[clock ticking]
[theme music]
CARL AZUZ: 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
than next.
And a great example of that is Bitcoin.
It's the most famous and most valuable cryptocurrency.
Last November, 1 Bitcoin was worth $68,000.
Last night, 1 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 crypto's 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 are 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 before.
That'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 Keselowski is on the hunt again.
- Here, we have two bedroom, 2 and 1/2 bath.
- He's looking for a home in Los Angeles.
STU KOZLOWSKI: 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.
STU KOZLOWSKI: 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.
STU KOZLOWSKI: 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.
JOE REICHLING: 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.
CARL AZUZ: 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 will 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
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 heart
how 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.
SIMON BARBOUR: In terms of the scale of use
of wearable technology, every elite sportsman, sports person,
and sports teams use 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
that so many people and so many athletes
are now using wearable technology.
People are seriously disadvantaged by not
being part of this revolution in technologies.
- With firms like STATSports and Catapult leading the charge,
sports technology will soon be a $40 billion
industry, with the wearables and data collection sector
worth around $8 billion.
And as the tech advances, the growth
is showing no signs of fatigue.
WILL LOPES: We work with 80% of the EPL today.
We work with every NFL team here in the US,
60% of the Bundesliga at this point.
So from the 3,400 elite teams across the globe,
Catapult plays a big part of their daily workflows today.
For many years, I think, what wearables was doing was really
creating the objective data of what's happening on the ground,
how do I measure, really, the exertion level of an athlete,
just descriptive data.
But that evolution has really started to really change now
with more predictive algorithms and ideally,
over time, to prescriptive algorithms.
- 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.
PAUL NICKEAS: If you look at the haptics,
because we do cover 95% of the muscle mass,
we're able to help correct any position that changes
within an understanding of a fixed training parameter,
for example.
So golf is a great example of how to perfect
the perfect golf swing.
What we can do, by the haptic notifications,
is you would have that sensation on your arm, on your shoulder,
and across your chest.
And then, when you were in 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.
[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Millie, the rescue dog,
recently needed rescuing herself.
She had 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 father 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 saw such an idea like that.
Some might have smelled a rat.
Some might have howled.
There's no way, son, you can't retriever
a lost dog with nothing but a hot dog,
get some dogged determination.
But use imagination.
Just make a lure that's cooked up, hooked
up, processed, and cured.
What might seem a boondoggle 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.
[music playing]