For most of the past two decades, the interest rate paid on a typical savings account was so close to zero that comparing one bank’s yield to another’s felt like a pointless exercise, the difference between one hundredth of a percent and two hundredths of a percent amounting to a few dollars a year on…
Read MoreDecentralized finance promises a financial system that anyone can access without banks, brokers, or gatekeepers standing between a person and their money, allowing a newcomer to swap one token for another, lend out savings for interest, or supply liquidity to a trading pool using nothing more than a crypto wallet and an internet connection. Yet…
Read MoreFor as long as most people can remember, the paycheck has arrived in the form of national currency, dollars or euros or pounds deposited into a bank account, and the idea that one’s salary might instead arrive as bitcoin or some other digital asset would have seemed, until quite recently, the province of cryptocurrency enthusiasts…
Read MoreFew institutions in ordinary life generate as much friction, suspicion, and outright conflict as the homeowners association and the neighborhood community association, organizations that exist to manage the shared affairs of a residential community but that have become, in the experience of many residents, synonymous with disputes over money, contested elections, and the sense that…
Read MoreAnyone who has shared their life with a dog or cat knows the particular helplessness of caring for a creature who cannot say what is wrong, who cannot describe the ache in a joint, the nausea before a meal is refused, or the slow loss of energy that precedes a serious illness, and who relies…
Read MoreThe idea that a person could be paid simply for walking, running, or exercising has an immediate and almost irresistible appeal, because it promises to turn an activity that many people struggle to do enough of, physical movement, into a source of financial reward, aligning the pursuit of health with the pursuit of money in…
Read MoreFor most of modern life, the wallet has been a small leather object carried in a pocket or a bag, holding the physical tokens that prove who a person is and what they are entitled to do, the driver’s license that establishes identity and the right to drive, the payment cards that allow purchases, the…
Read MoreThe world of decentralized finance, often shortened to DeFi, offers people the ability to trade, lend, borrow, and earn returns on their cryptocurrency without relying on banks or other traditional intermediaries, putting them in direct control of their own assets through software applications that run on blockchains. This control is the great appeal of DeFi,…
Read MoreThe giving of gifts to mark life’s milestones is among the oldest of human customs, the cash tucked into a birthday card, the savings bond presented at a graduation, the check handed over at a wedding, and the gifts that family members give one another to express love, to celebrate occasions, and to help the…
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