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Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images Before there was crypto, there was just bitcoin. During bitcoin’s earliest days, around 2008 and 2009, one of its core features was how difficult and annoying it was to actually get — it was worth hardly anything, traded only by a handful of hard-core superfans. One of the earliest markets was just a guy you’d email before paying him through PayPal. But then the exchanges came, making trading easy. Japan-based Mt. Gox was the first major one — it ruled the market until it was annihilated by a massive hack. Others emerged to fill the void. Soon there was a huge business in making bitcoin not difficult and not annoying to buy. By the time the boom of 2021 peaked, bitcoin was worth more than a trillion dollars, and a lot of exchange owners — but also a whole lot of exchange users — had gotten really rich, really quick. (Many others lost their shirts, of course.) Along with the cryptocurrency exchanges, thousands of new digital … [Read more...] about The Future of Coinbase Could Be a Lot Smaller

When Taqwanna Clark went to buy a video camera at Fry’s Electronics in Houston, she asked if they had a layaway plan. The cashier instead handed her an application for a store credit card. She applied. “Instantly, it came back declined — like, No!” she says. “Denied, denied — you know, your credit is not good enough.” Clark was 30 and working as a security guard at the Port of Houston. On weekends, she performed as a rapper in the local club scene, under the name T-Baby. She wanted the camera to shoot music videos, to promote her music career. “If I can’t afford a $200 camera,” she recalls thinking, “then I’m in a bad way with this credit thing.” Clark had lived with money anxieties since childhood. In elementary school, her family endured periods of extreme poverty. For a time, on the cusp of homelessness, they lived in the bare framing for a house her father was building on a wooded lot owned by a family member. They slept in an unfinished room and warmed canned food by a … [Read more...] about The High Cost of Bad Credit

See the article in its original context from May 8, 2002 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Sex is such a profoundly disruptive force in Adrian Lyne's film ''Unfaithful'' that as you watch it with your heart in your throat, you realize the degree to which Hollywood has succeeded in reducing screen sex to a fashion accessory. Its purpose in most movies nowadays is to embellish a story with enough (but not too many) discrete fillips of titillation and soft-core fantasy to quicken the pulse without causing palpitations. ''Unfaithful'' crashes through that mold by acknowledging that sex, especially reckless adulterous sex, can rock people's lives and have catastrophic consequences. The lovemaking in ''Unfaithful'' leaves deep emotional imprints. In the most extraordinary scene, Connie Sumner (Diane Lane), a beautiful, happily married suburban housewife and mother of a young … [Read more...] about FILM REVIEW; Day in Town Takes an Unexpected Tryst