Nigeria notches new highs, Magic gathers millions, and crypto climbs

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0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And I'm Darian Woods. Today, we are thrilled to be joined by the clever, curious, and cunning, clean-shaven Planet Money correspondent himself, Kenny Malone. The clean-shaven is somewhat accurate, although is that a reflection on how disheveled I look most of the time? You forgot cute. I guess it might be. Kenny, you are at the right place at the right time because it's Indigators of the Week! Pew, pew, pew, pew! On today's show, Nigeria's economy is doing a lot better than expected. A card game ventures into the dungeon of record revenue growth.

0:50And the crypto heads have some reasons to celebrate this week. That's after the break.

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2:01Indicators of the week. Darian, start us off. My indicator is 30%. The Nigerian economy, it turns out that it's 30 % larger than originally thought. 30 % is quite a delta. I mean... Yeah, it is a huge shift in how we perceive what is among Africa's largest economies. This revision comes from the Nigerian government changing its model for how gross domestic product is estimated. Is this just sort of like a numbers illusion that happened? There is no insinuation of any malfeasance. This is just the reality of calculating GDP in a low-income country. So as you know, GDP is the indicator you get when you add up all the buying and selling of goods and services in a year.

2:47And to crunch those numbers, we have tax takes and surveys. So you ask a kitchen store. What did you sell this quarter? A supermarket. How much groceries are people buying? And in a country like Nigeria, most people actually work informally. Well, but I guess under the table work is, I feel like, something that we have here in this country too. So should we expect our delta to be off by 30 % or? In Nigeria, the number of people working informally is estimated at 90%. Okay. Wow. That's higher. You might have a guy who goes around Lagos giving people haircuts. Maybe he doesn't pay taxes, he certainly doesn't answer surveys to government agencies that imply how much taxes he hasn't been paying.

3:29Yeah, fair enough. That's so interesting. And this revision is good news for Nigeria. The last decade has been really disappointing economically when you looked at the official statistics. GDP seems to peak in 2014, decline, and then stall at the equivalent of only around a couple of thousand US dollars per person. Now, there is criticism from the opposition that all of this revision is just a distraction from the economic reality of everyday people still suffering. But at least with better measurement, we can better identify where the pain points are. All right. So a 30 % adjustment of GDP. Serious, serious readjustment.

4:12Adrian, I am expecting something of a similar jaw-dropping magnitude. What do you have for us this week? My indicator of the week is$120 ,000, which is about the price of one Bitcoin this week. At least that's as high as it's gotten this week. It's hovering around record levels right now. I vividly remember some colleagues debating over whether it could reach$20 ,000 several years ago. Yeah, and I remember the debate around$10 ,000. And at each point, we've kicked ourselves for not buying all of the Bitcoins. Does anybody here think they have some Bitcoin hiding in a dusty drawer somewhere? I am at least glad to know that I don't have lost thousands and thousands of Bitcoin somewhere.

4:57That is the one thing I feel okay about. Well, this run-up in Bitcoin is thanks in part to the buzz around crypto legislation moving through Congress. Yeah, so last week, Republicans dubbed it Crypto Week. Right. There were multiple crypto bills moving through Congress, but really the star of this crypto week was a bill called the Genius Act. And Trump signed this into a law a week ago. And what the Genius Act does is lay out regulations for stable coins. And for those who don't know, stablecoin is basically a cryptocurrency tied to some other asset, ideally a stable asset like the U.S. dollar.

5:36And one way of how this might ideally work is that you buy a stablecoin from a company for a dollar. They issue you a stablecoin that's worth a dollar. And meanwhile, the company holds on to the actual dollar in its reserves so that it could pay you back later if you want to exchange it. One of the big changes that the Genius Act lays out is it would allow international companies to actually do business using stable coins instead of cash. OK, so then hypothetically, companies could issue their own coins, I guess, you know, like company, I don't know, XYZ issues XYZ coin pays people in that coin.

6:14That's what we're talking about here. That's right. And the idea, at least, is that transacting in stablecoins might be cheaper and more efficient than going through the regular banking system or credit card networks. Okay, and that's what the bill's supporters say. What about the critics? Well, some economists have argued that this could lead to chaos in the financial system. Consumer advocates have said that the regulations in the bill are too lax and they should be closer to the rules that banks have to follow. And critics also point to the fact that Trump and the Trump family have some apparent conflicts of interest here.

6:49You know, they have a company that is invested in Bitcoin. There's also a Trump meme coin. And Trump himself is also a stakeholder in World Liberty Financial, which is a company that issues stablecoin. So there's a lot going on there. And speaking of creating value out of nothing, let's hear about Magic the Gathering. Kenny. I have with me, as you can see or hear, a very special deck of Magic the Gathering cards that I have assembled to tell my indicator. Now, what is your general Magic the Gathering knowledge, each of you? I would watch people in the library at high school play it. I never got invited to the table.

7:31I'm sorry, first of all. Secondly, basically, all you need to know is that each card has a name on it and a description, and then likely there's a cost to use it in the game okay like that'll be enough okay you ready you ready okay here we go so my indicator is two because that is the green mana cost to play this traveling chocobo card from the magic the gathering crossover the final fantasy that resulted in record growth for magic okay adrian darian that's a lot you with me i understood about two mana 50 of what you said there that's okay let's slow it Chocobo. It's a nice little bird with golden wings.

8:10Chocobo's beautiful. All right, let me slow it down. Let's break this down. So the card game Magic the Gathering recently released a card set based on the super popular video game Final Fantasy. And this week, Magic's parent company, Hasbro, released an earnings report that showed the crossover was like a record-setting success. Hasbro earnings exceeded expectations. Hasbro shares jumped and i present the mighty leap card gain two power and two health not the mighty leap card yes but i don't know what that means that's okay don't worry but you it's a jump it's a good thing okay okay but then just after the report hasbro ceo starts talking about how this quarter was good and and how trump's tariffs have been lower than initial expectations but tariffs for Hasbro as a company still present a, quote, headwind, and then Hasbro shares plummeted.

9:02You know, it's funny. Magic cards are not a thing that I normally think of as being imported. I just kind of imagine they just manifest out of thin air. Yeah, well, I mean, look, they should, I think, spawn into your house. I agree. But I'm not sure magic cards in particular are the issue. A good chunk of them seem to be made in the U.S., but something like 50 % of Hasbro's toys and games come from China, and they're trying to get that down, trying to shift production to avoid tariffs. But the CEO, as part of this upsy-downsy earnings report week, did say that we should expect the cost of toys to keep steadily going up and up and up.

9:42So maybe, maybe, hear me out, we should all be stockpiling toys, perhaps even. Boom! Squeeze toy! Squeeze toy! A card that prevents one damage to any creature. And I would say, preventing damage to your creature or any creature, very useful in uncertain times. Thank you for protecting us from economic ignorance and darkness, Kenny. We appreciate you. Darian, I would invite you to my magic gathering. The gathering. To be clear, I never sought invitation. I was kind of just observing from a distance. That's so sad. This episode was produced by Angel Carreras with engineering by Sina Lafredo. It was fact-checked by Julia Ritchie.

10:24Cake and Cannon edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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