8 is the only digit whose shape is a circuit — you go round twice to get back where you started. What it handles is circulatory too: resource, power, influence, none of which are one-off things. They come in and go out, they scale up or down. So 8's core isn't wealth, it's scale and flow: you keep working out whether a thing can be made bigger and who is affected when it is.
You'll recognise it here: assessing anything, you automatically add a column for how big it could get, even when it's small; you're sensitive to where power actually sits — who decides and who only holds the title; and effort without leverage is hard for you to tolerate.
Running well, 8 is whoever takes a thing to scale: the stretch from one to ten belongs to you. What that stretch needs is unfashionable — judgement, exposure, looking at the numbers — and most people hand it off. Blocked, 8 attaches its sense of worth to results, so a day without them feels like not existing; or the reverse, refusing to scale for fear of losing control and sitting far below your own capacity. The tradition puts Saturn-like imagery on 8, and the point is cost: every enlargement carries a matching responsibility. The question worth asking often is whether you want the scale, or the safety you think the scale will bring.
