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Proprietary Data Insights Financial Pros Top Entertainment Searches This Month
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While You Were Spring Breaking Or Being A Ham The housing market continued to cool. At least if you believe Redfin. They continue to see decreasing demand. Source: Redfin
That’s a demand killer.
Is The House Haunted? According to a Redfin agent in Boston, people freak out if a house stays on the market longer than a week. They think there’s something wrong with the property. Subsequently, these people sometimes bail on the market out of fear that making an offer would be too risky. Reminds me of a friend of mine who moved from Pittsburgh to Dallas in 1998. He paid two mortgages for a year and a half because he couldn’t move his house in Pennsylvania. Ah, the bad, good old days. Speaking Of Pittsburgh… Amid all of this talk of record prices, maybe it’s a bastion of relative affordability. As of March 2022, the median home price there was $233,350, up 6.1% year-over-year, but far below the national median of $397,747. In Pittsburgh, the average home actually stays on the market for 52 days, compared to a national average of 38 days. The lesson here – look beyond the headlines. Because where there’s a will, there’s a way. |
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Cryptocurrency |
Will Buying Stuff With Crypto Ever Become A Thing? |
Key Takeaways:
Source: Twitter
Finally something notable happened on Twitter that didn’t directly involve Elon Musk. AMC’s (AMC) CEO, Adam Aron, announced you can use cryptocurrency to purchase movie tickets. Interesting that Dogecoin showed up in most of the headlines reporting this news, considering the reality the coin’s bulls seem reluctant to face. Source: Google
How’s HODL working out for you? If you timed it right, you’d get more bang for your buck – er, meme coin – with Shiba Inu. Source: Coinbase
And we stress, if you timed it right. If you bought that frothy $0.000089 top, you’d be better off going to see Morbius using the lame purchasing power of the good old fashioned USD. If You Own Crypto, Will You Ever Spend It? Use this link (also at the bottom of this email) to answer these questions for us. Do you own crypto? Will you spend it to buy products and services? Have you already? Or is it just a trade or investment? We’ll include some of your responses in a future installment of The Juice. Who Owns Crypto? According to a March, 2022, NBC poll of 1,000 Americans, 21% say they’ve invested in or “used” (we assume this includes making purchases with) cryptocurrency. That number hits 50% among 18-to-49 year old men. Forty percent of African Americans have traded or used crypto. A September, 2021, Pew Research poll pretty much echoes these results. It showed that Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults were more likely than whites to have invested, traded, or used crypto. Young men tend to be heavier crypto traders, investors, and users. Source: Pew Research The data on who is actually using cryptocurrency as currency isn’t quite as clear. In part, because there isn’t much of it. While it’s not too difficult to find a Bitcoin ATM these days (around 30,000 exist), it’s hit or miss as to whether you can use it and other crypto to make purchases. From cash apps to Visa and Mastercard crypto partnerships and branded credit cards, the groundwork for more widespread consumer adoption has long been laid. Two Big Roadblocks Exist One, despite the aforementioned activity among younger Americans, just 24% of all Americans say they’ve heard a lot about crypto, according to Pew. Seventy-five percent have heard only “a little” or “nothing at all.” If you’re not well-informed, you’re probably not super confident. Out of this bunch, a decent number might shoot for a speculative investment, but how many would even consider buying something with cryptocurrency? How many would even know how? This is part of what we’re trying to figure out. Two, if you’re all-in on crypto as an investment, as the purchasing power of your dollar continues to decrease, which one would you be more willing to part with? Imagine buying two movie tickets, a large popcorn with extra butter, and a box of Milk Duds with Dogecoin. You sit around listening to other people chew their food and slurp their drinks for two hours. Then, as you exit the theater and check your phone (cuz you didn’t do that during the movie!), you see Elon Musk tweeted something about DOGE and it popped 300%. That would suck. The Bottom Line: Practically speaking, AMC’s move to officially add DOGE and SHIB as payment options might be a sign of the times. Of more widespread adoption at places we visit regularly, such as the grocery store or coffee shop. Or it could merely be a company with myriad financial problems living off of its meme stock fame, acting as if it’s the leader of this brave new digital world we’re all navigating. From an investment standpoint, AMC’s announcement doesn’t make it any more of a buy than it was in 2021 or when it hauled off and bought a mining company. That said, if I was sitting on cryptocurrency profits, I wouldn’t hesitate to take some of them for a night out at the movies. But probably only if I didn’t have cash in my pocket or was saving my real currency to, say, buy a house. |
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