World Business and Economic Analysis
World Business and Economic Analysis
The practice of lending has always been popular in the world of finance. It has gone through many changes over the years – from crops to cash – but the idea has generally remained the same. However, since the launch of digital currencies, a new form of lending has made itself known: crypto loans. Despite hesitance from some people, this type of lending has cultivated a group of supporters and years later, it is garnering more attention and development.
Demand for deviation from the norm
The promising demand for cryptocurrency and banking services specializing in cryptocurrency is much higher now than it ever has been. According to the PointPay platform, Internet users’ interest in purchasing cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and Ether are higher in certain cases than it was in 2017. Google Trends confirms this with data illustrating the amount of “buy cryptocurrency”, “Bitcoin”, “Ethereum”, and “Binance” requests.
Nowadays, the lending market where Bitcoin is the collateral has a value of $25 billion. Bitcoin is a frequent – and convenient – subject of collateral because confirming its ownership is easy. Furthermore, no additional assessments of such collateral are required, which is the case with real estate or other types of property.
The development and impact of DeFi
A key factor that many can argue is helping the growth of the crypto loan industry is decentralized finance (DeFi). While not the sole reason for crypto lending’s increase in popularity, its own development will influence the practice.
Most of the aspects of banking, lending, and trading are under the management of centralized systems. These systems are typically operated by gatekeepers and governing bodies. DeFi challenges this type of financial system by taking power away from middlemen and gatekeepers and transferring this power to everyday people through peer-to-peer exchanges.
By utilizing cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, DeFi can effectively manage financial transactions. DeFi’s main objective is to democratize finance by replacing conventional centralized institutions with peer-to-peer connections. Ones that can provide a wide spectrum of financial services that range from everyday banking, loans, and mortgages to complex contractual relationships and asset trading.
Defi is entering into an array of financial transactions, both simple and complicated. It gains its power from decentralized apps (DAapps) or other programs such as ‘protocols’. DApps and protocols typically deal with Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions (i.e. the two leading cryptocurrencies).
Will this prosperity last?
The Bitcoin loan market has seen exceptional growth and crypto lending as a whole has garnered a substantial audience. Whatever the reason may be for these types of loans capturing a large amount of attention, they are making their mark. Bitcoin loans in particular generate faster than traditional loans and creditworthiness is not important, meaning that paperwork isn’t either. These advantages appeal to many, which all but guarantee a continuing interest in crypto loans.
One website, however, is taking chance out of the equation by letting travelers know when hotels are most likely to surge their prices.
Offpeak.io is a website (currently in beta) that allows users to search travel dates and avoid peak hotel pricing . Culling information from city-wide events, historical weather patterns, and hotel room availability, Offpeak.io is able to show users which days and weeks hotels are most likely to have significant price changes.
cheap hotel website screenshot Offpeak.io/Travel + Leisure
One of the co-founders told Thrillist that the website was like “traffic data on your GPS,” but for hotel booking.
When searching for hotel rooms in New York City for September, for example, users will see that average nightly prices are cheapest toward the end of the month. In the middle of the month, visitors will have to contend with New York Fashion Week and the UN General Assembly, both of which push hotel room demand.
If users increase the search data to 11 months, it’s easy to see that the cheapest months to visit New York City are generally January and February.
As Offpeak.io continues to grow, it will continue to add more destinations for travelers to search. Because the website is still in a beta testing phase, users may experience a few bugs.
It’s not yet possible to book hotels through Offpeak.io (the website redirects users to Expedia), but it’s still a very useful research tool to help you plan a trip around the best hotel savings.
Read the original article on Travel + Leisure. Copyright 2017. Follow Travel + Leisure on Twitter.
Welcome to the world of nice frames and happy life! Instagram mesmerizes visitors with colors and shots. As the most favorite social network in Iran, surfing Instagram is one of the funs Iranians spend their free time with.
Young Iranian couple Aida Pouryanasab and her husband Azad Motahhari follow a different lifestyle while traveling to remote villages to help needy people by sharing photos and experiences through their Instagram account.
Aida, 28, and Azad, 39, began their new lifestyle two years ago.
“Love paved the way for us from the very beginning,” Aida said.
“Actually we are good companions since we believe that life is a way to be paved. We should be good friends and supportive [to each other] in ups and downs,” she explained.
Life is dynamic!
“The difference between us and other people is that the life for us is dynamic. In fact, we avoid stillness and habitual work. When we begin our journey, we don’t know about the destination and we just, in fact, don’t want to indulge in one place. We just turn to the first sign of village we see and this is the love which guides us,” she explained.
“We do love traveling and since many years ago we have been traveling to different parts of Iran. As we were active in the food industry and cooking, we visited households, trying their local food and asking about their rituals and unseen attractions of the place,” she said.
“However, we began helping the underclass when we visited a village in Gilan province, northern Iran,” she said.
Aida and Azad have previously operated a fast food restaurant in Tehran and now they have an online confectionary, Aizafood, through which they have employed breadwinner women in different parts of the country.
“A family had neither TV nor refrigerator. They wore shabby dresses. So, the idea of helping came to our mind and we collected some second-hand clothes for them after we returned from our journey,” she said.
Through their Instagram account, the couple have collected money for the Iranian Thalassemia Society branch in the underprivileged city of Zahedan and also for children suffering from Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) disease.
“We organized some InstaMeets and asked our followers to bring their second-hand clothes. Gradually, helping needy people in remote places became a priority for us,” she said.
The couple is travelling for half of a month and they do not define any destination before beginning of the trip.
“Our parents have their own concerns about our lifestyle, however, they respect and accept it,” Aida explained.
Aida is now a PhD student of technology management. Moreover, she composes songs. Azad is a music arranger, singer, and guitarist.
The main source of their income is their online cooking shop. “We have recently established handicraft workshops for breadwinner women in different parts of Iran through which they sell their products to big shops in Tehran and earn revenues as well,” she explained.
“When we return to our busy life in Tehran, we get engaged in tasks which are favorable to us as much as traveling but they are postponed because we are not at home.
One of them is music. We begin our musical activities as soon as we feel refresh. Azad plays guitar and recite poems composed by me and arrange them, we love music,” she said cheerfully.
“We read books together and I work on my thesis. We visit our parents and if we have time, we paint on canvas and cook confectionaries. You know music, travel and cooking are our favorites,” she added.
“We do love this kind of lifestyle, you know, the important thing is this love. It means that we have a very different kind of life in comparison with others. Maybe others do not love to live this way.”
She talked about nights they had to spend in a rural house, in a tent, or even under the sky. She said that sometimes they had to walk a long distance but this is the way they want to live!
Instagram before and after!
“I had an Instagram account before we began our village tour and it had different usages for us in different periods of time,” Aida explained.
“At first, the account was a pictorial diary for me through which I shared my daily life with my friends. Then I began to show my artworks, lovely moments of our life through my page with my friends,” she said.
“We are not alone with the help of Instagram. In fact, our followers accompany us in each travel. We do our best not to share our difficulties and unpleasant incidents we experience but to show them the better life of people after receiving help from other people,” she said.
Aida said that Instagram was influential in her own lifestyle as a place which “connects people to each other visually.”
“For us it is a medium to inform people of those who live in different places and to share the joy of a better life provided for them through the help of people,” she said.
Aida explained that they face different issues due to living in different geographical places, having different customs and eating different foods.
“Sometimes we face problems encountering rural people in different areas. That is hard to convince them of some certain standards in medical and welfare necessities,” she concluded.
Source:Tehran Times
