’t there be truly digital financial services, built around contracts anyone can write, enforced by code rather than banks or law?”, Klein writes. 

This would be a game changer for content creators, who have been failed time and again by an internet that rewards access to entertainment without rewarding the creator. It’s been simply too easy to lift, copy and enjoy original work without paying for it. WEB 3.0 changes that. 

“If the original internet lets you easily copy information, the next internet will let you easily trade ownership of digital goods. Crypto lets you make digital goods scarce, which increases their value; it lets you prove ownership, which allows you to buy and sell them; and it makes digital identities verifiable, as that’s merely information you own. Together, they unlock the potential for a true economy for digital goods, where creators actually get rewarded for what they make.”

Just one more reminder that we are all still very early to the crypto space and that this could be one of the biggest investment opportunities of the future for those who could see what was coming.

Author: Jeremy Daniel

Cape Crypto is thrilled to announce that you are now able to buy Ethereum directly on our platform. Many of our clients have been asking for this, and we’re delighted to have completed the work so that you can now build an Ethereum portfolio alongside your Bitcoin investment. 

This is the logical next step in our grand journey to bring crypto to the masses in the fastest, easiest way possible. 

Chances are, if you’re interested in the cryptocurrency space, you’ve heard of Ethereum. But perhaps you’re not exactly sure what it is.

Fear not, we’ve put a short introduction together to help you understand what you’re buying and why it’s such a great investment for your crypto portfolio. 

Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. 

You could think of it as a massive, decentralised computer that has the ability to run apps (known as dapps). Dapps are simply software programs that are built to run on the Ethereum blockchain, just like how the apps that you have on your phone are built to run on your phone. Anyone can build a dapp, and have it added to the Ethereum blockchain enabling anyone in the world to interact with it.

Ether is the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain. 

When you buy “Ethereum” on an exchange, you are actually buying “Ether” – Ethereum is the name of the blockchain itself (and not its cryptocurrency) – but due to convenience and ease of explanation, the two definitions have largely become interchangeable. When you buy on Cape Crypto – we simply refer to it as Ethereum. 

Ether is the “fuel” used to run the commands of the dapps on the Ethereum platform – every command that is run on the blockchain needs a certain amount of fuel (Ether) in order to be completed.

You might think of Ether in a similar way to petrol or diesel. If you needed to run your generator for two hours during load shedding you would need maybe 2L of diesel. In the same way if you wanted to interact with a certain dapp on the Ethereum blockchain (the diesel generator), you would need to purchase that requisite amount of Ether (diesel) beforehand to be able to use it. Ether is the fuel used to run dapps.

Now of course just like fuel has a market price that goes up and down, so does Ether. This price is what leads people to buy and hold, speculating that the price will increase over time as we have seen thus far:

It was initially released on 30th July 2015 at the equivalent price of R40 per Ether. The price has since ranged between R20 000 and R40 000 per Ether over the last year, although it did reach a high of R55 000 in April. Unbelievable stuff.

(There are a few more concepts to Ethereum that we will talk about in upcoming articles such as Gas Price and Gas Limits)

After Bitcoin, Ether is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and Ethereum is the most actively used blockchain around the world (at the time of writing).

Ether and Bitcoin share many similarities: 

• Each is a digital currency traded via online exchanges and stored in various types of cryptocurrency wallets. 
• Both are decentralized tokens, meaning that they are not issued or regulated by a central bank or any other authority. 
• Both make use of the distributed ledger technology known as blockchain

Clearly what sets it apart is how flexible and effective it is for creating utility tokens. For instance DEFI (decentralised finance) dapps have taken the world by storm and unleashed a whole new paradigm to finance and trustless lending. The explosive growth of NFTs is also all driven and built on Ethereum.  

The future success of crypto and blockchains is heavily reliant on Ethereum and it will surely be a worthwhile addition to your growing crypto portfolio.

Sign up with Cape Crypto today and get a piece of the action. Prices are good and the upside over time is sky high!

What a difference a week makes!

Last Friday, Bitcoin was hovering around the $30 000 mark and investors were nervously wondering if it was going to drop below that psychological barrier. By Tuesday the following week Bitcoin had touched $40 500 and, although it lost a bit of momentum, it still managed to close the week up by 20%. 

Suddenly the news is turning bullish again. A scroll through the headlines reveals Bloomberg saying ‘Bitcoin is more likely to hit $60 000 than drop again,’ while the CEO of Digital Assets Data dropped the astonishing prediction that a single Bitcoin will be worth $1 million within the next 10 years.

The reasons for the rally were unclear, although there were strong rumours circulating that global giants Amazon were set to announce they would accept Bitcoin as a payment. That announcement didn’t happen but if it does, the upside will be tremendous and a game-changer. 

It’s great to see such excitement in the market but a dose of caution should be a large part of your crypto diet, as too often we’ve seen the market prove everyone wrong. 

In other news, Ripple and it’s digital asset XRP seemed to brush off the long-running SEC lawsuit when it announced a new On Demand Liquidity (ODL) corridor in Japan. ODL which used to be known as xRapid uses XRP as a bridge currency between two banks in order to remove the need for pre-funding using crypto liquidity. High transaction costs in normal banks have been identified as a key problem that XRP can solve and this is a great example of a real use case for cryptocurrency that should show no signs of slowing down. 

It’s worth noting that XRP’s price has been depressed for some time thanks to the big, confusing lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, but the rest of the world has just shrugged and continued to innovate with XRP and move the whole industry forward. 

At Cape Crypto, we continue to innovate no matter what the price. Our goal remains to be the quickest and easiest way for South Africans to own a piece of this dynamic, growing market with the lowest trading fees in the whole country. Remember that you can spend as much or as little as you want to get started right now. If a coin does go up to a million dollars, wouldn’t you hate to know that you missed out on that opportunity. 

Sign up today and get started

Many people realised that prices in the region of $60 000 for Bitcoin were too high, and expected a correction…but this dip has gone lower and longer than what we had hoped for. On the 22nd of June, the price hit a low of $30 000 but has climbed back up to $35 000 in recent days. But, what they say about the weather in Cape Town can also be said for Bitcoin prices…if you don’t like it, just wait five minutes and it’ll change. 

Aside from the crazy price gyrations, there is a lot of innovation and impetus still driving the market forward. 

Billionaires continue to drive the market. This time it’s not Elon Musk who is making waves, it’s Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey who recently hosted a live Twitter Spaces conversation with mogul / musician Jay-Z about Twitter’s acquisition of Tidal. 

Tidal is a music streaming service that was founded by Jay-Z with an emphasis on giving more back to musicians than Apple Music or Spotify do. Twitter recently acquired the company and, with Dorsey being a huge Bitcoin evangelist, there was a lot of discussion about how crypto could be used in the streaming media world going forward. 

CoinTelegraph wrote that ‘Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey have hinted that their music streaming service, Tidal, could be eyeing integrations supporting NFTs and smart contracts. They believe they can capture significant market share by using blockchain technologies to offer empowering tools to artists.’

It’s not too hard to imagine some new kind of product where music, twitter and cryptocurrencies come together to provide something new and exciting for the market and help musicians rebuild after the devastating loss of touring revenue from the pandemic. 

At the time of writing, many crypto enthusiasts are waiting (im)patiently for the launch of the Spark token from the Flare Networks. This company is bringing the next generation of smart contracts to the integrated blockchain, and mayn of those in the know say that they are really getting it right. Flare’s token, known as #Spark, is going live any day now, and is being handed out to all XRP holders who had a positive XRP balance in December of 2020. No-one is quite sure yet what each Spark token will be worth, but for many XRP holders, this could be just the kind of boost they need to make up for the big losses that have occurred over the last few weeks. 

Right now, up and down in the markets just feels like business as usual. Our only advice is to HODL and to keep building your portfolio with CapeCrypto. See you soon!

It’s a clear sign that the industry is developing and heading in the right direction. Every day brings new stories about new coins, new technologies…making widespread adoption seem inevitable. 

Last week in our YouTube chat show, we spoke about how India had stepped back from the brink of outlawing cryptocurrency. The Reserve Bank of India announced that no banks should be penalising customers for dealing in cryptocurrencies. The New indian Express newspaper ran a story with the headline that “India may move to classify Bitcoin as an asset class.”

It’s a huge relief for the millions of crypto enthusiasts in India and a signal that the Indian authorities understood that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum will have a role in the economy of the future, whether they like it or not. 

This week, the news was even more bullish. The small South American nation of Ecuador announced that Bitcoin would be accepted as legal tender in that country, with immediate effect.

As if that wasn’t enough, the country declared that there will be no capital gains tax for Bitcoin, since it will be a legal currency, and that immediate permanent residence will be granted to crypto entrepreneurs. These are extremely bullish sentiments from the small country that is attempting to disrupt the world’s global economic model in spectacular form. 

 
It’s not the only one. 

Just last week, Brazil announced that it was going ahead with plans to develop a central bank digital coin, known as a CBDC, and it’s not the only one. The European Central Bank is also working on a digital euro and tech firms like Ripple, Ethereum, Stellar are all lining up and doing whatever they can to make that happen. 

Finally, the nature of a decentralised currency means that it’s not only nations that can issue coins. There has been a lot of talk recently about cities issuing their own coins and, in so doing, raising money for vital infrastructure projects. The city at the forefront of this right now is probably Miami, which is fast becoming the new San Francisco in terms of its ability to attract digital innovators to live there, thanks to the forward-thinking leadership of Mayor Francis Suarez.

He’s ushering in a new phase of ‘startup cities’ that function holistically with their own coins a central feature of how that will work.

As Marc Andreesen wrote on Politico…”Policymakers shouldnt’ t be trying to copy Silicon Valley. Instead, they should be firing out what domain could be specific to their region – and then removing the regulatory hurdles for that particular domain.’ 

 Cape Town coin, anyone?