POINT OF ORDER
TIM COHEN: What bitcoin tells us about the ANC's hopeless grasp of banking
Fintechs are redefining the direction, shape and pace of innovation in financial services
Three years ago, I volunteered to write an article about bitcoin for a supplement to the Sunday Times. Bitcoin was in the news at the time, for a host of bad reasons. The US government had just arrested a man who was running a dark web site that used bitcoin as a medium of exchange. Someone had just managed to defraud one of the bitcoin providers, something that was supposed to never happen. The bitcoin exchange rate had plummeted and was substantially down on its highest point. To write the article, I thought I should actually buy one to see how difficult it would be, particularly in SA, which is ringed by exchange controls. The bitcoin provider I chose, Xapo, included an interesting innovation — it linked your bitcoin to a Mastercard debit card. I heard about Xapo through a podcast with CEO and entrepreneur Wences Casares, who is Argentinian and became interested in bitcoins because of the frequent financial fluctuations in his home country. His own finances had been devastated, m...
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