Hunt for Next Bitcoin Will Spark Wilder Crypto Swings - Bloomberg

Hunt for Next Bitcoin Will Spark Wilder Crypto Swings

New exchanges are creating a lottery for winners.

By Ben Carlson

December 27, 2017, 10:00 PM GMT+11

A shot in the dark? Photographer: Scott Olson/Bloomberg

If you thought bitcoin has been on a wild ride, check what happened last week with litecoin.

The newer cryptocurrency, which is supposed to be a faster version of bitcoin with a larger supply of coins, increased from around $100 on Dec. 8 to more than $370 by Dec. 12, a gain of 270 percent. The price has come down, but even after a fall from the peak, litecoin is up more than 7,000 percent for 2017.

The question is: Why did litecoin shoot up in the span of a few days? There was no news to speak of. There were no changes in the technology or new versions of the currency. One of the biggest reasons for this price boom is that litecoin now has an exchange where investors can easily purchase it. Much as investors in the tech bubble had E-Trade to buy dot-com stocks, cryptocurrency investors now have Coinbase, which has been at the center of bitcoin speculation because it is so easy to sign up and begin buying.

By the end of November, Coinbase announced it had more than 13 million users. To put this in perspective, Charles Schwab only has 10.2 million client accounts, though the traditional broker has a much larger asset base. At one point, the Coinbase app was the most downloaded on Apple’s App Store, showing that people are in a rush to invest in these assets and are doing so through their smartphones.

The reason mobile matters for litecoin is that investors are easily fooled by numbers when making their buy decisions. Litecoin was just added to the Coinbase line-up in May, and it has the lowest price of the three available assets on the platform. For now, Coinbase users can only trade bitcoin, the Etherum network's ether, or litecoin. This is what the interface looks like when Coinbase customers pull up the app on their phone to check the prices of the cryptocurrencies on the platform:

A glance at the prices on the exchange would seem to indicate that litecoin is much cheaper than the other two crypto-assets. Of course, users are able to purchase fractional units of each so it doesn’t really matter what the nominal price point is. For example, Berkshire Hathaway has a price of almost $300,000 per share while Facebook’s stock price is closer to $180. But both have a market cap close to $500 billion because there are different numbers of shares available. Investors shouldn’t be concerned with the share price but rather the overall value.

Although rational people should be able to figure this out, there are times when investors are not rational and use nominal share prices to determine their buying decisions. This occurs in particular when asset prices have lottery-like features. With the huge gains in cryptocurrencies these days and the number of people rushing in with the hope of getting rich quick, this is a perfect example of how security price levels can affect investor buying impulses.

Researchers from the University of Washington studied the characteristics that cause investors to gamble and drive up prices:

Barberis et al. (2005) argue that when groups of investors concentrate their trading within a specific habitat or category of stocks, fluctuation in those investors’ sentiment can lead to nonfundamental comovement among those stocks. In addition, prior studies show that investors with a taste for gambling concentrate their trading in lottery-like stocks with high skewness and volatility and low nominal prices. Those investors with gambling preferences trade actively, and their trading activities are often correlated, perhaps due to their stronger behavioral biases and because their demographic attributes are similar. Given the observed behavior of gambling-motivated investors, we conjecture that the lottery-like stocks favored by these investors would exhibit excess return comovement.

When investors see extreme gains, high volatility and low nominal prices, they tend to treat assets like lottery tickets. This study also found that investors with this propensity to gamble also trade these types of securities more actively, which can make similar securities more strongly correlated to these moves as these market participants are always looking for the next big thing.

So while there were no fundamental reasons for litecoin to skyrocket in recent weeks, there is a behavioral explanation. This type of move doesn’t last forever, even in early-stage markets such as this, but you can expect to see this behavior in other cryptocurrencies in the future as people try their best to pick the next winner.

It’s estimated there are now more than 1,000 different cryptocurrencies. Eventually more of them will find their way to Coinbase as customers demand a more diverse opportunity set to trade. You should expect to see more wild price swings as investors look for the next lottery ticket in cryptocurrencies.

China's Communist Party to discuss amending constitution, graft fight - Reuters

DECEMBER 27, 2017 / 5:45 PM

China's Communist Party to discuss amending constitution, graft fight

Reuters Staff

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s ruling Communist Party will meet next month to discuss amending the constitution and to talk about the ongoing fight against graft, state media said on Wednesday, ahead of March’s expected passing of a new anti-corruption law.

Fighting deeply ingrained graft has been a key policy plank for President Xi Jinping in his first term in office, and that battle will take on a new hue with the setting up of the National Supervision Commission as he begins his second term.

Trial work has already begun for that commission, which is likely to be formally codified in law in March at the meeting of China’s largely rubber stamp parliament.

The new body will take over from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and merge multiple anti-graft units into a single body. It will also expand the graft campaign’s purview to include employees at state-backed institutions rather than just party members.

In a short report, Xinhua news agency said the party’s politburo, one of its elite ruling bodies, had met and decided to hold two important meetings next month - one on amending the state constitution and the other specifically on fighting corruption.

Xinhua gave no details of what the constitutional amendment might entail, but Chinese legal scholars have said the country needs to amend its constitution before it can set up the new supervision commission to ensure there is a proper constitutional basis for its powers.

The constitution clearly defines China’s top political institutions, such as the judiciary and the prosecutor, in order to grant them state power and changes need to be made to these definitions to make room for a similarly powerful supervision system, scholars argue.

The party will discuss the amendment, or amendments, at a plenum next month, Xinhua said without giving an exact date or saying whether it was one amendment or more.

The constitution, which is different from the party constitution, was last amended in 2004 to include guarantees to protect private property and human rights.

The other meeting, a full session of the anti-corruption watchdog the CCDI, will be held from Jan. 11-13, the report added, again without giving details.

Xi has vowed that his war against graft will not ease until officials at all levels dare not, cannot and do not want to be corrupt.

Xi told top party leaders in October revision of the anti-graft architecture would include the scrapping of a controversial “shuanggui” system of secret interrogations, and the introduction of a new detention system.

The latest draft of the new Supervision Law, unveiled last week, adds protections for graft suspects as part of efforts to revise the interrogation system.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Christian Shepherd; Editing by Nick Macfie

Japan says ties at risk if South Korea messes with 2015 'comfort women' deal - Reuters

DECEMBER 27, 2017 / 5:30 PM

Japan says ties at risk if South Korea messes with 2015 'comfort women' deal

Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) - Japan said on Wednesday any attempt by South Korea to revise a 2015 deal meant to have resolved a row over “comfort women” forced to work in Japan’s wartime brothels would make relations “unmanageable” after Seoul said the agreement had failed.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-Wha speaks before a briefing of a special task force for investigating the 2015 South Korea-Japan agreement over South Korea's "comfort women" issue at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea December 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jung Yeon-Je/Pool

The two U.S. allies, which share a bitter history including Japanese colonizations, are key to international efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs that it pursues in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha apologized for the controversial deal on Wednesday, as a panel investigating the negotiations leading up to the agreement unveiled its results.

The investigation concluded that the dispute over the comfort women, a Japanese euphemism for the thousands of girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in wartime brothels, could not be “fundamentally resolved” because the victims’ demand for legal compensation had not been met.

South Korea wants Japan to take legal responsibility and provide due compensation.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the 2015 settlement, which includes a 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) fund to help the victims, resulted from “legitimate negotiations”, warning any amendment may complicate relations.

“If (South Korea) tries to revise the agreement that is already being implemented, that would make Japan’s ties with South Korea unmanageable and it would be unacceptable,” Kono said in a statement.

Kang apologized for “giving wounds of the heart to the victims, their families, civil society that support them and all other people because the agreement failed to sufficiently reflect a victim-oriented approach, which is the universal standard in resolving human rights issues”.

Under the deal, endorsed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s predecessor and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan apologized to former comfort women and provided the fund to help them.

They agreed the issue would be “irreversibly resolved” if both fulfilled their obligations.

Oh Tai-Kyu, head of a special task force for investigating the 2015 South Korea-Japan agreement over South Korea's "comfort women" issue, speaks during a briefing on his investigation at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea December 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jung Yeon-Je/Pool

Tokyo says the matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty. It says that in 2015, it agreed to provide the funds to help them heal “psychological wounds”.

The South Korean government will review the result of the investigation and translate it into policy after consulting victims and civic groups that support them, Kang said.

The comfort women issue has been a regular cause for contention between Japan and neighbors China and North and South Korea since the war. Japan colonized the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and occupied parts of China before and after the war.

“(The Moon government) has said it will seek a two-track policy by separately dealing with the comfort women issue and the relationship in the face of North Korea’s threats, but Japan may not agree with that”, Lee Sung-hwan, a professor of Japanese studies in Keimyung University in South Korea, told Reuters.

Japan wants South Korea to remove statues near the Japanese embassy in Seoul and the Japanese consulate in Busan city commemorating Korean comfort women. Seoul says the memorials were erected by civic groups and therefore out of its reach.

According to the investigation, however, the sides struck a separate, secret deal in which South Korea promised to persuade the groups to relocate the statues, provide no support for their overseas statue-raising campaign and refrain from calling the women “sex slaves” on the world stage.

In 2014, the U.N. Human Rights Committee requested Tokyo to clarify the “comfort women” euphemism, with an independent expert on the panel calling for it to be replaced with “enforced sex slaves”.

“Such an issue of universal value and historical awareness as that of comfort women cannot be resolved through short-term diplomatic negotiations and a political bargain,” said Oh Tai-kyu, a former journalist who led the investigation.

Andrew Horvat, a visiting professor at Josai International University in Japan, said that the pact was flawed from the beginning because it failed to produce real reconciliation.

“The agreement was not reconciliation, but an agreement not to talk about it anymore”, Horvat said.

Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Haejin Choi and Yuna Park in Seoul, and Linda Sieg, Kaori Kaneko and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; Editing by Nick Macfie

Six objects to define the London of 2017 - Guardian

Six objects to define the London of 2017

From a crammed tube carriage to a jar of diesel fumes, V&A curator Rory Hyde selects six items to sum up life in the capital for future museum-goers

What would you preserve in a museum to define your city in 2017? Let us know in the comments. We’ll feature the best suggestions

Lord Nelson’s statue wearing a breathing mask in Trafalgar Square, London.

Lord Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square wearing a breathing mask after a stunt by Greenpeace. In 2017 London breached its annual air pollution limit in just five days. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Cities is supported by

Rockefeller FoundationAbout this content

Rory Hyde

Wed 27 Dec ‘17 18.30 AEDT

The Museum of London recently announced it would collect a piece of the giant stinking “fatberg” clogging the sewers of Whitechapel. The congealed blob of fat, oil, grease, wet wipes and sanitary products is over 250m long and weighs over 130 tonnes, truly a monument to London. Curator Vyki Sparkes said it “will be one of the most fascinating and disgusting objects we have ever had on display”. Children will come to peer at it through the glass as it oozes and sweats, asking: “Daddy, is it alive?”

What better way to tell the story of life today? It reveals our most intimate habits (93% of it is wet wipes – who are all these people eschewing toilet paper for moist plastic?) and demonstrates the limits of our infrastructure. Joseph Bazalgette, who built London’s sewers in the 1860s, prescribed a gentle gradient to carry water and sewerage – nothing like the noxious cocktail of chip grease and sanitary napkins we pour into them today. Future historians will pore over its contents as a snapshot of life in 2017. Which raises the question: what other slices of urban life should we keep as a monument to this particular moment in time? How can you “collect” a city?

‘Daddy, is it alive?’ … the Whitechapel fatberg.

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‘Daddy, is it alive?’ … the Whitechapel fatberg. Photograph: Thames Water/PA

At the V&A, we have recently taken ownership of a piece of Robin Hood Gardens, the council estate designed by Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, which – like the fatberg – is currently being demolished by the council. Comprised of two complete apartments over three levels, with two facades and a section of its famous “street in the air”, this object will allow us to tell any number of stories about living in London: social, architectural, economic and political. In particular, we hope to capture the moment of optimism in the postwar era, when we as a society built generously and ambitiously for those who had the least – and how these ideas have been forgotten.

Robin Hood Gardens shortly before demolition.

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Robin Hood Gardens shortly before demolition. Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

But that’s just the beginning of what museums could acquire to tell the story of a city in 2017. Here are six more ideas for my home city, London. Tell us what you’d collect for your city in the comments below. We’ll feature the best suggestions in a forthcoming roundup on Guardian Cities.

1. Garden bridge archive

An artist’s impression of the scrapped Garden bridge.

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An artist’s impression of the scrapped Garden bridge. Photograph: Heatherwick Studio

“Come in close, children,” the tour guide will say. “This is what happens when the dream of a celebrity collides with the ego of a mayor.” The scuppering of Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden bridge was one of the major stories of the year. Lovely in principle, but exceedingly wasteful in detail, the bridge eventually succumbed to common sense, although only after tens of millions of pounds of public money had been spent. Collecting the archive of drawings and correspondence would help to ensure against falling for impractical dreams again.

2. Tube carriage

Commuters on a tube at Oxford Street station.

The tube has never been busier. The number of journeys has increased by 30% since 2007, with the number of passengers on peak trains increasing 50% since 1991. It’s one of the defining experiences of London. But how could a museum “collect” it? I would suggest commissioning the artist Rachel Whiteread to create a cast of the negative space in a tube carriage. It wouldn’t be very substantial – comprised only of the breathing space between armpits, and cheeks pressed against the doors.

3. Bridge barriers

Defensive barriers on London bridge.

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Historians of the future will look on the barriers erected along London’s bridges as evidence of a societal emergency. Designed to keep pedestrians safe after terrorists driving vans killed 12 people and injured nearly 100 on Westminster and London bridge in the summer, they speak more of a militarised zone than a modern cosmopolitan city, and yet seem to have become a reality of our modern urban lives.

4. Food delivery app satchel

Deliveroo cycle couriers wait for orders on a London street.

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Deliveroo cycle couriers wait for orders on a London street.

“Before these aqua blue satchels took over London,” the tour guide will say, “we had to actually speak to the pizza shop. On the telephone.” The children gasp. In just a few short years, food delivery apps such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats have transformed the experience of London – for diners, yes, but most of all for couriers. The rise of the gig economy may have had little physical impact on the city, but could prove to be a critical turning point in how urban labour is digitally managed.

5. The smell of diesel fumes

Pollution has reached combustion point.

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Pollution has reached combustion point. Photograph: Alamy

The new awareness of the dangers of air pollution, and the coming of electric cars, will hopefully spell the end of the diesel combustion engine. Nobody writes songs about nitrous oxide, though, so how will we remember it? I imagine a large glass jar sitting proudly in the gallery of 20th-century technologies, with a label that simply reads: “London air, 2017.”

6. A 2ft pile of building regulations

The burned-out shell of Grenfell Tower in Kensington.

Pant by numbers: the cities with the most dangerous air – listed

Dame Judith Hackitt’s interim report into the causes of the Grenfell Tower tragedy takes aim at the regulations that govern the building safety. “The regulations themselves are quite simple,” she told BBC Radio 4, “but what sits below them is a whole series of guidance documents which stacked on top of one another would be about 2ft high.” This is where the lives were lost, a slow-motion catastrophe, endorsed by official stamps of approval, which left the door open “to abuse by those trying to save money”. It would be a shameful exhibit, but one that would hopefully ensure that a tragedy like this does not happen again.

Rory Hyde is curator of contemporary architecture and urbanism at the V&A.

Student-Loan Borrowers Await Debt Relief - TIME

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Student-Loan Borrowers Await Debt Relief Posted: When Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institutes collapsed in 2015 and 2016, respectively, after allegations of fraud and misleading marketing, it seemed like a moment of reckoning for the for-profit college industry. Tens of thousands of students were left with no degrees or those not worth the paper they were printed on, plus millions of dollars in student-loan debt. President Obama’s Education Department passed regulations aimed at streamlining the process to forgive loans taken out by defrauded students. Relief has yet to arrive. Nearly 100,000 student-loan borrowers with billions in total debt from an array of mostly for-profit schools are still waiting for their accounts to be cleared, and the process put in place to help them–known as “borrower defense to repayment”–has ground to a halt. The Education Department has the authority to discharge defrauded students’ federal loans, but 11 months into the Trump Administration, not a single claim has been approved, and just two have been denied. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced in June that her department would rewrite the Obama-era rules, saying they were unfair to students and schools, and left taxpayers with a hefty bill. After another delay, the new regulations will now likely go into effect in July 2019. “Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable,” DeVos said in June. “Unfortunately, last year’s rulemaking effort missed an opportunity to get it right.” Advocates for student borrowers disagree. “There is a general sentiment of frustration with the fact that we’re doing this again,” says Will Hubbard, a member of both last year’s and this year’s rulemaking committees who represents the interests of student veterans. Reports have circulated this fall that the Education Department is considering offering partial rather than full debt relief for some applicants based on how much harm they suffered. But even students who show success–like securing employment–were still harmed, says Toby Merrill, director of Harvard University’s Project on Predatory Student Lending. “Our clients are very smart and hardworking,” she says. “When people are succeeding in spite of a really terrible thing that happened to them, we shouldn’t look at that and say, ‘Well, the thing must have not been so bad.'” The Education Department recently said it will begin adjudicating the backlog of claims “very soon.” For borrowers whose claims are denied, it will forgive any interest accrued on unpaid debts starting one year after the claim was filed. Still, with the rule’s renegotiations continuing into 2018, it’s unclear when borrowers like Jarrod Thoma, a 34-year-old former U.S. Army corporal, will know the fate of their looming debt. Thoma graduated with a bachelor’s degree from DeVry University in 2015 and has been waiting on his claim for more than two years. He says his degree from the for-profit college actually hurt his job prospects and that with $52,000 in student loans, his family will struggle to afford his loan payments if his claim is denied. (DeVry did not respond to requests for comment.) “Under the current Administration, I really feel like my claim is worthless,” Thoma says. “There are a lot of [people] in my situation. There has to be a sense of urgency.”    This appears in the December 25, 2017 issue of TIME.

China’s Geely takes $3.8bn stake in Volvo trucks - Financial Times

26/12/2017

China’s Geely takes $3.8bn stake in Volvo trucks

Deal with activist Cevian Capital prompts talk of unifying car and lorry businesses

Volvo's truck and car businesses have been separate since 1999 © Bloomberg

Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent

The Chinese owner of Volvo Cars is to become the biggest shareholder of truckmaker Volvo Group in a potentially historic realignment between the two Swedish automotive businesses.

Zhejiang Geely will pay about €3.25bn ($3.8bn) to Cevian Capital, Europe’s largest activist investor, for a stake in Volvo Group with 8.2 per cent of the capital and 15.6 per cent of the vote.

Talk of reuniting the two brands — split up when Volvo Group sold Volvo Cars to Ford in 1999 — is “premature”, according to people close to the transaction.

But Geely sees considerable potential for joint marketing between the two Volvos, shared technology projects on issues such as autonomous driving and electric vehicles, and the chance to help the truckmaker perform better in China where it has struggled, the people added.

Geely has surprised the automotive world with its resurrection of Volvo Cars since it acquired the Swedish carmaker in 2010.

Volvo Group itself has largely been turned around in the 11 years Cevian has been a shareholder with the Swedish activist making a profit of about €2bn on its stake. That would make the deal to sell the stake to Geely the most lucrative exit ever by an activist, according to Nomura, topping the €2.7bn Icahn Enterprises made last year when selling American Railcar Leasing.

Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding, said he was delighted by the deal. “Given our experience with Volvo Car Group, we recognise and value the proud Scandinavian history and culture, leading market positions, breakthrough technologies and environmental capabilities of AB Volvo.”

He added that Geely would be supportive of Volvo’s management and board as it implements its strategy.

Volvo Group’s share price has doubled since June 2016 as a new chief executive, Martin Lundstedt, formerly head of truckmaker Scania, has revived its fortunes.

Volvo Cars’ chief executive, Hakan Samuelsson, sits on Volvo Group’s board and was a former truckmaking executive at Scania and MAN before helping spearhead Mr Li’s takeover of the upmarket car brand.

Nomura and Barclays Capital will formally acquire Volvo Group’s shares from Cevian before selling them to Geely after the necessary regulatory approvals have been received.

Christer Gardell, Cevian’s co-founder, said the activist was happy to have helped Volvo Group become a more competitive and valuable company.

“The agreement will not only give AB Volvo a new large and committed shareholder, but one with significant expertise in strategically important areas for future value creation, such as electrification, autonomous driving, connectivity and the Chinese market.”

Volvo Group built its first car in 1927 and soon after began making trucks. But in 1999 it followed the trend for separating cars and trucks by selling the former to Ford and subsequently buying Renault and Nissan’s heavy vehicles operations. Companies such as Daimler and Volkswagen, which still combine their truck and car businesses, have recently come under pressure from investors and analysts to consider a break up.

Bhutto: Security has collapsed - Al Jazeera

Bhutto: Security has collapsed

4 Nov 2007

Editor's note: This interview originally aired on November 3, 2007, less than two months before her assassination.

Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister, has told Al Jazeera security in her country has "collapsed" and accused the authorities of turning a "blind eye" to armed groups in several regions.

"Not only are our tribal areas out of our control, but even the beautiful valley of Swat is now under takeover by Islamists," Bhutto said on Al Jazeera's Frost Over the World programme on Friday.

She said that "internal security has totally collapsed in Pakistan" and that this could not be the case "without there being some blind eye if not collusion being turned to the rise of the militants and militancy".

Her comments to Al Jazeera came as clashes between government troops and pro-Taliban fighters in Pakistan prompted fears that Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, would impose martial law.

More than 100 people are said to have been killed in fighting in the Swat valley over the last week.Pakistani authorities on Friday denied rumours that martial law had been imposed amid intense fighting between armed groups and government troops in Pakistan's northwest.

Fighters in the region showed journalists 48 men they described as government troops who had surrendered during the fighting.

The men were later said to have been released, though the Pakistani government did not confirm the men had been captured.

Meanwhile, Pakistani forces are also battling pro-Taliban fighters in North Waziristan, a tribal region on the border with Afghanistan, where members of al-Qaeda are believed to be sheltering.

Legal challenge

Political tensions in Pakistan have also mounted as opponents are challenging Musharraf's re-election as president in the supreme court.

Opposition parties boycotted the election on October 6, meaning the general easily won an overwhelming majority of the votes cast by federal and provincial politicians.

But Bhutto reiterated that her Pakistans People's Party would accept whatever ruling the supreme court arrived at.

"We are going to back the supreme court in whatever judgment it decides to give on the issue of General Musharraf's legality," she told Al Jazeera.

The supreme court is due to deliver its verdict before Musharraf's current term expires on November 15.

Karachi bombing

Al Jazeera, Bhutto also condemned the bombing of her homecoming procession in October as a "horrific incident in which 158 innocent young men, a woman and a baby lost their lives".

She reiterated her call for international help with an investigation into the blast that struck her, saying that the UK's Scotland Yard or the FBI in the US could help to catch "the financers and the organisers" of the bombing.

The October 18 attack on Bhutto's convoy, as she travelled through the streets of Karachi, came just hours after the former prime minster returned to Pakistan from eight years of self-imposed exile.

Bhutto confirmed that she had sent a letter to Musharraf in which she "named three individuals" who she suspected "to stop the restoration of democracy" and who she thought might be involved in any attempt on her life.

Bhutto's family had remained in Dubai while she returned to Pakistan. She said her children had been asleep at the time of the blasts, "and in the morning they got text messages from their friends saying: 'We hope your mother is well.'"

She said her family supported her. "They understand that I'm doing this for their country and for all the people of Pakistan," she said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA