CNN10 2022-01-24




CNN 10

Dramatic Falling Values Of Cryptocurrency; Rise In U.S. Interest Rates; Pros And Cons Of Wearable Technology. Aired 4-4:10a Et

Aired January 24, 2022 - 04:00:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: 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 crypto currencies are not doing well right now. We've told you before how these forms of money are volatile.

They're historically valuable one day and worth a lot less the next, and a great example of that is Bitcoin. It's the most famous and most valuable crypto currency. Last November, one Bitcoin was worth $68,000. Last night, one 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 Etherium, the second most valuable digital currency has also lost almost 50 percent of its value since November.

Others, in general, have dropped as well. So what's causing this, a couple things. One because of their volatility, crypto currencies 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 crypto currencies 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 will 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 U.S. saw last year was seven percent 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.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stu, hey man welcome.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stu Kozlowski is on the hunt again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here we have two bedroom, two and a half bath.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's looking for a home in Los Angeles. Besides worrying about square footage, there's low inventories, sky high prices and bidding wars and now rising mortgage rates.

STU KOZLOWSKI, LOS ANGELES HOMEBUYER: There's almost a point higher than they were when I made that offer (inaudible) escrow. So that's a significant jump.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This week a 30 year fixed rate loan is 3.56 percent. Back up to pre-pandemic levels, on the medium home price of $350,000 Americans can expect to spend $120 more on average excluding taxes and insurance than they did a year ago.

KOZLOWSKI: I think that effects the kind of homes I look at, that effects the neighborhoods I look at, that effects 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.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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 mortgage rose by a half a point.

JOE REICHLING, REALTOR, COMPASS: Every half point that 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.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rising rates will effect homebuyers in pricier coastal cities, where they're more often right on the cusp of qualifying for a home mortgage.

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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 B.C.

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 Teslasuit, 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? (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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 and needs to be substituted? These are the questions that players and coaches are asking themselves everyday and thanks to the data revolution in elite sports. The answers could soon be right at their fingertips.

SIMON BARBOUR, PERFORMANCE ANALYST LEAD, LOUGHBROUGH UNIVERSITY: In terms of the scale of use it's wearable technology. Every elite sportsman, sportsperson 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 it's so fast evolving and that so many people and so many athletes are now using wearable technology. People are seriously disadvantaged by not being part of that -- this revolution technologies.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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.

PAUL NIKEAS, VICE-PRESIDENT, TESLASUIT: We work with 80 percent of the EPL today. We've worked with every NFL team here in the U.S. 60 percent of the Bundesliga at this point. So, you know, some 3,400 elite teams across the globe Catapult plays a -- in a big part of their daily workflows today.

For many years I think what wearables was going was really creating, sort of, the objective data of what's happening on the grounds. How do I measure, really, the exertion level of an athlete? Just descriptive data, but that evolution has really started to, you know, really change now with more predictive, you know, algorithms, and ideally over time to prescriptive outlook.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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 forced feedback to train and develop an athletes memory.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at the haptics and because we do cover 95 percent of the muscle mass, we're able to help correct any position that changes within an understanding of -- of a fixed training perimeter, for example. So golf is a great example. How to effect the perfect golf swing?

What we can do by haptic notifications is you -- you would have that sensation on -- on your arm and your shoulder and across your chest. And then when you are in the -- the right position, those sensations would stop. So you, kind of, get a guide of how to go back to perfect that perfect swing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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.

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AZUZ: Millie the rescue dog recently needed rescuing herself. She'd slipped out of her collar, runaway and gotten trapped in southern England's Mud Flats which can flood when the tide is high. Millie was there for two days and volunteers efforts to fetch her only scared her farther 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 (Inaudible), you can't "retrieve" your lost dog with nothing but a "hot dog" and some "dogged" deep determination, but use imagination. Just make a "lure" that's cooked up, hooked up, processed and cured.

What might seem a "boondoggle" fit 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 You Tube channel.

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