Watching the business news first thing is a new routine for 12-year-old South Korean Kwon Joon, as he dreams of becoming the next Warren Buffett after earning stellar returns of 43% from a hobby picked up just last year: buying stocks reut.rs/2YWc7TM 1/6
Kwon pestered his mother to open a retail trading account last April with savings of $22,400 as seed money, just as the benchmark KOSPI index began recovering from its biggest dip in a decade 2/6
'My role model is Warren Buffett,' said Kwon, who rode the steepest jump by year-end among MSCI’s country indexes 3/6
South Korea’s rookie investors like Kwon, who pursues 'value investing' in blue chip shares with funds garnered from gifts, trading mini-car toys and running vending machines, have led the blistering rise of retail trade amid the coronavirus pandemic 4/6
More retail investors are teenagers or even younger, making up more than two-thirds of the total value traded in the nation’s shares, versus less than 50% in 2019 5/6
The trend has grown as equity markets lure parents disillusioned with the education system and millennials working from home. @ckim170 has more reut.rs/3cTTkjY 6/6
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Tesla boss Elon Musk is a poster child of low-carbon technology. Yet the electric carmaker’s backing of #bitcoin this week could turbo-charge global use of a currency that’s estimated to cause more pollution than a small country every year reut.rs/3aLNzlS
Tesla revealed it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and would soon accept it as payment for cars, sending the price of the cryptocurrency through the roof
So what’s the problem, you may ask?
#Bitcoin is created when high-powered computers compete against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles, an energy-intensive process that currently often relies on fossil fuels, particularly coal, the dirtiest of them all
Zoltan Berki usually wakes up before dawn, as his five small children sleep next door, to feed the old iron furnace that stands in a wall cavity to warm up both rooms. This is the only part of his house that he can afford to heat during winter reut.rs/371mWZ8 1/7
He also has to burn some materials before daylight, to conceal the thick black smoke that billows from his chimney when he uses plastic or rubber. Such household pollution is illegal in Hungary, including in this town near the Slovakian border 2/7
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled last week that Hungary had breached pollution limits for over a decade in the Sajo river valley, as well as other areas, which could be grounds for financial penalties unless reversed 3/7
A team of experts appointed by the @WHO completed its 28-day mission to the Chinese city of Wuhan this week seeking clues about the origins of COVID-19. The following looks at their findings ⬇️ reut.rs/3tKO8ov
What are the main scenarios?
Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO’s leading animal disease expert, said the team conducted scientific investigations into four main scenarios about how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spread into humans
1️⃣ In the first, a single person was exposed to SARS-CoV-2 through direct contact with the host species, the horseshoe bat. The virus could have been circulating in humans for a while before making its breakthrough in heavily populated Wuhan
Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will open with a debate about whether the U.S. Constitution allows a former president to face trial after he has left office. Here’s a look at the five Senate Republicans who voted that the trial was constitutional reut.rs/36RCpuL 👇 1/6
Ben Sasse
The Nebraska senator handily won reelection in 2020 and is considered a potential contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He denounced Trump's false claims of widespread electoral fraud and said there was no basis to object Joe Biden's win 2/6
Lisa Murkowski
Murkowski of Alaska became the first U.S. senator in 50 years to win an election with a write-in campaign in 2010 after losing in the Republican primary. She called for Trump to resign after his supporters rioted at the Capitol 3/6
#Bitcoin took another large stride toward mainstream acceptance after Elon Musk’s Tesla revealed it had bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, sending the cryptocurrency shooting higher reut.rs/2MGNIz8
The announcement of Tesla’s investment, buried in Tesla’s 2020 annual report, follows months of tweets by Musk related to cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, sometimes helping fuel its rally reut.rs/3oYIVG5
So what’s all the fuss about?
#Bitcoin has been rallying hard, jumping over 300% in 2020, breezing past its record high reut.rs/3jB6ljN
Buying a Tesla with #Bitcoin? How payments might work:
If Tesla were to accept bitcoin payments the way other companies have, customers would transfer bitcoins from their 'digital wallets' to another entity that converts them and sends the sum to Tesla reut.rs/2YXkbU2
For example, companies including AT&T and Microsoft have accepted bitcoin through BitPay, a cryptocurrency payment processor. BitPay has facilitated payments for luxury auto dealers, but is not working with Tesla now, a representative said
Shoppers can also buy items from merchants that have never officially accepted bitcoin by using payment cards that convert the cryptocurrency into U.S. dollars ahead of the transaction