Crypto Crisis Shrinks ETF Assets in Market That Embraced Them

Layan Odeh
Financial Post

Retail investors in Canada were quick to put money into cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds after regulators allowed a proliferation of products that track Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets. They’ve lost most of it in a year.

(Bloomberg) — Retail investors in Canada were quick to put money into cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds after regulators allowed a proliferation of products that track Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets. They’ve lost most of it in a year. 

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Canadian-traded crypto ETFs had just C$1.64 billion ($1.22 billion) in assets under management as of Nov. 18, according to calculations from National Bank of Canada analyst Daniel Straus. That’s down more than three-quarters from the C$7.3 billion value in those funds on Nov. 30 last year. 

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, on the heels of other bankruptcies in the sector, has dealt a debilitating blow to confidence in digital assets. Other large crypto firms have been shaken as contagion spreads: Genesis Global, a US cryptocurrency broker, is seeking emergency funding to stay afloat, while BlockFi Inc. is also said to be in dire financial straits. 

Wall Street Beat: Why the Genesis Contagion Matters After FTX 

“The effect of FTX has likely led to a lengthening of what would be considered a crypto winter, a period of people’s lack of focus on the space or lack of trust in the space,” Som Seif, chief executive officer of Purpose Investments Inc., said in an interview. 

In a measure of how swiftly the market has changed for risk assets, a single money-market ETF managed by CI Financial Corp. now has more in assets than all the crypto ETFs listed in Canada combined. The CI fund applies the simplest investment strategy imaginable: it puts the cash into interest-paying savings accounts at commercial banks.

The vast majority of the decline in ETFs assets has come from the falling price of Bitcoin and other holdings, not from outflows, which have been small. Crypto ETFs saw C$51 million of outflows year-to-date as of Nov. 18, according to data from Straus — though C$20 million of that came in those first 18 days of this month.

Canada has pushed further than the US in allowing regulated crypto-related products. Cryptocurrencies are classified as commodities for tax purposes, and many coins and tokens are classified as securities. The regulator stepped up its efforts after QuadrigaCX, the country’s largest crypto exchange at the time, collapsed in 2019 and was later ruled to be a fraud and a Ponzi scheme perpetrated by its founder. 

“Firms like FTX are one of the reasons regulators in Canada accepted our exchange-traded products,” 3iQ Corp. Chief Executive Officer Fred Pye said in an interview.    

Still, Canadian crypto-trading platforms and exchange-traded funds tend to hold their assets with custodians in the US, such as Gemini and Coinbase. “Hopefully, this is the impetus for Canada to look at these type of situations and think, ‘Hey, maybe we should onshore these assets now,’” said Dustin Plett, an executive at Paradiso Ventures Inc., a Canadian digital-asset custodian that does business under the name Balance. 

Seif’s Purpose Investments, which launched the first directly backed Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in North America last year, expects demand to rebound over the next several months. “Long-term fundamentally, I continue to believe that more and more individuals and institutions will want to access crypto and the return streams of them,” he said.  

© 2022 Financial Post

Cryptocurrency blowout shows disruption fuelled by easy money often only disrupts your portfolio

Martin Pelletier
Financial Post

Martin Pelletier: The old saying, ‘often the best trade is the one you don’t make’, comes to mind

This past week the collapse of FTX.com sent the cryptocurrency world into a tailspin. Photo by REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

This year has been a complete train wreck for cryptocurrency investors, claiming nearly US$2 trillion in market value and billions of dollars in frozen funds.

Nearly three-quarters of bitcoin’s and ether’s value has evaporated over the past 12 months, while others such as Luna have lost nearly all their value. We think the catalyst for the bursting of this dot-com bubble 2.0 is that interest-rate hikes have put an end to highly speculative assets, much as Alan Greenspan, former United States Federal Reserve chair, did back in 1999.

This doesn’t mean segments such as cryptocurrency and blockchain technology do not have a future, but perhaps it’s just simply too early to tell what they will turn into, especially from a utility offering point of view. More concerning is that some very smart people seem to be getting this all very wrong and costing their investors.

Just last week, there was the collapse of FTX.com, a cryptocurrency exchange with some notoriety given that Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen were in on it and its name graces the Miami Heat’s arena. Its valuation was subsequently whacked, falling by nearly 80 per cent to US$530 million.

Canada’s third-largest pension-plan manager, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, invested in FTX last January as part of a US$400-million funding round that gave it an implied valuation of US$32 billion.

But let’s not forget the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in August wrote off its $150-million stake in bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network LLC.

“Celsius is the world’s leading crypto lender with a strong management team that puts transparency and customer protection at the core of their operations,” Alexandre Synnett, the Caisse’s executive vice-president and chief technology officer, said a year ago. “The (Caisse) and WestCap are eager to partner with them to share our expertise in the fintech sector as they continue to expand their services.”

So much for that plan.

Canadian pension plans have no doubt benefited by embracing the quantitative-easing-fuelled tech boom, earning some impressive returns that are only now beginning to be given back. But perhaps the latest developments in the cryptocurrency space show they pushed things too far.

As a portfolio and fund manager, the risk of having even a tiny but highly speculative position is that it blows up and the rest of your work — what the 99.9 per cent of the remaining portfolio is doing — gets ignored. You would think pension plans, or the so-called smart money, would understand this, or at least have the risk controls in place to prevent it from entering their investment process and philosophy.

That said, this doesn’t mean one shouldn’t embrace the opportunities that come with investing in early-stage technology. For example, we have a small slice of venture-cap tech, but it’s managed by a group of experts headquartered in Israel who oversee a pool of direct private investments into companies that have an actual operating business and it’s diversified across various sectors — everything from agtech and consumer software to fintech and health care.

But the one thing we don’t have are any direct cryptocurrency investments, because we simply can’t get our head around its functionality, convenience factor, which ones will be winners and losers, or even whether the entire segment is simply a losing proposition altogether. Simply put, it’s just way too speculative an investment at this stage of its life cycle even for a small position. We’re all too happy to let someone else take that risk.

There is a great saying in our business: “Often the best trade is the one you don’t make.” This type of thinking allowed us to avoid the whole Canadian legalization of marijuana trade, thankfully so given its utter collapse and the vast amounts of wealth destroyed by the hype promoted by many Canadian dealers.

Now that things have settled out, one should be able to get a better understanding of the kind of disruption legalization did or did not do.

Maybe it’s because we’re old-fashioned, but we try to avoid those sectors or companies whose business plans depend on near-zero interest rates and infinite amounts of inexpensive capital provided by the Fed and other central banks.

Scaling out a business or product and introducing true disruption that improves consumer affordability and, more importantly, convenience is easy to do when money is free, but not so much when there is a cost.

© 2022 Financial Post

Escobar is the new Android banking Trojan we’ve met before

Jovi Umawing
other

 Aberebot, a known Android banking Trojan, has changed its name and returned loaded with new features. First spotted by @MalwareHunterTeam in early March, this mobile variant was renamed “Escobar”—a homage to the Colombian drug baron—and disguised itself as a McAfee app. It went by the package name of com.escobar.pablo and the application name of “McAfee”.

BleepingComputer found a post on a Russian-speaking hacking forum that says Escobar’s creators are renting the beta version of the malware for $3,000 a month and plan to increase it to $5,000 once development is finished:

Hello dear {redacted}. I came to this group with an advice and recommendation of a friend. I am an Android malware developer and I want to start renting my private Android banking bot here. The bot is still in BETA version and it is possible to encounter errors and bugs so for this month I will rent the bot to maximum 5 customers.

This new Aberebot variant widens its information-stealing capabilities by accessing features built-in to smartphones to get as much information as it can, to take complete control of victim accounts, empty accounts, and perform unauthorized transactions.

Among the 25 permissions it asks from users, it abuses 15, enabling the malware to (among other things) record audio, read and send SMS messages, take screenshots, uninstall apps, get the precise location of device, and download media files from victims’ devices.

Escobar can steal Google Authenticator multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes, SMS call logs, key logs, and notifications, which it sends to its C2 server.

Lastly, Escobar gives device control to affiliate malware distributors using VNC Viewer, a screen-sharing tool with remote control features. Once the phone is unattended, threat actors can, essentially, do what they want with the device.

Cyble, the cybersecurity company that wrote extensively about Aberebot and Escobar, asserts that highly sophisticated malware like Escobar can only be distributed from sources outside the Google Play Store.

Google Play is far from perfect, but the best way to minimize the chance of becoming infected with Escobar is to stick to downloading apps from there. Android users should also enable Google Play Protect on their device, and use a mobile security solution.

Malwarebytes users are already protected from Escobar. We detect it as Android/Trojan.BankBot.Esco.c.

Stay safe!

© 2022 All Rights Reserved

The REAL Takeaway From The News Of Zillow Buying ShowingTime

Tom Ferry
other

 Peter Drucker told us many years ago: All business is innovation and marketing.

We should know this. We should collectively strive for this.

Yet what do we see when someone innovates to provide a better customer experience in real estate?

Outrage. Fear. Consternation. Condemnation.

If you felt any of those emotions when you heard the news that Zillow purchased ShowingTime, it may be time for a long, hard look at yourself.

It’s time to use this news as a wake-up call and channel your misplaced energy into action.

Disruption is a Part of Life… Or Certainly Business

Disruptors have always existed. And as long as people continue seeking better ways of doing business, they will always exist.

Zillow is just being Zillow. They’re innovating. They’re marketing. They’re creating a consumer-friendly alternative to an industry that sometimes feels stuck in the dark ages.

Taking those two things into account – disruptors will always exist and Zillow is just doing their thing…

The question is not “What can be done to stop them?”

The question is this: What are YOU doing to compete?

It’s Time to Look Within

If this announcement struck fear in you, my hope for you is to use this “scare” to do more of what you know you should be doing. The question to ask yourself now is “How can this get me to innovate and actually do better?”

Here are five questions to ask yourself to break it down to the nitty gritty:

• Who is my customer?
• What are their problems?
• How am I going to solve them in a unique way?
• How am I going to do it at scale?
• How am I going to build my team so I can bring consistent value to my customers and attract more of them?

Now is the time to put yourself in a “wartime general” mindset.

It’s not about running around with your hair on fire…

It’s about remaining calm in the face of adversity and challenges.

It’s about taking a step back, assessing the situation, and asking yourself the right questions to get into massive action.

This Won’t Be the Last Big Zillow Announcement

Whether you want to accept it or not, this won’t be Zillow’s last big announcement.

They’re a brokerage now. They’re one of your competitors. They’re going to keep doing their thing.

And more disruptors will be seeking ways to infiltrate our industry every day.

So you have two options: Keep complaining about their every move and eventually get squeezed out entirely, or get your butt in gear to compete by:

• Building a more trusted brand. Your brand has to be everywhere in your localized market
• Bringing the most value and being of service to your past clients and sphere to stay top of mind
• Maybe expanding your geo farm
• It might be time to upgrade your website
• Or to start thinking more strategically about your video content and how to drive traffic back to your website
• To counter their moves with the addition of localized Google ads

The point is… there’s plenty of work to be done, so why waste your energy worrying about what some industry behemoth is doing when instead you can channel it into your own improvement?

Go execute… because that’s the ultimate way to create the degree of separation.

And if you need help, we’re always here to guide your journey, help you make the right decisions, and keep you focused and in action.

© Tom Ferry – #1 Coach in Real Estate Training. All rights reserved.

No-payment mortgage scheme floated in Vancouver

Frank O’Brian
Western Investor

Instead of monthly payments, the lender takes a percentage of the home’s appreciation under a aimed at the refinancing of existing home loans, not buyers

A Vancouver firm is aiming to revamp the residential mortgage landscape in North America, but the high down payment required would make it unworkable for most home buyers, a mortgage expert says.

Fraction Technologies Inc. revealed February 10 it’s raised $289 million in a mix of equity and debt financing from Primetime Partners, Panache Ventures and Impression Ventures among others.

The company has developed a platform whereby customers take out loans with interest rates tied to the appreciation of their home’s value. It is designed primarily at existing homeowners who wish to refinance. 

There would be no monthly mortgage payments as required under conventional mortgage loans.

The $289 million raised by Fraction is supporting those loans. 

“For us it’s really about how can we make a difference in homeowners’ lives. We put the homeowner first, not the banks,” CEO and co-founder Hayden James told BIV.

Instead of monthly rates, the interest rate is payable upon the sale of the home.

If, for instance, a home appreciates an average of 5 per cent over a five-year-term, that then becomes the effective rate.

If a home depreciates in value, Fraction charges a minimum rate of 3.49 per cent.

For homes that appreciate significantly — a trend Vancouverites can attest to — Fraction charges a maximum rate of 7.99 per cent.

The funds can also be used to invest in rental property, according to the company.

There is caveat on the scheme, however, for anyone who wants to use the program for a home purchase: a home buyer must be able to afford a 60 per cent down payment, compared to a minimum of from 5 per cent to 20 per cent in the conventional mortgage market.

According to the Fraction website, “If you have 60 per cent down on a home, you can work with Fraction to purchase the home with no monthly payments.”

On the typical home in Metro Vancouver, now priced at $1.1 million, the buyer would be required to put down $660,000 cash to secure Fraction financing.

“This looks crazy,” said Peter Kinch, a Port Moody-based mortgage broker and consultant with Mortgage Alliance, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. ”Unless I’m missing something.”

Aside from the high down payment, Kinch noted that the scheme would only work in markets with strong asset appreciation

“It may not fly in Calgary,” he said.

As well, for homeowners who experience negative appreciation the interest rate charged on funding is about three times higher than the current five-year mortgage rate, he added.

The strategy is aimed at existing home owners with substantial equity who want to refinance without making monthly payments. But, as Kinch noted, conventional reverse mortgages are available at similar lending rates.

The genesis of the company emerged from time James and co-founder Josh Baker spent working on a separate technology product for a real estate brokerage.

“We had seen our friends and family had to sell their homes in order to access their home equity. And then on the other side we got to see a lot of investors that were looking to buy property but then not rent it out, which is kind of the classic Vancouver story,” James said.

The pair briefly explored the idea of whether they could bridge that gap and find a way for people to sell shares in their homes.

“We came to the conclusion pretty quickly it was a pretty bad idea,” James recalled, explaining why the company shifted its focus.

The company has grown from three to 10 employees since December and James hopes to expand that headcount to 30 employees by the end of the year.

Most of Fraction’s employees are based in Vancouver, however, the company maintains an office in northern California where co-founder Rayan Rafay is based.

Fraction’s platform is currently available to homeowners in B.C. and Ontario.

“The Fraction Appreciation Mortgage is ideal for older adults eager to age in place but faced with insufficient retirement funds to cover the cost of their healthcare and other expenses,” according to Abby Miller Levy, managing partner of Primetime Partners, which is among the Fraction backers.

As Kinch noted, it would likely not be of any help to younger buyers trying to get into the market because of the risks and the substantial equity required for the financing.

© Copyright 2020 Western Investor

GameStop stock mania continues, and regulators are monitoring the action ? here?s what market experts are watching

Kat Facchini
other

 The activity in GameStop continued Thursday, and it’s caught the eye of regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission said late Wednesday that it is “actively monitoring” the surge.

With regulators starting to take action, many questioned what this week’s events mean for the broader market. Seven experts weigh in on what to watch.

Billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban noted how the market may not be that different; it’s the demographics that are changing.

“The reality is you just have to run your company and do your best. That doesn’t change the fundamentals of the company at all. In so many respects, it’s window dressing and if you are an owner of American Airlines, you’re an owner of GameStop, hopefully prior to all this, hopefully you owned it for a good reason and you believe in the company. All the manipulation — not even manipulation — all the swings in the price of the stock, it’s all just mishegoss, right? If it’s a good company, it’s a good company, and if it’s bad company, it’ll end up going out of business, and the people who bought it just to speculate some will make money, some will lose money, but that’s just the way the market’s always worked. The only thing that’s really changed is the speed and the density, and the reduction in friction for smaller traders to trade. That’s the only thing that’s changed.”

Allianz’s chief economic advisor, Mohamed El-Erian, mulled whether this moment in the market was a sign of a bigger problem, or just an exciting opportunity.

“It is enabled by very distorted financial conditions. Look, there’s four levels to this element, and you’ve been covering them. One is the pure hedge fund versus retail anti-establishment. That doesn’t have broader market implication or financial stability. The second one is the change in market structure. The third one is the interest of regulators and politicians. And then the fourth one is the one that really has a lot of market implication. Is this the beginning of the accident we worried about because of overleverage, excessive risk-taking, or is this simply another buy-the-dip opportunity for market participants as hedge funds de-gross? That is the key element for your 401(k). The other stuff is really interesting, but the bottom line is, do you believe this is the canary in the coal mine or is this yet another buy-the-dip opportunity?”

When asked about the outcry against hedge funds, former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton urged transparency.

“If you’re doing one thing and saying another, or you come on and say something and then immediately shift course, that’s inappropriate behavior. In many cases, it’s unlawful and nobody should be doing that. Whether it’s traditional pump and dump [or] more sophisticated forms of manipulation, that should be rooted out. There’s no question about that. And whether the transparency we have in our marketplace around particular positions is appropriate is something that we should be continually examining. Like I said, I think the U.S. market in terms of short positions is probably more transparent than any other, but as things change, there’s always room for improvement.”

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian explained the personal element for retail investors, and how the internet is continuing to change the market.

“I think the thing that for me has been so clear is that this, like a lot of things on the internet that really go viral and take on a life of their own, has become something much bigger. I think, even just looking at the comments around the internet, it’s something that’s very personal to a lot of people, and a chance for Joe and Jane America, the sort of retail buyers of stock, to flex back and push back on these hedge funds. I do think this is a seminal moment. I don’t think we go back to a world before this because these communities they’re a byproduct of the connected internet. Whether it’s one platform or another, this is the new normal. We’ve watched the internet now over the last 10 or 15 years thanks to the rise of social media and all this infrastructure really bring a bottom-up revolution in so many industries. We’ve seen this across media, we’ve seen this across so many different sectors, and now it is happening to finance. It’s nothing short of remarkable, and I really do think this is really the start of a new era for how we’re going to perceive the public markets and the interaction with consumers with it.”

Insider Inc. co-founder and CEO Henry Blodget spoke about how history could repeat itself and urged caution for investors.

“When I heard Alexis Ohanian this morning, who I have great respect for, saying this is something completely new, it’s small folks combatting the big institutions, it’s just such an echo of what we heard in the 1990s. As David Tepper was just saying, it was exactly the same story, it was a new mechanism, chat boards. Yes, we’ve removed even more trading friction now with some of the new platforms that make it even easier to trade. That will accelerate this, but this is more than just an echo. This is a repeat of something we have seen again and again through history. … Well, I think we know how it ends. Call up some stock charts from 2000 to 2002, and you get a picture of how it is very much likely to end. I remember sitting in my office in 1998, which was two years before the peak so it can last for much longer than you think, watching a stock called K-tel which was an old, sort of music retailer from my childhood then, that suddenly did exactly what GameStop is doing. It was this new thing, it was exciting, it was some reflection of the future plans of the company, all the stories around it, it went right back to where it was beforehand. That is the scenario that I think is very likely for most of these stocks, and I would just urge anybody who has not been through this before … please don’t bet more than you can afford to lose.”

Gabriela Santos, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, pushed for focus on fundamentals in the long run.

“The way that we think about it is in the short term stock prices for individual companies or for the broader market can be driven by a whole variety of things – by sentiment, by speculative behavior – but over the long run, the prices of stocks should be driven by fundamentals, or earnings. And so when we think about our allocation to individual companies, we have to think about whether the price movement is merited by fundamentals or not, and then we can think about whether it’s appropriate to keep that stock or to sell that stock. But I think it’s going back to our playbook which is all about long-term fundamentals driving stock prices.”

Galaxy Digital’s chairman and CEO, Michael Novogratz, advised to sell, but also spoke about how generational conflict may be spreading to the market.

“I had a friend call me [Wednesday]. He said, ‘Oh, my God, I bought AMC.’ I called him up and said, ‘Sell it instantly.’ Listen, if you got in on the short squeezes early, great for you. You had the little guy taking it to the hedge fund managers and you put three literally legendary investors out of business almost. But you’re now at levels on all these stocks where you’re guaranteed – I’m not sure if it’s a day, or two days, or five days, or two weeks –  but you’re guaranteed to lose money if you hold them. And so it’s a game of pass the parcel. What’s really interesting is how much volume is trading. GameStop traded like $25 billion of volume [Wednesday]. So there’s turnover. There’s new people buying from the original guys that squeezed this thing. What’s also interesting … is there is an anger. I spent an hour last night on the Reddit chat and it’s shocking how angry. There’s a nihilism that’s going on out there, which I do think is reminiscent of the time. I think we saw it at the Capitol Building. I think we saw it in Black Lives Matter protests. People are crying for systems change. This is generational. This is millennials and Gen Z screaming at boomers, saying ‘You screwed up our planet, you screwed up our economics, you screwed up our future, and screw you.’ And so, I think there’s a lot going on here besides the squeeze that is societal, but from a markets perspective, sell and sell soon.”

© 2021 CNBC LLC

Canadian property techs are in danger of dying from data starvation

Haider-Moranis
other

Haider-Moranis: These startups represent the future of real estate and should be encouraged, not thwarted

The combination of artificial intelligence and big data is transforming businesses across the economy.  

In real estate, it has led to the emergence of so-called prop-tech, a class of technologies that address all different aspects of the real estate buying and selling process. While prop-tech is thriving in the U.S., it has not caught on to the same degree in Canada. The problem isn’t a lack of innovative algorithms — it’s access to data. 

A 2018 report by McKinsey Global Institute estimated that neural networks-based deep learning algorithms have the potential to “enable the creation of between $3.5 trillion and $5.8 trillion in value annually.” But such value creation is possible when the sophistication of algorithms is matched by the richness of the available data.

For Canadian prop-tech to be a part of that trillion-dollar value generation, real estate transaction data must be available to those who have the technical know-how to create products and services to enable informed and efficient decisions. 

Recently, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) has cut off a data feed to a company called Bungol Inc., which operates a prop-tech business, for violating the “Authorized User Agreement.” With no new data, Bungol will struggle to survive as its user base shifts to other channels.

Bungol started operating as a Virtual Office Website (VOW) in 2018.Jack Zhang, a tech-savvy young entrepreneur, established the firm when the Competition Tribunal instructed TRREB (then known as Toronto Real Estate Board or TREB) to allow brokerages to share listings and sold data with prospects who have signed in and registered with a password-protected VOW. 

Before the Competition Tribunal ruling, brokerages were restricted from sharing sold data online with their clients. Brokerages could only show listings online. A federal court ruled in favour of the Competition Bureau against TREB that enabled brokerages to put sold data to good use.

Several innovative firms of various sizes and scope benefited from the ruling and launched innovative real estate businesses. We have written in this space about Nobul.com, which is also a VOW that enables a digital marketplace for buyers, sellers and real estate agents to find each other.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Bungol is similar to Nobul. These businesses represent the future of real estate in Canada and are helping to redefine what a real estate brokerage can be in the twenty-first century. To understand the new model, let’s first look at the old model.

The traditional brokerage model involves a broker of record who established a physical office. For many years, fax machines were the instrument of choice in sharing documents. Buyers and sellers had to sign the print copies of contracts to be legally binding. Agents would drive back and forth between buyers, sellers, lawyers and financial institutions to finalize a deal.

Over the years, accommodations were made to accept digital signatures in place of physical signatures on paper so that contract documents could be signed and transferred electronically. Though other small improvements were made to benefit from the advances in technology, not much was accomplished for more intensive use of real estate data.

Instead, real estate boards in Canada have considered data as proprietary, and the user agreements specify howbrokerages may or may not use it. In an earlier directive, TREB cautioned members that its “data cannot be scraped, mined, sold, resold, licensed, reorganized or monetized in any way, including through the sale of derivative products or marketing reports.”

Bungol is a millennial-run brokerage that understands how smartphone obsessed millennials are likely to interact with the real estate sector.

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Bungol has no agents working in the office. It finds prospects and refers them to short-listed agents in other brokerages for a referral fee. It uses data to help buyers and sellers find each other with the help of a real estate agent. It is innovative while adhering to the traditional real estate model.

Technology is expediting the growth of innovative business models. It enables businesses to reach scale in just a few years. Before the use of information technology became ubiquitous, such growth took decades, if not more.

Bungol and others like it are struggling tech startups in the prop-tech domain in Canada. These startups will not survive if they are denied data. Their innovative algorithms and business models will die due to data starvation. Such an outcome will not be in the interest of the real estate industry that should embrace technology as others have.

© 2020 Financial Post

Everything you need to know about adding a live stream open house to your REALTOR.ca listing

Nabil Imani
BCREA

Please note: various jurisdictions have offered differing health and safety guidelines about showing property. REALTORS^® should put safety first, follow health advice and only use the live stream feature when permitted.

We know the COVID-19 pandemic is severely impacting the way REALTORS^® normally do business. That’s why we’re making it a priority to adapt with the ever-changing guidelines and rules set by government officials and healthcare professionals, so REALTORS^® have the tools they need.

We recently added the ability to advertise live stream open houses on REALTOR.ca listings.

As virtual showcases and livestreaming open houses on social media become the new normal replacing real-life open houses, we encourage REALTORS^® to take advantage of this new feature.

We know change can be difficult and we want to make it easier for you to adopt this new feature. We’ve answered nine of your frequently asked livestreaming questions to help you become a pro. Ready? Set. Action.  

• What can I use livestreaming for?

You can use livestreaming services to showcase your listings and engage with buyers remotely and in real-time. You can tour the home, walk through the property and neighbourhood, and answer questions directly with buyers. 

• What streaming platforms does REALTOR.ca support?

REALTOR.ca supports all streaming platforms.

• I am new to livestreaming; how do I get started?

Below are some guides that explain how to set up livestreaming on popular platforms. Note, platforms may change their set-up process over time. You can also do a Google search, “How to schedule a live stream on…” to find additional resources.

• What URL do I use to schedule my live stream on member.REALTOR.ca?

While setting up your live stream on your chosen streaming platform (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), you will be given a direct URL. You must use that direct URL on member.REALTOR.ca to link to your live stream on REALTOR.ca.

• How do I know if my board or association is sending my live stream information to REALTOR.ca?

Please check with your board or association to see whether they will send your live stream information to REALTOR.ca. However, if your board or association allows you to input your live stream information at the MLS^® system level, and allows CREA visibility to this information, you will see your live stream information on the Listing Input page.

• Can buyers watch my live stream on REALTOR.ca?

No, your live stream will not be hosted on REALTOR.ca; therefore, buyers will not be able to watch your live stream on REALTOR.ca. Buyers will be re-directed to the streaming platform of your choice to watch and access your live stream.

• How will my scheduled live stream look on REALTOR.ca?

A link to your live stream will be prominently displayed on your REALTOR.ca listing. On desktop, your live stream link will be displayed under the Description section. On mobile, your live stream link will be displayed above the Description section for higher visibility. We cannot control how the live stream option will display on DDF^® listings as it is up to the discretion of the partner.

• Can I schedule a private live stream for just my clients?

Some live stream platforms allow you to schedule private sessions, however, you should not link private live stream sessions on your REALTOR.ca listings.

• Can I use pre-recorded videos?

While some platforms allow you to save previously recorded sessions, it’s not recommended to schedule these as live streams on REALTOR.ca as you cannot interact with your audience in real-time. You can add previously recorded videos and virtual tours to your listing. (Please note: MLS^® System fields may vary by board or association).

Do you have tips for filming a live stream open house? Share them in the Comments below.

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Investment follows a $49 million incentive from the federal government to entice the financial giant to B.C.

Tyler Orton
Western Investor

Ottawa is putting up nearly $50 million to boost the presence of Mastercard Inc. in Vancouver with the launch of a $510 million cyber security centre.

The credit card company announced Thursday (January 23) that the West Coast city would be the home of its sixth global technology centre — one focused on developing technologies to thwart cyber attacks in the payments arena.

In a bid to entice the financial giant to B.C., the federal government dipped into its Strategic Innovation Fund to the tune of $49 million.

A February 2019 analysis from The Logic revealed just over half the fund’s recipients were foreign firms, at the time the story was published.

Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga said in a statement, “The Vancouver centre will help us meet the growing demand for technology solutions to reduce the cost of cyber-attacks, enable today’s connected devices to become tomorrow’s secure payment devices and address the growing vulnerabilities associated with the Internet of Things.”

Mastercard’s new Intelligence and Cyber Centre will be based at The Exchange office tower on Howe Street, which counts Amazon.com Inc. among its tenants.

The Mastercard office houses Vancouver-founded cyber security firm NuData Security Inc., which Mastercard acquired in 2017.

Mastercard said in a statement the new centre will be “creating and maintaining” a total of 380 jobs, while the federal government estimated the new sit would create 100 new co-op positions.

NuData already employs about 100 workers in its downtown office, leaving Mastercard to hire about 300 more workers to meet the needs of the cyber centre.

Jill Tipping, CEO of the B.C. Tech Association, told Business in Vancouver Mastercard was clearly enticed by access to talent and the city’s connections with key markets around the world.

“I’m thrilled that they’re recognizing Vancouver as a great place to launch, but it makes it even more important that we put the investment into supporting our local homegrown companies,” she said.

“We’re going to continue to be attractive to major multinationals making foreign direct investments and that’s a good thing — but only if we make the investments to ensure that we have a balanced tech ecosystem.”

Tipping added that one of the other benefits of bringing in a company like Mastercard will be its ability to cultivate local talent.

“When major multinationals come to town and set up shop tackling big global problems, one of the things they do is they basically provide learning and growth opportunities on how to tackle scale-up problems, how to run a global business [and] how things happen at the multinational level.”

Mastercard is the most recent international company to show an interest in Vancouver.

Earlier this week, Silicon Valley-based fintech company Tipalti Inc. announced it was opening an office in the city next month, while fellow California tech firm Grammarly Inc. opened a 3,000-square-foot site in Gastown last fall.

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