How Crypto’s Collapse May Have Done the Economy a Favour
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    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,664,237 (-0.59%)       Melbourne $1,033,450 (+0.65%)       Brisbane $1,081,028 (+0.65%)       Adelaide $985,065 (+1.78%)       Perth $950,560 (-0.18%)       Hobart $777,999 (+0.89%)       Darwin $786,482 (+1.68%)       Canberra $952,466 (-2.00%)       National $1,094,758 (-0.02%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $782,104 (+0.40%)       Melbourne $498,897 (+0.23%)       Brisbane $701,683 (+2.16%)       Adelaide $513,743 (+2.48%)       Perth $535,535 (+0.22%)       Hobart $517,946 (+0.06%)       Darwin $387,696 (-0.18%)       Canberra $486,097 (+1.41%)       National $578,371 (+0.96%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 11,905 (+214)       Melbourne 13,995 (+360)       Brisbane 8,080 (-32)       Adelaide 2,812 (+63)       Perth 7,563 (+9)       Hobart 1,219 (-23)       Darwin 158 (-3)       Canberra 1,092 (+27)       National 46,824 (+615)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,269 (+98)       Melbourne 7,693 (+15)       Brisbane 1,591 (-38)       Adelaide 442 (+7)       Perth 1,605 (-9)       Hobart 215 (-13)       Darwin 289 (-12)       Canberra 1,183 (+20)       National 22,287 (+68)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $800 ($0)       Melbourne $595 ($0)       Brisbane $650 ($0)       Adelaide $630 ($0)       Perth $700 ($0)       Hobart $560 ($0)       Darwin $725 (+$25)       Canberra $700 (-$10)       National $678 (+$2)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $750 ($0)       Melbourne $590 ($0)       Brisbane $650 ($0)       Adelaide $525 (-$5)       Perth $650 ($0)       Hobart $498 ($0)       Darwin $520 (-$60)       Canberra $580 ($0)       National $606 (-$7)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,789 (-25)       Melbourne 7,602 (+102)       Brisbane 3,854 (+40)       Adelaide 1,449 (+10)       Perth 2,298 (+17)       Hobart 233 (+17)       Darwin 84 (+1)       Canberra 469 (+14)       National 21,778 (+176)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 7,814 (+1)       Melbourne 5,490 (+10)       Brisbane 1,803 (-14)       Adelaide 422 (+10)       Perth 757 (+29)       Hobart 94 (0)       Darwin 85 (-4)       Canberra 567 (+2)       National 17,032 (+34)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND       Sydney 2.50% (↑)        Melbourne 2.99% (↓)       Brisbane 3.13% (↓)       Adelaide 3.33% (↓)     Perth 3.83% (↑)        Hobart 3.74% (↓)     Darwin 4.79% (↑)      Canberra 3.82% (↑)      National 3.22% (↑)             UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 4.99% (↓)       Melbourne 6.15% (↓)       Brisbane 4.82% (↓)       Adelaide 5.31% (↓)       Perth 6.31% (↓)       Hobart 4.99% (↓)       Darwin 6.97% (↓)       Canberra 6.20% (↓)       National 5.45% (↓)            HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.0% (↑)      Melbourne 1.9% (↑)      Brisbane 1.4% (↑)      Adelaide 1.3% (↑)      Perth 1.2% (↑)      Hobart 1.0% (↑)      Darwin 1.6% (↑)      Canberra 2.7% (↑)      National 1.7% (↑)             UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.4% (↑)      Melbourne 3.8% (↑)      Brisbane 2.0% (↑)      Adelaide 1.1% (↑)      Perth 0.9% (↑)      Hobart 1.4% (↑)      Darwin 2.8% (↑)      Canberra 2.9% (↑)      National 2.2% (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 31.4 (↑)      Melbourne 30.7 (↑)        Brisbane 33.3 (↓)     Adelaide 29.3 (↑)      Perth 39.6 (↑)      Hobart 35.5 (↑)        Darwin 32.1 (↓)     Canberra 30.7 (↑)      National 32.8 (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND       Sydney 31.2 (↑)      Melbourne 30.6 (↑)      Brisbane 34.1 (↑)      Adelaide 26.0 (↑)      Perth 40.0 (↑)      Hobart 31.3 (↑)      Darwin 40.5 (↑)        Canberra 39.2 (↓)     National 34.1 (↑)            
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How Crypto’s Collapse May Have Done the Economy a Favour

Crypto’s lack of connections with traditional finance means its problems haven’t spilled over to the economy

By GREG IP
Fri, Nov 25, 2022 8:42amGrey Clock 4 min

This year’s crypto collapse has all the hallmarks of a classic banking crisis: runs, fire sales, contagion.

What it doesn’t have are banks.

Check out the bankruptcy filings of crypto platforms Voyager Digital Holdings Inc., Celsius Network LLC and FTX Trading Ltd. and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, and you won’t find any banks listed among their largest creditors.

While bankruptcy filings aren’t entirely clear, they describe many of the largest creditors as customers or other crypto-related companies. Crypto companies, in other words, operate in a closed loop, deeply interconnected within that loop but with few apparent connections of significance to traditional finance. This explains how an asset class once worth roughly $3 trillion could lose 72% of its value, and prominent intermediaries could go bust, with no discernible spillovers to the financial system.

“Crypto space…is largely circular,” Yale University economist Gary Gorton and University of Michigan law professor Jeffery Zhang write in a forthcoming paper. “Once crypto banks obtain deposits from investors, these firms borrow, lend, and trade with themselves. They do not interact with firms connected to the real economy.”

A few years from now, things might have been different, given the intensifying pressure on regulators and bankers to embrace crypto. The crypto meltdown may have prevented that—and a much wider crisis.

Crypto has long been marketed as an unregulated, anonymous, frictionless, more accessible alternative to traditional banks and currencies. Yet its mushrooming ecosystem looks a lot like the banking system, accepting deposits and making loans. Messrs. Gorton and Zhang write, “Crypto lending platforms recreated banking all over again… if an entity engages in borrowing and lending, it is economically equivalent to a bank even if it’s not labeled as one.”

And just like the banking system, crypto is leveraged and interconnected, and thus vulnerable to debilitating runs and contagion. This year’s crisis began in May when TerraUSD, a purported stablecoin—i.e., a cryptocurrency that aimed to sustain a constant value against the dollar—collapsed as investors lost faith in its backing asset, a token called Luna. Rumours that Celsius had lost money on Terra and Luna led to a run on its deposits and in July Celsius filed for bankruptcy protection.

Three Arrows, a crypto hedge fund that had invested in Luna, had to liquidate. Losses on a loan to Three Arrows and contagion from Celsius forced Voyager into bankruptcy protection.

Meanwhile FTX’s trading affiliate Alameda Research and Voyager had lent to each other, and Alameda and Celsius also had exposure to each other. But it was the linkages between FTX and Alameda that were the two companies’ undoing. Like many platforms, FTX issued its own cryptocurrency, FTT. After this was revealed to be Alameda’s main asset, Binance, another major platform, said it would dump its own FTT holdings, setting off the run that triggered FTX’s collapse.

Genesis Global Capital, another crypto lender, had exposure to both Three Arrows and Alameda. It has suspended withdrawals and sought outside cash in the wake of FTX’s demise. BlockFi, another crypto lender with exposure to FTX and Alameda, is preparing a bankruptcy filing, the Journal has reported.

The density of connections between these players is nicely illustrated with a sprawling diagram in an October report by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which brings together federal financial regulators.

To historians, this litany of contagion and collapse is reminiscent of the free banking era from 1837 to 1863 when banks issued their own bank notes, fraud proliferated, and runs, suspensions of withdrawals, and panics occurred regularly. Yet while those crises routinely walloped business activity, crypto’s has largely passed the economy by.

Some investors, from unsophisticated individuals to big venture-capital and pension funds, have sustained losses, some life-changing. But these are qualitatively different from the sorts of losses that threaten the solvency of major lending institutions and the broader financial system’s stability.

To be sure, some loan or investment losses by banks can’t be ruled out. Banks also supply crypto companies with custodial and payment services and hold their cash, such as to back stablecoins. Some small banks that cater to crypto companies have been buffeted by large outflows of deposits.

Traditional finance had little incentive to build connections to crypto because, unlike government bonds or mortgages or commercial loans or even derivatives, crypto played no role in the real economy. It’s largely been shunned as a means of payment except where untraceability is paramount, such as money laundering and ransomware. Much-hyped crypto innovations such as stablecoins and DeFi, a sort of automated exchange, mostly facilitate speculation in crypto rather than useful economic activity.

Crypto’s grubby reputation repelled mainstream financiers like Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, and made regulators deeply skittish about bank involvement. In time this was bound to change, not because crypto was becoming useful but because it was generating so much profit for speculators and their supporting ecosystem.

Several banks have made private-equity investments in crypto companies and many including J.P. Morgan are investing in blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underlying cryptocurrencies. A flood of crypto lobbying money was prodding Congress to create a regulatory framework under which crypto, having failed as an alternative to the dollar, could become a riskier, less regulated alternative to equities.

Now, stained by bankruptcy and scandal, cryptocurrency will have to wait longer—perhaps forever—to be fully embraced by traditional banking. An end to banking crises required the replacement of private currencies with a single national dollar, the creation of the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort, deposit insurance and comprehensive regulation.

It isn’t clear, though, that the same recipe should be applied to crypto: Effective regulation would eliminate much of the efficiency and anonymity that explain its appeal. And while the U.S. economy clearly needed a stable banking system and currency, it will do just fine without crypto.



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Bhutan is pioneering a new frontier in travel by allowing tourists to pay for flights, visas, hotels and even fruit stalls using cryptocurrency via Binance Pay.

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BHUTAN LAUNCHES WORLD-FIRST NATIONAL CRYPTO PAYMENT SYSTEM FOR TOURISM

Bhutan is pioneering a new frontier in travel by allowing tourists to pay for flights, visas, hotels and even fruit stalls using cryptocurrency via Binance Pay.

By Jeni O'Dowd
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Bhutan has become the first country in the world to implement a national-level cryptocurrency payment system for tourism, marking a major milestone in digital innovation and travel.

Launched in partnership with Binance Pay and Bhutan’s fully digital DK Bank, the system enables travellers with Binance accounts to enjoy a seamless, end-to-end crypto-powered journey. More than 100 local merchants, from hotels and tour operators to small roadside vendors in remote villages, are already live on the system.

“This is more than a payment solution — it’s a commitment to innovation, inclusion, and convenience,” said Damcho Rinzin, Director of the Department of Tourism, Bhutan.

“It enables a seamless experience for travellers and empowers even small vendors in remote villages to participate in the tourism economy.”

Using supported cryptocurrencies, tourists can now pay for nearly every part of their trip, including airline tickets, visas, the Sustainable Development Fee (SDF), hotel stays, monument entry fees, local guides, and shopping, all through secure static and dynamic QR code payments.

Binance CEO Richard Teng praised the move, saying: “We are excited to partner with Bhutan as we are not only advancing the use of cryptocurrencies in travel but also setting a precedent for how technology can bridge cultures and economies. This initiative exemplifies our commitment to innovation and our belief in a future where digital finance empowers global connectivity and enriches travel experiences.”

Known as the “Kingdom of Happiness,” Bhutan has long prioritised Gross National Happiness over GDP, with a strong focus on sustainability, cultural preservation, and societal well-being. The new system aligns with these values by reducing payment friction and bringing financial inclusion to local communities.

Among the key features of the system:

  • Seamless Experience: Tourists can pay with crypto for all travel-related expenses.

  • Inclusive Reach: Small vendors, even in remote areas, can accept QR code payments.

  • Lower Fees: Transactions cost significantly less than traditional payment methods.

  • Comprehensive Support: More than 100 cryptocurrencies supported, including BNB, BTC, and USDC.

  • Secure and Instant: Real-time confirmations, 2FA, and encrypted transactions via the Binance app.

Behind the local settlement mechanism is DK Bank, Bhutan’s first fully digital bank. Licensed by the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan, it aims to deliver accessible financial services to all, including marginalised and unbanked communities.

The launch is being hailed as a bold step forward in integrating digital finance with global tourism — one that could set the benchmark for other nations looking to modernise the travel experience while empowering their local economies.

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