money

The rising tide of novel coronavirus (COVID19) fear is generating an interesting effect on investor dollars. Where this week we've already seen major dips in oil prices* and the DOW Jones Industrial Average*, your average "stay at home" company seems to be fairing quite well. A note shared by investor company MKM Partners pointed toward companies such as Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Peloton, Slack, and Zoom.

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Twitter just acquired a group of creators operating under the title Chroma Labs. They started their business in 2018 and quickly came to prominence with their Chroma Stories app. This app allowed users to easily create high quality "story" videos for sharing on multiple platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Twitter saw their value and moved in for the team-up.

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Today we're looking at a pair of "Apple Computer Sneakers, late 20th century" that've appeared in a "collectables" auction. As the auction listing suggests, these sneakers were "produced by Apple exclusively for their employees in the early 1990s." Of course the story of these sneakers isn't quite so simple. We dug a bit deeper to find the source... or multiple sources.

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There's a Sony/Nintendo PlayStation prototype up for auction right now that'll end up going for many thousands of dollars by the time it's over. We've got devices today from both Sony and Nintendo that are far more powerful, more capable, more usable in every way. New devices don't look like the beige monstrosities of the early days of personal computers - that's not this, but this is not about that. This is about proof that the ephemeral world of gaming has a strange, awesome past.

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This January of 2020 an auction is set to take place with a set of artworks from several artists, one of whom is Damien Hirst. Of interest in this auction is a relatively old Damien Hirst artwork by the name of "Bodies", originally sold in the year 1989. The artwork is one of the first 4 medicine cabinets that'd eventually make a suite of 12, and it was purchased for a sum of £600
- converting that amount in 1989 to dollars hits around USD$1k.

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Plastic cards tried to make paper cash a thing of the past and phones are now trying to return the favor. All of these payment systems, however, have one thing in common. They all require you to carry something with you, something you could potentially lose. Your hand, on the other hand, is always by your side (hopefully) which is why Amazon is reportedly looking into technology that will let people pay with just their palm.

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Back in the days when phones weren't exactly smart, the only way people could browse the Web was often through Opera. In the age of smartphones and Google Chrome, however, Opera has become almost a legacy, a legacy that might soon be tarnished by the company's own actions. It turns out that Opera is using what can only be described as predatory loan apps on Android to make a profit but could, in turn, get it banned from Google Play Store for good.

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Pokemon cards are now being sold on StockX. StockX is an auction/sales site that goes the extra mile when it comes to authenticating the source of a wide variety of items, centering on sneakers, artwork, and other highly sought-after representations of modernity. Before now, the "Trading Cards" category included only sports - Basketball, Baseball, Football, and Hockey. Now it includes Pokemon!

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It's a classic story of selling a multi-million-dollar video game character on a digital sale site for $500 - we've all heard it. This particular story takes place in China, and starts with a video game "whale" - a rich person who spends boatloads of cash on video games. This whale, Lu Mou, spent 8 million to 10 million yuan (the equivalent of around $1.4 million USD) in a video game, creating a powerful in-game character with in-game purchases.

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With many tech companies dipping their toes in the personal finance pool, it won't be long before we see Google attempt to do the same. Google confirmed today that it will soon begin offering checking accounts to its user base. Internally, this new service is code-named Cache, and it seems the big G has plans to launch it at some point in 2020.

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A pair of AirPod Pro earbuds were customized by the same folks who brought you several diamond-encrusted iPhones. They've suggested that the "Caviar AirPods Pro Gold Edition" is an extravagant package the likes of which only one person will ever own. They've suggested that the body of each of the AirPod Pro buds is "one-piece 750-content gold."

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If NBC follows through with today's report, they'd be the first "totally free streaming video service" to be delivered by a major media provider. Of course, said streaming video provider wouldn't likely be delivered COMPLETELY free. Instead, today's report means it's likely NBC's Peacock will be free, with advertisements. So sorta like what Hulu did when they started... only a little bit different.

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