(NEW YORK) — Cryptocurrencies affiliated with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump plummeted in the initial hours after Trump was sworn into office Monday.
“Official Trump,” a recently launched crypto token, plunged more than 20% in value over a 24-hour stretch ending Tuesday morning, according to crypto tracking site CoinGecko. After the drop, Official Trump stood at $38.
The decline for Trump’s meme coin reverses some of the gains enjoyed in an initial surge after it hit crypto markets last week. The coin’s price climbed from about $10 on Saturday morning to a high of about $74.59 before it began to slide.
“Melania Meme,” which also launched last week, dropped in value by more than half over a 24-hour timespan ending on Tuesday morning, CoinGecko data showed. The price of the Melania Meme was $4.19 on Tuesday morning.
The recent decline for the coins associated with Trump and Melania coincided with a slight drop for bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency. In early trading on Tuesday, bitcoin fell nearly one percentage point, putting its price at $102,853.
Many digital assets have climbed since Trump won the November election, indicating investor enthusiasm about declarations Trump made in support of cryptocurrency.
In July, Trump told the audience at a cryptocurrency conference in Nashville, Tennessee, that he wanted to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
Trump also has promised to ease regulations for the sector and establish the federal government’s first National Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
On Monday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler officially resigned from his position, marking the departure long-sought by some crypto boosters who viewed Gensler as overly restrictive toward digital assets.
There have been reports that Trump would sign an executive action that would prioritize cryptocurrency policy. However, no such order was among the dozens of actions Trump signed
(NEW YORK) — Homebuyers eager to forget this year’s housing market may ring in 2025 with an extra dash of zeal.
A rapid rise in home prices has coincided with stubbornly high mortgage rates, shutting out potential buyers with daunting costs.
A burst of supply could have eased prices, but no such relief was forthcoming. Instead, homeowners have balked at swapping out their current mortgage rates for higher ones, and construction has failed to make up for a long-standing shortage in new homes.
Unfortunately, next year’s housing market will likely bring more of the same, experts told ABC News.
Home prices may rise at a slower pace, offering a glimmer of hope as high mortgage rates fall slightly but continue to weigh on consumer activity, they said.
Still, the market appears locked into a fundamental mismatch of supply and demand set to frustrate buyers, the experts added.
“I don’t see much sunshine in the forecast,” Ken Johnson, chief of real estate at the University of Mississippi, told ABC News. “It’s going to be gloomy and overcast, but it’s not going to be stormy.”
An unusual trend has beguiled buyers: Home prices are soaring, despite a prolonged stretch of high mortgage rates that, in theory, should crimp demand and push down prices.
Market observers who spoke to ABC News said they expect both price increases and mortgage rates to ease in 2025 — but only a smidge.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage stands at 6.85%, FreddieMac data last week showed. That figure has ticked up slightly since the start of the year, despite a series of interest rate cuts at the Federal Reserve in recent months.
Earlier this month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said rate cuts may slow over the course of 2025. Such a policy would leave mortgage rates higher for longer, experts said.
Redfin, a Seattle, Washington-based real estate giant, forecasts average 30-year fixed mortgage rates will remain in the high 6% range over the duration of 2025. Online real estate marketplace Zillow says mortgage rates will fall, but only moderately.
Alongside persistently high mortgage rates, experts predicted a continued, albeit slower, rise in home prices.
In September, Goldman Sachs predicted a 4.4% rise in home prices in 2025, which would mark a slight decline from the 4.5% rise in 2024.
The persistence of high mortgage rates will put some downward pressure on prices, since demand will soften as many consumers forego expensive loans, experts said, but the high rates will also exacerbate a lack of supply that has kept prices soaring.
Current homeowners will want to remain locked into relatively low mortgage rates. Homebuilding will deliver much-needed supply of new homes, but it will fall well short of the amount required to meet demand, experts said.
“I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn’t feel like prices are going to moderate that much,” Marc Norman, associate dean at the New York University School of Professional Studies and Schack Institute of Real Estate, told ABC News. “If you don’t have a lot on the market, that’s going to put pressure on prices.”
Experts who spoke to ABC News acknowledged that economic forces could defy expectations, leaving the housing market in better or worse shape than anticipated.
Faster-than-expected progress in bringing inflation down to the Fed’s target level could free up the central bank to slash interest rates, which in turn would lower mortgage rates, some experts said. An economic downturn would damage household finances and ease demand, likely leading to a drop in home prices, they added.
If inflation proves more stubborn than expected, however, interest rates may stay high for even longer, experts said, which could put the housing market into an even deeper freeze.
For now, the outlook for 2025 appears clear, Christopher Mayer, a real estate professor at the Columbia University Business School, told ABC News.
“My best guess is that next year is a lot like this year,” Mayer said.
(NEW YORK) — TikTok mounted a last-ditch effort at the Supreme Court on Friday meant to stop a ban of the app set to take effect within days — but the platform’s arguments may have landed with a thud.
A majority of the justices appeared inclined to uphold a federal law that would ban the company unless it divests from China-based parent Bytedance.
TikTok has challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, claiming that a ban would limit free-expression rights on a platform used by one of every two Americans. Lower courts, however, have found merit in security concerns about potential data collection or content manipulation that could be undertaken by the Chinese government.
If the court challenge fails and TikTok forgoes a sale, the ban would take effect on Jan. 19, a day before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Experts who spoke to ABC News said the measure would not penalize individuals for accessing or using the app, even after the ban takes hold.
Here’s what to know about exactly how the potential ban would work, and how users could still access TikTok, according to experts:
How exactly would the TikTok ban work?
The law potentially banning TikTok — the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — cracks down on the app by targeting third-party companies vital to the functioning of the platform.
Specifically, the law would restrict app stores and hosting companies, which provide the digital infrastructure on which web services like TikTok depend.
Mandatory withdrawal of the app from major app stores, such as those maintained by Google and Apple, would bar new users from downloading the app and prevent existing users from updating it.
Without updates, the app would degrade in quality over time through inconveniences such as video-loading delays and performance glitches, some experts said.
“If the app were not able to download updates, it would eventually become obsolete,” Qi Liao, a professor of computer science at Central Michigan University, told ABC News.
A separate stipulation would also make it illegal for hosting companies to provide services for TikTok — and the measure offers a fairly broad characterization of such firms.
Hosting companies “may include file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting,” the law says.
TikTok would stop functioning if the firm’s U.S.-based hosting companies stopped providing services, experts said.
“For you to pull up TikTok content on your phone, somebody has to be hosting that,” said Timothy Edgar, a computer science professor at Brown University and a former national security official.
At least in theory, however, the social media giant could establish partnerships with hosting companies outside the U.S., putting them out of reach of U.S. enforcement, the experts added.
Such a move would keep TikTok available to U.S. users, but the service would likely be slower and glitchier as the digital infrastructure moves further away, they added.
“The whole point of hosting content is to have it close to users,” Edgar said. “It certainly wouldn’t work in any kind of smooth way.”
Considering potential legal liability, TikTok will likely opt against efforts to preserve its U.S.-based platform in modified form, Edgar added. Instead, he said, services may simply come to a halt, as they did in India in the immediate aftermath of the country’s 2020 ban.
“You’ll get a message saying, ‘Oh, it looks like you’re using the app in the U.S. It’s not available in your country,” Edgar said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Would TikTok users be able to access the app after the ban?
No matter the extent of potential service interruptions, users would still be able to access TikTok after the ban by using workarounds, experts said.
Users who do so will face technical hurdles and reduced app quality, Liao said. For some, that will likely prove a formidable deterrent; but others may seek out TikTok anyway.
“If they really want to use it, the user will find a way to use it,” Liao said.
Users giving it a shot can rest assured that the conduct is perfectly legal, the experts said.
“If you’re an ordinary user with TikTok on your phone, you’re not a criminal,” Edgar said. “There’s no penalty at all.”
(NEW YORK) — Holiday spending surged in 2024, blowing past expectations and outpacing customer purchases over the gift-buying season last year, according to data released on Thursday by Mastercard SpendingPulse, which gauges in-store and online retail sales.
The end-of-year flex of consumer strength marks the latest indication of resilient U.S. buying power, which has kept the economy humming despite a prolonged stretch of high interest rates.
Retail sales climbed 3.8% from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 compared with the same period last year, Mastercard SpendingPulse data showed. The boost in spending exceeded a Mastercard SpendingPulse estimate of 3.2%, while outperforming last year’s growth of 3.1%. The retail sales data excludes automotive purchases.
“Solid spending during this holiday season underscores the strength we observed from the consumer all year,” Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute, told ABC News in a statement.
Jewelry sales grew more than any other product category, climbing 4% compared to last year, the data showed. Spending on apparel and electronics also climbed at a solid pace.
The shopping surge was most pronounced online, where spending grew 6.7% compared to the same period last year, the data showed.
While the overall spending reflects the health of U.S. consumers, the pattern of purchases indicates a search for discounts, Meyer said.
“The holiday shopping season revealed a consumer who is willing and able to spend but driven by a search for value as can be seen by concentrated e-commerce spending during the biggest promotional periods,” Meyer added.
The holiday sales growth suggests the U.S. economy has remained robust, even amid high borrowing costs.
Gross domestic product grew at a solid 2.8% annualized rate over three months ending in September, the most recent quarter for which data is available.
The labor market has slowed but proven sturdy. The unemployment rate stands at 4.2%, a historically low figure.
Consumer spending accounts for nearly three-quarters of U.S. economic activity.
The increase in holiday spending coincided with an initial bout of relief for borrowers, as the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a total of one percentage point over the final few months of the year. However, interest rates still stand at a historically high level of between 4.25% and 4.5%.
Lower interest rates typically stimulate economic activity by making it easier for consumers and businesses to borrow, which in turn fuels investment and spending. However, interest rate cuts usually influence the economy after a lag of several months, meaning the recent lowering of rates likely had little impact on holiday spending.
Earlier this month, the central bank predicted fewer rate cuts next year than it had previously indicated, suggesting concern that inflation may prove more difficult to bring under control than policymakers thought just a few months ago.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, Federal Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the willingness to keep interest rates high stemmed in part from the health of the U.S. economy and the shoppers propelling it.
“We think the economy is in a really good place,” Powell said, later adding: “Growth of consumer spending has remained resilient.”
