#310
Haunted House
On Thursday, Halloween revelers explored “haunted houses” across the country. These attractions span from humorous to creepy to downright horrifying – with one haunted house in San Diego going so far as to require visitors to sign a waiver before entering.
But as it turns out, the perception of ghostly inhabitance has a material impact on real estate. Realtor.com commissioned a poll finding that 23% of consumers believe they have, in fact, shared their home with ghosts.
This is a major concern for home buyers and sellers. 54% of respondents in the survey said they would never purchase a home that is believed to be haunted – even if they liked the house! And 51% would sell a house immediately upon learning of ghostly roommates.
Another 6% would have the house torn down, while 23% would try to rectify the situation with renovations to make it seem less frightful. Unfortunately, it’s unclear how well ghosts respond to remodeling!
While sharing a house with ghosts seems unpalatable to most, sharing a neighborhood apparently isn’t so bad. Nearly 70% of consumers are open to living next door to a haunted house.
So while spirits may be unwelcome guests for most Americans, just remember that these ghoulish roommates have also had a tough time…
Portfolio News
Dharma launches v2 DeFi platform to the public - Portfolio company Dharma is on mission to introduce DeFi to millions of users as a vehicle for stable, international savings. Come deposit your Dai (DAI) or USD Coin (USDC) into the Dharma Smart Wallet and start earning 7.4% yield today! Read more
TradeBlock - The Hard Fork - In this week's crypto market report, TradeBlock touches on China's President embracing blockchain technology, Bakkt bitcoin futures volume hitting new highs, and Zuckerberg testifying in front of Congress on Libra. Read more
Haunted House
Haunted real estate: half of homeowners would sell house believed to have ghosts - A recent study finds that a significant portion of Americans believe they've lived in a haunted house - and that this has a material impact on real estate values. Read more
Industry News
Ethereum DeFi sets record as Bitcoin rallies 30% - Users are trusting record amounts of value in decentralized finance platforms. According to DeFi Pulse, there’s now a record 2.4 million ether locked in DeFi, surpassing the previous high of 2.3 million in April. Read more
"Alexa, when is my water bill due?" - As Amazon moves further into financial services (it already does over $1bn of lending to its e-commerce businesses), customers of billers on the Paymentus Payment Network will soon be able to manage and pay their utility bills through Alexa devices. Read more
Starbucks will accept Bitcoin in 2020, thanks to Wall Street’s Bakkt - In an effort to move beyond futures trading , Bakkt will be commencing its consumer app and merchant portal in mid 2020 with Starbucks - who will be the first launch partner in helping "unlock the value of digital assets." Read more
Apple Card adding 0% financing for iPhone purchases - Apple Card users will be able to finance iPhone purchases over 24 months with 0% interest - and will still get 3% cashback on the iPhone purchase. Presumably, Apple will expand Apple Card 0% financing to the Mac, iPad, and other products at some point in the future. Read more
The Fed cuts rates by 25 basis points, so does Robinhood - Earlier this month, Robinhood announced its new savings rate of 2.05% which was the highest in the market at the time - relative to 1.90% for Marcus, and Varo Money for 2.02%. This week, Robinhood lowers its APR by 25 points to 1.80% from original 2.05%. Read more
Massive cache of card data goes up for sale on dark web - The details of more than 1.3m credit and debit cards - 98% of them from India - have been put up for sale on an underground forum - with the crooks selling the cards for $100 each. Read more
TrueLayer, the open banking API provider, discloses investment and partnership with Visa - TrueLayer, which is responsible for about 65% of all open banking traffic in the UK, wants to leverage the Visa partnership to work with a huge network of businesses and banks to develop open banking services and applications to provide tangible solutions. Read more
Why China’s digital currency is a ‘wake-up call’ for the U.S. - Fortune believes that while the US dollar still remains heavily in the lead as the world's reserve currency, China's PBOC digital currency should be forcing the FED to accelerate its own plans and thinking of a blockchain sandbox. Read more
US financial regulators join Global Financial Innovation Network -The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are looking to take proactive steps to enhance regulatory clarity. Read more
Blockchain search volumes skyrocket in China following public approval statement out of Beijing - After China's President Xi stated that he wants the country to take a leading position in the development of blockchain technology, blockchain was searched 3.3m times on WeChat (329% growth) and 72k times on Baidu (a 1,382% surge). Read more
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