Who Is the CryptoMom, and Why Do Crypto Startups Like Her?
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With your money briefing, I'm J.R. Whalen at The Wall Street Journal in New York. There's cryptocurrency, there's Bitcoin, and then there's the crypto mom. We'll explain who she is in a moment. First, these money and market stories you should know. The cost of renting housing shot up last year, offering residential landlords a respite before another crush of new apartment supply hits the market this year. Rents rose 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2018. That's 2.5% higher than during the same period in 2017 and the best performance since 2015. The Journal's Real Estate Bureau reports that rent growth is now hovering just above the long-term average of nearly 3%, indicating the market is fairly evenly balanced between landlords and tenants.
This year, developers are expected to complete another 319,000 new units. That's up from this year's still aggressive figure of 287,000 units. That's the largest influx of new apartment supply. in roughly three decades. And for those buying a house for the first time looking for a loan, one of their first phone calls isn't to Chase or Wells Fargo, it's to mom and dad. A little more than a quarter of mortgage borrowers who used FHA-insured loans got assistance from a relative to make the down payment in the 12 months through September of last year.
Who is Hester Peirce and why is she called the 'CryptoMom'?
That's up from about 22% in 2011. Now, though the pace of home price growth has slowed, Prices are still consistently rising year over year, and higher mortgage rates are making buying more expensive. But homeowners who get help with their down payments have generally been viewed as riskier because they have sunk less money into their property and thus have less to lose by walking away if home prices drop or if they're laid off from their job. The FHA says that since September 2011, 7.6% of those in which a family member helped with the down payment are now delinquent for 90 days or more. That's above the 5.2% rate for FHA homeowners who did not get assistance, but it's less than the 9.3% rate for those who got assistance from a party besides a relative or the government.
Cryptocurrency investors face a lot of heat and frustration, precipitous declines in currency values, a lack of broad government oversight, and a fuzzy crystal ball when it comes to the future of crypto startups and currencies. But they do have a crypto mom. Who is the crypto mom? Well, Wall Street Journal financial regulation reporter Dave Michaels is on the line with us with some details. So, Dave, just help us understand who Hester Peirce is. She is known by some as the crypto mom. She sits on the Securities and Exchange Commission and she's a Republican.
That's right. She is a relatively new SEC commissioner who got this nickname crypto mom shortly after she was the only SEC commissioner to support what would have been an exchange-traded fund tracking the price of Bitcoin that was offered or at least conceived of as an investment product by the Winklevoss brothers earlier of Facebook fame. And the SEC rejected the idea of this ETF, but Commissioner Peirce was the only commissioner who said that it should have been allowed to be marketed and sold. And she issued a very long dissent explaining why she thought the SEC got it wrong and that this happened back in the summer. It really got portions of the crypto market really jazzed about her reasoning and the potential for her sort of advocacy for their point of view at this regulatory agency.
Yeah, I would imagine they're very excited. Bitcoin enthusiasts trying to launch funds that would bring the cryptocurrency to small investors have been rejected at least 10 times by the SEC. Many of the big banks also don't want to dip their toes into the crypto waters at all. But to hear that they've got some support on the inside, I think your word jazzed seems appropriate.
That's the status that she's gotten, the status within the market, which is, I mean, that's a fairly amorphous term. I realize there are lots of different types of investors and participants in this, in the crypto market from, you know, from just the pure Bitcoin sort of traders and speculators to those that are, you know, deeper into the blockchain ecosystem.
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