For someone new to cryptocurrency, the prospect of buying a digital asset like Bitcoin can feel intimidating, not because the act of buying is difficult but because the prices move so violently that the decision of when to buy seems to carry enormous weight, with the constant fear that one might purchase just before a…
Read MoreFor the tens of millions of people who rent their homes, a paradox sits at the heart of their financial lives, which is that the single largest and most regular payment most of them make, the monthly rent, generates almost no lasting benefit to their financial reputation, even as years of paying it faithfully and…
Read MoreMost families today are sitting on an enormous and growing collection of photographs, scattered across phones, laptops, old hard drives, memory cards, and cloud accounts, representing years or even decades of birthdays, holidays, vacations, ordinary afternoons, and milestones large and small, and yet for all the effort that went into capturing these moments, the great…
Read MoreAlmost everyone who uses the internet has an email address and a handful of messaging accounts, and almost no one actually owns them, because the address that identifies a person online, along with the entire history of their correspondence, belongs not to the user but to the company that provides the service, which can suspend…
Read MoreFor many couples, money is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about, and it is also one of the most consequential, because the way two people handle their shared finances touches nearly every part of a life built together, from the home they live in to the trips they take, the debts they…
Read MoreBitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency, has long been understood primarily as a store of value, a kind of digital gold that people buy and hold in the expectation that it will preserve or grow their wealth, and for most of its history that is essentially all it has been used for. While other blockchains,…
Read MoreFor most of cryptocurrency’s history, digital assets such as Bitcoin have been far easier to buy and hold than to spend, since the corner store, the coffee shop, and the gas station all expect dollars, not Bitcoin, and very few merchants accept cryptocurrency directly. This gap between owning crypto and using it for everyday purchases…
Read MoreWhen someone buys a used car, they are buying not only the vehicle in front of them but its entire past, the miles it has traveled, the accidents it has survived, the repairs it has needed, and the care or neglect it has received, and yet this past is largely invisible, knowable only through documents…
Read MoreFor most of the history of commerce, buying something well has demanded time, attention, and a certain amount of skill, as a shopper who wanted the best price had to compare sellers, watch for sales, read reviews, and, in some settings, summon the nerve to haggle, all of which rewarded those with the patience and…
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