GoKawiil
Tech News
The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage climbed for a seventh consecutive week, pushing it to its highest level since November 16, 2023. The increase continues a sustained upward trend in borrowing costs for home buyers.
Borrowers seeking small mortgages, often under $100,000, are finding it harder to secure financing even though these loans correspond to the cheapest homes on the market. A key reason is that many of the fixed costs lenders incur to originate a mortgage don't scale down with the loan size, making smaller loans less profitable to issue.
A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Financial Crime examined 72 flash loan attacks between February 2020 and July 2024 that drained $1.211 billion from DeFi platforms, part of 254 total attacks costing $6.568 billion across 20.63 billion transactions on seven blockchains. The researchers found that attacks exploiting flaws in protocol logic rose from 28% of flash loan losses in the first two years of the study to 55% in the most recent period, overtaking price oracle manipulation as the dominant technique.
The US Department of Energy has issued a $1.9 billion loan guarantee to support restarting a nuclear power plant tied to a deal with Google. The financing is meant to help bring the previously shuttered reactor back online to supply carbon-free electricity for growing data center demand.
A new survey shows roughly one in four homeowners are voluntarily paying extra toward their mortgage principal each month, aiming to shorten their loan term and reduce total interest paid. The trend comes even as broader housing affordability pressures make it harder for many other borrowers to set aside any extra cash.
Kelan and Brittany Kline, a former jail deputy and elementary school teacher, launched the personal finance blog The Savvy Couple in 2016 while paying off roughly $40,000 in student debt. The site grew into a seven-figure online business, and by 2020 the couple's combined net worth, including their business and home, surpassed $1 million.