Author name: Chasing Mavericks

Introduction A new partnership announced this week is worth paying attention to if you’re tracking where stablecoin infrastructure is actually landing on the continent, not in pilots aimed at remittances, but in trade finance. Access Bank South Africa and Stables, a USDt-native payments infrastructure provider focused on Asia and MENA, have entered an exploration phase […]

Introduction For decades, proving that an academic certificate is genuine in Kenya has meant navigating slow manual verification chains, processes that could take a month for a single check and stretch to six months for employers verifying large batches of candidates. Even the more recent move to QR-coded paper certificates left a weakness: the underlying

Introduction Yellow Card, the stablecoin infrastructure provider best known for powering crypto-to-fiat rails across Africa, has closed a $40 million strategic funding round. The round drew participation from SC Ventures (Standard Chartered’s innovation and investment arm), Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, and other strategic backers. The new capital brings Yellow Card’s total equity

Introduction On 31 July 2026, the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) published Information Circular No. 2026/21, its first comprehensive guidance on how Virtual Assets (VAs), crypto, stablecoins, NFTs, tokenized securities, and more, will be taxed. For anyone building, trading, or transacting in this space in Nigeria, this is the framework to know. Here’s the full picture,

Introduction South Africa has taken a significant step toward formalising how crypto assets move across its borders. On 3 August 2026, the National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) jointly released a draft Crypto Assets Manual for cross-border activities, opening it up for public comment. For the first time, the country is spelling

Introduction Kenya has quietly become East Africa’s most important Web3 proving ground, and a new report from Hashed Emergent, with knowledge partners Web3 Developer Clubs and the Virtual Assets Chamber of Commerce, lays out exactly why. For anyone building bridges between global capital, corporates, and Africa’s blockchain economy, this is essential reading. Here’s what stands

Introduction Moving money across Africa has never been simple. Onafriq – the payments network connecting banks, mobile money operators, merchants, and enterprises in 43 African markets, linking over a billion mobile wallets and 500 million bank accounts, knows this better than most.  Now the company is betting that stablecoins can make its own treasury operations

Introduction A new Standard Chartered and Zodia Markets report finds that the biggest gaps in the stablecoin economy aren’t in Europe or North America, they’re in the very markets that are supposedly least ready for them. Stablecoins have become vital infrastructure for digital payments, treasury operations and cross-border transactions. Yet more than 98% of stablecoin