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  • Falling and rising monetary measures kick off a new week of our coverage.

  • I'm Carl Azuz, welcome to the show.

  • Crypto is what's been going down.

  • Digital currencies, or cryptocurrencies, are not doing well right now

  • We've told you before how these forms of money are volatile; they're historically valuable one day, then worth a lot less the next.

  • And a great example of that is Bitcoin.

  • It's the most famous and most valuable cryptocurrency.

  • Last November, one Bitcoin was worth $68,000.

  • Last night, one Bitcoin was worth less than $36,000.

  • It's lost almost half its value in two months.

  • It's not the only form of crypto; there are thousands of them.

  • But Ethereum, the second most valuable digital currency, has also lost almost 50% of its value since November; others, in general, have dropped as well.

  • So, what's causing this?

  • [A] Couple [of] things.

  • One, because of their volatility, cryptocurrencies are considered risky assets; they lose a lot of their value when inflation is high like it is now.

  • So, many investors are avoiding putting money into crypto because they want safer bets.

  • Also, crypto isn't centralized, it's not managed or controlled by a bank or a government.

  • Supporters of these currencies like that; they'd rather rely on a network of computers to determine cryptos' value.

  • But some governments see it as a threat to their own economies because they have less control over it.

  • So, China, for instance, has banned people from trading cryptocurrencies or mining for them.

  • And even though Russia is a hugely popular place for mining crypto, using computers to validate new currency, its central bank has also proposed a ban on it.

  • And India's government is looking at ways to regulate these currencies.

  • So, all of this can drive down the value of crypto; will it stay down? No one knows.

  • Even though Bitcoin is valued at less than $36,000 now, American investment bank Goldman Sachs thinks it'll soar to over $100,000 sometime over the next five years.

  • But the actions of investors, economies, and governments can all influence its value.

  • Now, something that might be going up: our interest rates.

  • Why is that of interest?

  • Well, if you can't pay the full cost of a car or a house all at once, you borrow money, you take out a loan to make up the difference.

  • A higher interest rate on your loan means you'll have to pay back more money over time.

  • So, if it costs people more to borrow, why might America's central bank want to raise interest rates?

  • Because that could help control inflation.

  • The rise in prices that the US saw last year was 7% over what it was the year beforethat's America's highest inflation in decades.

  • If the federal reserve raises interest rates, fewer people are likely to borrow money, and that can slow down the economy and help bring down inflation.

  • it's a mixed bag for homebuyers; many will be looking to borrow less money if they have to pay it back at a higher interest rate.

  • But if this means fewer people are shopping for a home, it could leave more homes to choose from.

  • Stu! Hey, man, welcome.

  • Stu Kozlowski is on the hunt again.

  • Here we have two bedroom, two and a half bath.

  • He's looking for a home in Los Angeles.

  • How many square feet is it?

  • Besides worrying about square footage, there's low inventory, sky-high prices and bidding wars, and now, rising mortgage rates.

  • They're almost a point higher than they were when I made that offer and got under escrow.

  • So, that's a significant jump.

  • This week, a 30-year fixed rate loan is 3.56%, back up to pre-pandemic levels.

  • On the median home price of $350,000, Americans can expect to spend $120 more on average, excluding taxes and insurance, than they did a year ago.

  • I think that affects the kind of homes I look at, that affects the neighborhoods I look at, that affects the kind of things I'm willing to go and have conviction about that maybe I didn't a month ago or a week ago.

  • Mortgage rates are going up in anticipation of higher interest rates, which the Federal Reserve said would happen this year.

  • In just the last month, a 30-year mortgage rose by a half a point.

  • Every half point the mortgage rates rise, I think that definitely has an impact on what buyers are willing to do, how far they're willing to stretch on home purchase.

  • Rising rates will affect homebuyers in pricier coastal cities where they're more often right on the cusp of qualifying for a home mortgage.

  • 10-second trivia: Which of these sports is the oldest?

  • Marathon, polo, hurling, or ice hockey.

  • The lacrosse-like game of hurling is the oldest on this list, dating back to the 13th century BC.

  • Wearable technology, or computerized clothing, offers tremendous amounts of info about athletic performance, but a lot of it is relatively expensive.

  • There are concerns about how long it'll last and about what happens if a competing team were to get a trove of sensitive data about the team using it.

  • When it comes to the Tesla suit, which is not related to the Tesla car company, the 20,000-dollar price that one recently sold for is out of reach for many.

  • Wearable tech can't provide the hard work, ability, or talent it takes to succeed, and it can't measure hearthow hard athletes are willing to push themselves beyond tired.

  • When in a match, should I be exerting the most effort?

  • How can I maximize my launch off the starting blocks?

  • Which player is flagging?

  • It needs to be substituted.

  • These are the questions that players and coaches are asking themselves every day.

  • And thanks to the data revolution in elite sports, the answers could soon be right at their fingertips.

  • In terms of the scale of use of wearable technology, every elite sportsman, sportsperson, and sports teams use, uh, wearable technology because it can be the difference between winning and losing; the margins are so small.

  • The key thing is that it's so fast-evolving, um, that so many people and so many athletes are now using wearable technology, uh, people are seriously, uh, disadvantaged by not being part of that, this sort of revolution in technologies.

  • With firms like STATSports and Catapult leading the charge, sports technology will soon be a 40-billion-dollar industry, with the wearables and data collection sector worth around 8 billion dollars.

  • And as the tech advances, the growth is showing no signs of fatigue.

  • We work with 80% of the EPL today, we work with anyevery NFL team, uh, here in the US, 60% of the Bundesliga at this point.

  • Um, so, you know, uh, from the 3,400, uh, elite teams across the globe, um, Catapult is... plays a, you know, a big part of their daily workflows today.

  • For many years, I think what, uh, wearables was doing was really creating, sort of, the objective data of what's happening on the ground.

  • So, how do I measure, really, the exertion level of an athlete?

  • Just descriptive data.

  • But that evolution has really started to, you know, really change now with more predictive, uh, you know, algorithms, and ideally, over time, to prescriptive outlet.

  • So, what will that transition from descriptive to prescriptive analysis actually look like?

  • One piece of tech is already emerging: from British-based company Teslasuit, who have developed a full-body haptic training suit that provides touch and force feedback to train and develop an athlete's muscle memory.

  • You look at the haptics and, because we do cover 95% of the muscle mass, we're able to help correct any position that changes within an understanding of a... a fixed training parameter, for example.

  • So, golf is a great example: how to perfect the perfect golf swing.

  • What we can do by the haptic notifications is, you would... you would have that sensation on... on your arm, on your shoulder, and across your chest, and then when you are in the... the right position, those sensations would stop.

  • So, you, kind of, get a guide of how to go back to perfect that perfect swing.

  • From F1 to Karate to tennis, Teslasuit is already working in a diverse array of sports to improve the skills needed for a competitive edge.

  • Millie the rescue dog recently needed rescuing herself.

  • She'd slipped out of her collar, run away, and gotten trapped in southern England's mudflats, which can flood when the tide is high.

  • Millie was there for two days and volunteers' efforts to fetch her only scared her farther away.

  • But then someone had an idea: Why not tie a piece of sausage to a string, attach it to a drone, and use that to try to lure Millie to safety?

  • Amazingly, it worked.

  • I never "sausage" an idea like that; some might've smelled a rat.

  • Some might have "howled", "There's no way, son, you can't 'retrieve' you lost dog with nothing but a 'hot dog' and some 'dogged' deep determination, but use imagination."

  • Just make a "lure" that's cooked up, hooked up, processed, and cured; what might seem a "boondoggle" fit for a "hound traverse" down some ground and turn lost to found.

  • I'm Carl Azuz for CNN 10; we've got Mission Hills High School watching today.

  • Thank you for viewing our show from San Marcos, California, and for your comments on our YouTube channel.

Falling and rising monetary measures kick off a new week of our coverage.

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