Hell for Tether: a cryptocurrency crimped
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The notionally dollar-pegged “stablecoin” quietly underpins many crypto-market moves. We ask what the currency issuer’s clash with New York authorities means for the wider crypto craze. In many African countries, parliamentarians are asked to fill public-service gaps—at great personal cost. We examine moves toward a fairer forking out of funds. And why physical-education exams are popping up in China.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:09.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:17.2 | It's expensive to be an African parliamentarian. Constituents relentlessly ask for financial help. It's expensive to be an African parliamentarian. |
| 0:23.7 | Constituents relentlessly ask for financial help. |
| 0:25.7 | It's not just handouts, though. |
| 0:28.6 | They simply want services the state isn't providing. |
| 0:33.4 | We look at efforts to fill in those gaps rather than emptying MP's pockets. |
| 0:39.3 | And Chinese authorities worry that the country's youngsters are in poor shape. So in a country obsessed with exams, there's now another, |
| 0:43.3 | physical education tests that carry as much weight as the academic kind. |
| 0:51.3 | But first... |
| 0:56.0 | Assets of all sorts have been on a tear recently. |
| 1:04.0 | Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a fresh high, |
| 1:08.0 | after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterated in congressional testimony |
| 1:12.2 | that America's central bank will continue to help the economy. |
| 1:16.3 | The main thing that we can do is continue to support the economy, give it the support that it needs. |
| 1:21.3 | In fact, America's indices have set 32 record highs in 2021, and it's only February. Oil prices are also rising. Even the resale |
| 1:31.4 | value of baseball cards is on the up. And then there are the cryptocurrency markets. |
| 1:36.8 | The market cap for Bitcoin above $1 trillion. Another cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which was |
| 1:42.2 | started as a gag, has gained about 1,500% of its value in the last three months. |
| 1:47.4 | Is this just the beginning of a crypto craze or will the Bitcoin bubble burst? |
| 1:52.7 | The bubble might not be bursting, but it has been deflating, a smidgen. Bitcoin is now hovering |
| 1:58.7 | around $49,000. |
... |
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