My views on online privacy have evolved a lot in recent years. This is partly because I better understand why privacy is valuable, why it’s important to pay for online media and services, and because of all the recent cases of abuse of our online data by the big online platforms. My reasons to value my privacy might be different from yours, but I’d encourage you to do some reading (and thinking)...
(This article first appeared on the Rand Merchant Investment Holdings AlphaCode website) And you should care about Bitcoin, even if you don’t believe in it No, you can’t pay for your groceries at the supermarket with Bitcoin (yet). You can’t pay your taxes, your mortgage or your rent, and you certainly won’t be able to persuade your boss to pay you in Bitcoin either. Yes, you...
It seems, if you’re following finance and technology news, that Bitcoin is a bubble (again) it has crashed (again) and is left for dead (again). Go ahead and open Google News and do a search for “Bitcoin crash” and filter for articles published in the past month. These attention-grabbing headlines are probably not going to go away, so in this article I’ll try to give some context about why they...
tl;dr: I recommend these guys. In the same way that countries are rated by their creditworthiness –how likely they are to pay back their debt and the rate of interest they need to pay– individuals also have a score which serves as a financial résumé of sorts. In this article, I’ll discuss what your credit score is and how to get a credit report in South Africa. What is a credit...
I received an invite to try out the a mobile app, Spot, which is still in Beta. It aims to be a Venmo-like alternative. I got a great response from the Spot team and I’m proud to be the winner of “most engaged inactive user” award ???? I think there’s room for peer-to-peer settlements in South Africa, but with the current legislation that states all of these sorts of...
The spike (and volatility) in the Bitcoin price has attracted renewed interest from many individuals, investors and businesses in recent weeks.
Today, I’ll take a bit of a deeper dive into the numbers and look at the reason why more people are considering Bitcoin as an alternative asset class.
For the first time ever, the price of one bitcoin has surpassed the price of used 1990 Honda Ballade sedans. While today’s swap can be attributed to a good day for bitcoin (up ~3%) and a bad day aging Japanese car owners, the big picture is that bitcoin has more than doubled in the last year (up ~185% from a year ago) while Hondas are essentially trading exactly at the price you would expect them...
We don’t like to talk about how much money we earn (this is the case in the West, at least; when I was living in Taiwan, I believe my neighbours on both sides knew my age, weight and salary). We hide our salary from our friends, peers, colleagues and in some cases even partners. Now, there are reasons aplenty to keep things private and there is always a requirement for some degree of...
I’ve been asked the question a lot: Is Craig Wright really the Bitcoin creator, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto?
TL;DR: Who cares?
We should first question the relevance of knowing the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
I’m currently working in Indonesia (and I’ll be here for a few more weeks) enjoying the hustle and bustle from sleepy, beautiful Cape Town.
A lot of apps and websites I use are now (and understandably) showing me their content in Bahasa Indonesia. Despite finding the language interesting and easy to study, I still prefer to see these sites in English.
Formerly Business Development and Marketing at Luno (where we went from eight nerds in a tiny office to hundreds of people spread over three continents) and before that Marketing at PayFast. Currently a full-time nomad, learning, running long distances and doing research, mostly in Mexico.