Tag: digital currency

The volatility of the South African Rand (ZAR) against the US Dollar (USD) and other major currencies is a trend that is keeping many South Africans up at night. How well the USD performs and how it impacts the value of the ZAR, is greatly impacted by factors such as the US employment figures, inflation rates and gross domestic product (GDP) data, pronouncements by the US Federal Reserve (Fed), and locally, South Africa’s trade balance, GDP, inflation levels, unemployment figures, and guidance from the South African Reserve Bank about monetary policy.

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20 vision. This being the year 2020, it turned out to be truer than ever before. For investors, and all of us really, there was so much about this year that was unpredictable, surprising and shocking.  With 11 months of the year now past, and in our penultimate note for 2020, we can look back at what investors might have known and could have done.

The next three years do not look like the new normal they look like the never normal. It is not a pessimistic way of describing it but a realistic way, and it means that we need to think long and hard about planning and strategy and execution. There will be a lot of strategic thinking wastage over the next three years, and in our view, we cannot spend enough time studying how people are thinking and how they are reacting to the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic, the economy, and technology.

Digital and mobile technology is continually evolving and advancing, creating new ways to pay; from mobile wallets to peer-to-peer to digital currency, the modern payments landscape has evolved past simply cards and cash. Consumers, eager to adopt these new ways to pay, are changing their purchasing habits to meet these emerging methods.

It seems to be standard practice that every year, financially savvy investment guru’s give us their take on what they think the investment landscape for the year will yield.

On the 18th of June, Facebook announced its plan to launch its Libra cryptocurrency in 2020. Bitcoin, the popular digital currency, has been around for over 10 years but hasn’t significantly changed how we trade. However, Facebook’s massive global user base could usher in wide-scale adoption of Blockchain, the technology behind modern cryptocurrencies.