Summary of random news
Once a buzzword, digital transformation is reshaping markets
Buzzwords trending has been a joke/meme in the tech word just to highlight the companies with extraordinary growth due to rabid digital uptake. However, the pandemic has turned the meme into new reality allowing many SaaS to thrive speeding up the cloud business to transform businesses into their digital forms quicker. Saleforce and Box are the prime examples in this phenomena.
Russia releases $500m loan to Belarus as west imposes sanctions
Russia released a second tranche of 500M as credit to Belarus in response to the West’s sanction. Belarus hijacked a commercial European flight with a fighter jet to arrest an activist Roman Protasevich, a long time opponent of Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko. Belarus’s Brazen is a wake up call for the West of how far a tyrannical government can go and we on the West cannot simply resonate. It certainly posts lots of alerts to how these countries will further impose threats to the rest of the world.
The rise of crypto laundries: how criminals cash out of bitcoin
Last year cyber criminal has earn 350m in crypto ransoms paid out to hacker gangs, such as DarkSide, the group that shut down the Colonial Pipeline earlier this month.More Forensic firms have been raising funds to develop to counter these criminals. Their number one goal is to turn cryptocurrency into fiat currency. One way to do so is to leverage tumblers and mixers tool that mix legitimate transaction with the illicit funds. One good way to detect this bad actors is to monitor the entities with higher rate of cashing out because there is actually fewer needs to cash out in order to sustain your business models. Some countermeasures include more funding into the forensic firms to develop tools, impose serious forfeiture, and tout the idea of having shared blacklists of wallets known to be used by bad actors – a kind of Interpol alert, with exchanges, analytics groups, and the government openly sharing information on their investigations in order to make this possible.
Thrill-seeking traders send ‘meme stocks’ soaring as crypto tumbles
As the infatuation for speculative crypto investing comes to a stop after melt down since early May, many reports show that enthusiasm for meme stocks returns and currently AMC Inc stock price has increased over 200% for the past weeks. The fervour for meme stocks are due to the young generations’ investing style. Investing style is believed to be the drive to investing boldly among young generations while the traditional view on healthy investing depends on carefully selections of specific sectors. Some experts argue that these young investors will eventually turn back to be a long term investor while others claim these savvy young people started a new way of investing. The social curb that affects the market seem to cause many froth is tame so the passion and fervour to bet on meme stocks have returned among the young generations between 18 and 40.
Wall Street’s new love affair with China
The biggest financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have been pushing hard to enter the China market. Recently MSM has reported the wealth management partnership between Goldman Sachs and ICBC in Canada. Chinese ICBC executives show immerse interest in having credible and experienced foreign financial firms such as Goldman Sachs to provide great saving plans for the Chinese citizens and believe they have more developed system and mature management. Statistics has shown the citizens on average put 60% on their savings on real estate and 27% deposit which experts claim that it indicated the young investment mindset in China. What Goldman Sachs want is to offer products that allow them to access the wealth of ICBC’s 680M clients and also opened up other offshore investing opportunities. “China is where the growth is” says one JPMorgan analysts.
The attitudes of Wall Street is jarringly opposed to the political situations between the two countries especially after the suppression of Hong Kong and XinJiang’s freedom and human rights, and China’s threat on Taiwan and the South East Asian sea. Wall Street in general believes US firms haven’t merged into the Chinese market fast enough due to the sway of the Chinese Communist Party in power since 1949. Even though Wall Street firms wish to push for faster integration, many factors involved caused firms to take pragmatic approach and be vigilant. Of course, as long there is a chance the US firms won’t miss any chance to push the agenda forward with contortion. However, they are smart enough to calculate the risk from the unstable political situations. “In China, the rules and attitude can change overnight” says Greggory Warren from Morningstar in the US”. Also how China canceled last minutes the approved IPO of the Ant Group — once considered a fintech national champion”. After this, even the die hard fans of entering China for tendies need to think twice and evaluate their moves seriously.
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