#25. Look beyond the surface
Uses for crypto in Emerging Markets, the reason behind a product failure, and stories of cities worldwide.
Welcome! Have you ever wondered:
Are cryptocurrencies of any use in Emerging Markets? 💱🌐
What is behind a product failure? 🔌🚶
Where to read stories of cities worldwide? 🌆🌏
If so, keep reading…
Uses for Crypto in Emerging Markets
When the cryptocurrency topic is brought up, you run into people with strong feelings: those thinking it’s a scam and those with laser eyes on their profile pics.
But looking beyond those strong sentiments, there is a fact: only 13% of the world population are born into stable currencies (USD, EUR, etc.). 87% of the world has to deal with currency volatility and lack of competence of their institutions, among other factors.
Cryptocurrencies are evening the arena and opening doors to people in Emerging Markets, despite their volatility. Today we’ll explore 3 cases I read about recently:
🇿🇼 First, the case of Aurra Kawanzaruwa. Aurra managed to save her school in Zimbabwe because she used $BTC to buy school supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. She realized the power of bitcoin at that very moment and encouraged people at the school to save in BTC instead of the local currencies.
I read about it in the RareBirds newsletter. You can listen to the full story in the podcast inside:
🇵🇭 Second, the case of Axie Infinity: A Pay to Earn game that is booming. It is a game similar to Pokemon where Axies fight. Each Axie is based on an NFT, acquired via $ETH. Winning a game of Axies can get you to earn Small Love Potions, or SLPs, which are tokens that can be exchanged for cryptocurrencies. This game has most of its players in the Philippines, and many have managed to make money to pay for living expenses, achieving monthly earnings of up to $300, when the usual wage would be $200.
I first read about it in Not Boring:
You can watch this video too:
🇪🇹 Last, the case of Ethiopia, where Kal Kassa, who now resides in the US, pays Ethiopian freelancers $BTC since it is a cheaper and faster alternative to birr money transfers.
Read this and more in this article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-privilege
Failure story: USSD in GT Bank
Guaranty Trust Bank or GT Bank is the 5th largest bank by assets in Nigeria. They took pride in making banking easy, however, its products were having issues.
Its mobile App and USSD transactions started failing recently, leaving many clients unable to pay or access their money.
TechCabal dug deeper seeing how product failure was a symptom of a larger problem in people management: the tech team had half of the people quitting.
The reason behind that mass quitting can be attributed to the absence of promotion in 2020. GT Bank suspended all promotions arguing the impact of COVID-19 in their operations. At that same time, GT Bank was restructuring to becoming a financial holding company and refocusing its strategy solely on banking and aiming at competing against fintech.
The workers’ resignations were significant: a tech team consisting of 20 people was halved. There are reports of a team losing 3 members in a month, where the handover wasn’t smooth to others.
This worker scarcity impacted as there is a service downtime at the end of the month due to server overload. In the past, some experienced workers would proactively track certain metrics and move applications across servers to ensure space for the surge. However, now being overworked, they didn’t have the time.
GT Bank is already taking steps into improving this: in June 2021, they promoted 900 people. Some say it is not enough, since the teams are still suffering from the strong pressure of being understaffed, but it is a first step towards improving this situation.
You can read TechCabal’s article here: https://techcabal.com/2021/07/09/gtbank-mobile-app-ussd-transaction-failures/
Source recommendation: The Monocle
Talking to my uncle he told me: when I retire, I don’t want to go and live by the beach: I want to move to Madrid because cities are where things happen.
I cannot agree more. I am an urban person.
The Monocle is a very special source recommendation: it transports you to any city in the world and tells you what is going on there: Hong Kong censorship, Cuban activists in Arco in Madrid, or design news all over the world.
In the Monocle, they write ad-supported newsletters arriving every day in your inbox in the shape of The Monocle minute. Curated, great stories that will transport you to the city they are talking about, smoothly. In a moment where travel restrictions are still there, it is great to be transported anywhere.
The Monocle magazine was launched in 2007. They believed in a globally-minded audience that wants to know of experiences beyond their national borders. They publish the physical magazine 10 times a year and have 24,000 subscribers.
You can read it here: https://monocle.com/
Thank you for the mention Amaia! Looking forward to exploring Monocle.