For as long as bitcoin has existed as a mainstream investment topic, one comparison has followed it more persistently than any other: the idea that bitcoin is, or is becoming, a digital version of gold, a scarce, hard-to-debase asset that investors can turn to specifically when the value of conventional currency is being eroded by…
Read MoreSomewhere between a TikTok video promising to turn fifty dollars into five thousand and a group chat where a classmate is bragging about a meme coin that tripled overnight, most teenagers today have already formed an opinion about cryptocurrency, whether their parents have said a single word about it or not. This is the reality…
Read MoreSomewhere between the lottery ticket machine and the change counter at a grocery store, a growing number of Americans have started noticing a new kind of terminal: a squat, brightly lit kiosk with a touchscreen, a bill acceptor, and a logo referencing Bitcoin or crypto. These machines, most commonly called Bitcoin ATMs or crypto ATMs,…
Read MoreFor most of cryptocurrency’s short history, the assets sitting in people’s digital wallets were things to hold, trade, or watch rather than things to spend. A traveler who had accumulated bitcoin or ether over several years might have felt wealthier on paper, but when it came time to book a flight home for the holidays…
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 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…
Read MoreThe individual retirement account has long been one of the most powerful tools available to ordinary people for building wealth over a lifetime, a tax-advantaged container in which investments can grow with their gains sheltered from the annual taxation that erodes returns in ordinary accounts, and for most of its history it has held familiar…
Read MoreCryptocurrency was supposed to be a technology of liberation, a way to move money without banks and to hold wealth without intermediaries, yet for a great many ordinary people their first real encounter with it has come not through investment but through fraud, in the form of a stranger’s friendly message, a too-good-to-be-true opportunity, or…
Read MoreFor decades, the reward a credit card offered in exchange for loyalty was a familiar and predictable thing, a small slice of cash returned to the account, a handful of airline miles, or points redeemable in a catalog of merchandise and gift cards, all of them fixed in value and easy enough to understand even…
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