Latest opinions that Nkahiseng Ralepeli has shared on Finextra

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Nkahiseng Ralepeli

VP of Product: Digital Assets

Absa Bank, CIB.

Member since

24 Oct 2024

Location

Joburg

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Nkahiseng's opinions

The Degen Banker: When Wall Street Meets Crypto Twitter

Once upon a time, calling yourself a “degen” was financial heresy. It meant you YOLO’d into dog coins, aped into DeFi yield farms with 6,000% APRs, and spent more time in Discord than on Bloomberg. You were a creature of chaos, allergic to compliance decks and powered by memes and Metamask. But times have changed. Today, the degen banker is no lon...

05 May 2025 /crypto /markets

Fractional Dreams: How Tokenisation is Unlocking Assets in Emerging Markets

Imagine a young professional in Nairobi buying a digital slice of a new apartment building, a cattle farmer in Bolivia selling tokens backed by his herd, or a street vendor in Mumbai investing in a fraction of a tech company’s stock – all through a smartphone. This isn’t sci‑fi finance; it’s the promise of fractionalisation and tokenisation. These...

31 March 2025 /inclusion /crypto

Stablecoins at the Checkout: How Mobile-First Markets Are Embracing a New Way to Pay

When you tap your card or phone to pay for a coffee, a lot happens in the blink of an eye. A tiny point-of-sale (PoS) terminal beeps approval, but behind the scenes, a complex dance unfolds between your bank, the merchant’s bank, and the card network. In mobile-first regions like Africa and Asia, this familiar routine is on the cusp of transformat...

24 March 2025 /payments /crypto

Bridging the Gap: Why Nostro and Vostro Accounts Need a Modern Makeover

Cross-border banking runs on a decades-old choreography: banks hold nostro and vostro accounts with each other, shuffling money across borders like ballroom partners. In Latin, nostro means "ours" and vostro means "yours," reflecting two sides of the same coin – or rather, the same bank account. In practice, a nostro account is...

17 March 2025

Why Are Stablecoins So Damn Profitable, and What Does This Mean for Africa?

Stablecoins have quietly become one of the most profitable businesses in financial services. While banks juggle loan books, compliance burdens, and regulatory capital requirements, stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle are running some of the leanest, most lucrative operations in history. In 2024, stablecoins processed over $27.6 trillion in t...

10 March 2025 /payments /crypto

Bybit’s $1.5 Billion Hack: Human Error, Industry Resilience, and Why Crypto Gets Judged Differently

If a bank gets robbed, no one suggests we should stop using money. If a stock exchange suffers a cyberattack, no one argues that traditional finance is inherently flawed. But when a crypto exchange gets hacked? Suddenly, it’s an indictment of the entire industry. Bybit’s recent $1.5 billion hack—the largest in crypto history—is yet another example...

27 February 2025 /crypto /crime

Fake It Till You Blockchain It: How Tech is Taking on the Counterfeit Industry

Counterfeit goods are a global plague, infiltrating every industry from luxury fashion and electronics to pharmaceuticals and automotive parts. According to the OECD, with an estimated value of $500 billion annually, counterfeiting accounts for 2.5% of global trade, damaging economies, eroding trust, and, in some cases, putting lives at risk. Yet,...

17 February 2025 /crypto /predictions

Crypto’s Washington Makeover: From Outlaw to Policy Priority

The past few weeks have been a full-blown policy rollercoaster, with digital assets at the centre of Washington’s grand rebranding effort. Keeping up has been like trying to drink from a firehose—regulatory shifts, new leadership, and legislative proposals flying in from every direction. As someone who spends a lot of his time looking at blockchai...

14 February 2025 /regulation /crypto

From Rock to Ledger: How Blockchain Could Reshape Mining in South Africa

This year’s Mining Indaba got me thinking—not just about the scale of South Africa’s mineral wealth but about the systems that underpin the industry. Mining is the backbone of the economy, contributing 7.5% of GDP and employing nearly half a million people, yet it remains impact—in part anyway—by inefficiencies, disputes, and opaque supply chains. ...

07 February 2025 /crypto /predictions

From Doge to Government: Why Blockchain Could Transform Public Tendering in South Africa

When Elon Musk tweets, the world listens—often with raised eyebrows and a dash of scepticism. But his recent move to invite blockchain leaders to discuss how blockchain technology could be better utilised in governance sparked something entirely different for me: a revisitation of my Oxford MPP research on how blockchain could revolutionis

28 January 2025 /crypto /predictions