Tag: curb

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Politics

FTX, Cryptocurrency Chief, Strikes to Curb Excessive Threat Trades

FTX, Cryptocurrency Leader, Moves to Curb High Risk Trades

A popular cryptocurrency exchange announced on Sunday that it was curbing some type of high-risk trading, partly due to the sharp fluctuations in the value of Bitcoin and the. is held responsible Casino-like atmosphere on such platforms worldwide.

Switching the exchange, FTX, would reduce the amount of bets investors can place by lowering the leverage offered from 101 to 20 times. Leverage multiplies the trader’s chance not only of profit, but also of loss.

“We will take the first step here,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, 29, the billionaire and founder of the platform, which operates from Hong Kong, on Twitter on Sunday. “Today we are removing the high leverage from FTX. The maximum permissible value will be 20x. “

The announcement came after the New York Times, in an article posted online on Friday, described the risky trades offered on FTX and other global exchanges such as Binance and BitMEX that accelerated a global crash in May. This month, those bets worth more than $ 20 billion were liquidated on cryptocurrency exchanges around the world.

Bankman-Fried said lowering leverage “is a step in the direction the industry has been headed and has been for a while,” adding, “Although we believe many of the arguments in favor of With high leverage, we don’t miss the mark either, believing it’s an important part of the crypto ecosystem, and in some cases it’s not a healthy part of it. “

Global platforms like FTX allow traders to borrow big when betting on price fluctuations – traders don’t buy and sell cryptocurrencies, but instead predict where the prices of the underlying assets will go. These bets, known as derivatives, mean that the exchange will grant them credit when they raise $ 1,000 so they can wager on the future price of the cryptocurrency worth up to $ 101,000 on FTX. Now, with the new cap, the maximum on this transaction would be $ 20,000.

This type of transaction should not be available to professional investors in the United States, but – at least historically – some of these investors have used workarounds to trade on the sites.

Leverage makes investors much more susceptible to their accounts being liquidated due to an automated margin call if the price of the cryptocurrency goes against their prediction and they do not have enough collateral on their accounts to support their bets.

It happened in May. When cryptocurrency prices began to fall due to market-moving events such as China’s announcement of regulatory action or Tesla’s decision to suspend Bitcoin payments, it prompted exchanges to automatically liquidate the accounts of the most leveraged investors before their collateral were no longer sufficient to cover their positions.

“These liquidations are obviously a big factor in the price crash,” said Clara Medalie, head of research at Kaiko, a provider of cryptocurrency market data in Paris, and recalled the sudden fall in value of the cryptocurrency in mid-May. “It is a doom-loop.”

Bankman-Fried said on Sunday that only a small percentage of traders are taking advantage of the maximum leverage available. He also argued that FTX had fewer liquidations than other exchanges and that he had long sought to “promote responsible trading”.

Still, he predicted in an interview last week that some investors would not welcome a move to reduce debt. “We’d get a consumer outcry if we got rid of it and we’d get very bad press,” he said. “But it could be the right thing.”

Mr Bankman-Fried also admitted that high leverage created the impression that exchanges like him were promoting risky trading, although he claimed it was not a fair conclusion.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, offers up to 125x leverage. Changpeng Zhao, the Sino-Canadian founder of Binance and a developer who traces his professional roots back to Wall Street, has said that the extreme leverage numbers were just a “marketing gimmick” and that most traders don’t use them.

Timothy Massad, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives in the U.S., said he welcomed FTX’s decision and hoped other platforms like Binance would follow suit.

The change, he said, could be motivated in part by FTX’s success last week in raising $ 900 million in venture capital, the highest ever value for a cryptocurrency exchange. FTX’s high leverage offerings are more likely to damage its reputation as Mr Bankman-Fried seeks to expand the global reach of its platform, Mr Massad said.

“Sam has bigger visions, and this step removes a focus that might be in the way,” said Massad. “Take it off the table.”

Categories
World News

Yuan Longping, Plant Scientist Who Helped Curb Famine, Dies at 90

Yuan Longping, Plant Scientist Who Helped Curb Famine, Dies at 90

After graduating in 1953, Mr. Yuan took a job as a teacher in an agricultural college in Hunan Province, keeping up his interest in crop genetics. His commitment to the field took on greater urgency from the late 1950s, when Mao’s so-called Great Leap Forward — his frenzied effort to collectivize agriculture and jump-start steel production — plunged China into the worst famine of modern times, killing tens of millions. Mr. Yuan said he saw the bodies of at least five people who had died of starvation by the roadside or in fields.

“Famished, you would eat whatever there was to eat, even grass roots and tree bark,” Mr. Yuan recalled in his memoir. “At that time I became even more determined to solve the problem of how to increase food production so that ordinary people would not starve.”

Mr. Yuan soon settled on researching rice, the staple food for many Chinese people, searching for hybrid varieties that could boost yields and traveling to Beijing to immerse himself in scientific journals that were unavailable in his small college. He plowed on with his research even as the Cultural Revolution threw China into deadly political infighting.

In recent decades, the Communist Party came to celebrate Mr. Yuan as a model scientist: patriotic, dedicated to solving practical problems, and relentlessly hard-working even in old age. At 77, he even carried the Olympic torch near Changsha for a segment of its route to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Unusually for such a prominent figure, though, Mr. Yuan never joined the Chinese Communist Party. “I don’t understand politics,” he told a Chinese magazine in 2013.

Even so, the Xinhua state news agency honored him this weekend as a “comrade,” and his death brought an outpouring of public mourning in China. In 2019, he was one of eight Chinese individuals awarded the Medal of the Republic, China’s highest official honor, by Xi Jinping, the national leader.

Mr. Yuan is survived by his wife of 57 years, Deng Zhe, as well as three sons. His funeral, scheduled for Monday morning in Changsha, is likely to bring a new burst of official condolences.

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Business

U.S. Backs International Minimal Tax of at Least 15% to Curb Revenue Shifting Abroad

U.S. Backs Global Minimum Tax of at Least 15% to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

The Biden government proposed a global tax on multinational corporations of at least 15 percent in the latest round of international tax negotiations, Treasury officials said Thursday, as the US tries to reach a deal with countries fearing an interest rate hike Discourages investment.

The rate was a sub-expectation from the United States, and the Treasury Department hailed its positive reception among other countries as a breakthrough in the negotiations. The fate of the talks is closely tied to the Biden administration’s plans to revise corporate tax law in the United States, and the White House is pushing for an international deal this summer and passing laws later this year.

President Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate in the US from 21 percent to 28 percent, which is higher than in many other countries. A global minimum tax agreement would better enable the United States to make the increase without penalizing American companies or encouraging them to relocate overseas.

The Treasury Department held meetings this week with a group of negotiators from 24 countries on what is known as the global minimum tax that would apply to multinational companies regardless of where they are headquartered.

“The Treasury Department underlined that 15 percent is a lower limit and that discussions should continue to be ambitious and increase that rate,” the Treasury Department said in a statement after the meetings.

The global minimum tax negotiations are part of a wider global struggle to tax technology companies. They come because the Biden government is trying to put provisions in tax legislation that incentivize the relocation of jobs overseas. Talks dragged on for more than two years, slowed by the discontent of the Trump administration and the onslaught of the pandemic.

As part of its American employment plan, the von Biden administration asked for a tax known as global low intangible tax income (GILTI) to be doubled to 21 percent, which would narrow the gap between corporate payments for overseas profits and payments for profits earned Income in the United States. Under the plan, the tax would be calculated on a country basis, which would result in more overseas income being subject to tax than under the current system.

If the global minimum tax rate of 15 percent is adopted, there will still be a gap between that rate and the US domestic rate proposed by the Biden administration. Tax officials have argued that the new gap would be smaller than the current one and therefore would not affect the competitiveness of American businesses. A large delta between the global minimum tax and what US companies have to do with their overseas income gives companies based outside the US an advantage.

American corporations have closely watched the various moving parts of the negotiation. Large corporations have generally been wary of the Biden government’s tax plans.

This week Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told the US Chamber of Commerce that they would benefit from the Biden administration’s proposals.

In business today

Updated

May 20, 2021 at 4:26 p.m. ET

“We are confident that the investments and tax proposals contained as a package in the employment plan will improve the net profitability of our companies and improve their global competitiveness,” she said.

Immediately after her presentation, Suzanne Clark, the Chamber’s managing director, said that she disagreed.

Conclusion of an agreement on the global minimum tax will not be easy, even if an agreement is in principle close.

Finance ministers from France and Germany announced last month that they were ready to support 21 percent. However, countries have to change their laws to formally implement the agreement, and enforcement of the agreement becomes complicated. Ireland, which is not a member of the steering committee negotiating the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has a corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent and has expressed reservations about such an arrangement. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak was also skeptical this week.

Manal Corwin, a former Treasury Department official in the Obama administration who now heads KPMG’s national tax practice in Washington, said other countries felt that the United States was imposed on a minimum global tax of 21 percent, which the United States said Tax would be the same as the rate proposed by the Biden government on the foreign income of US companies. The fact that the US is ready to negotiate at a lower rate is important, she said.

“In order to get a deal, it was important for the US to clarify that they didn’t necessarily say 21 percent or nothing,” Ms. Corwin said.

Still, she added, the 15 percent floor may be too high for some countries to accept and too low for some members of Congress in the United States to approve.

Rohit Kumar, head of PwC’s Washington office for national tax services, said Ireland and other countries’ response to the proposal will be crucial as a tax deal reached through the negotiations would be far from ironic.

“Are countries actually changing and enacting national law? Or is it just a political agreement where everyone says, “This is nice, but we don’t?” Said Mr. Kumar, a former top aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. “As US lawmakers are considering these proposals, this is billions of dollars question.”

Tax officials said they never insisted on the 21 percent rate, but that they believed other countries would be receptive to the idea of ​​adopting a rate higher than 15 percent, depending on the fate of the changes to the US tax system that were introduced in To be considered.

Ms. Yellen has warned that a global “race to the bottom” has devoured government revenues and has taken a more cooperative approach to the negotiations than the Trump-appointed administration.

She is expected to continue talks on global tax reform with her international counterparts at the Group of 7 Finance Ministers meeting next month.

Categories
Business

E.U. Set to Curb Covid Vaccine Exports for six Weeks

E.U. Set to Curb Covid Vaccine Exports for 6 Weeks

BRUSSELS – The European Union completes emergency legislation that gives it extensive powers to curb exports of the block-made Covid-19 vaccines for the next six weeks. This is a marked escalation in their response to domestic supply shortages that have created a political vortex amid a rising third wave on the continent.

The bill, due to be released on Wednesday, has been reviewed by the New York Times and approved by two EU officials involved in the drafting process. The new regulations will make it harder for pharmaceutical companies that make Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union to export them, and supplies to the UK are likely to be disrupted.

The European Union has come into conflict with AstraZeneca in the first place, as it drastically reduced its supplies to the bloc and cited production problems in January. The company is the main target of the new regulations. However, legislation that could block the export of millions of doses from EU ports could also affect Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Britain is by far the biggest benefactor of EU exports and will lose the most to these rules. However, they could also be used to curb exports to other countries such as Canada, for example the second largest recipient of vaccines made in the EU. and Israel, which is receiving doses from the block but is very advanced in its vaccination campaign and is therefore seen as less needy.

“We are in the crisis of the century. And I’m not ruling anything out for now, because we have to make sure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible, ”said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in comments last week that paved the way for the new rules. “Human life, civil liberties and also the prosperity of our economy depend on it, on the speed of vaccination and on further development.”

The legislation is unlikely to affect the United States, which has received fewer than one million doses from facilities in the EU.

The Biden government has announced that it has received enough doses from its three authorized manufacturers – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson – to cover all adults in the country by the end of May. Most of this supply comes from plants in the United States. The country also exports vaccine components to the European Union, which is reluctant to risk disrupting the raw material supply chain.

The European Union allowed pharmaceutical companies to perform their contracts by authorizing them to export more than 40 million doses of vaccine to 33 countries between February and mid-March, with 10 million going to the UK and 4.3 million going to Canada. The bloc has kept about 70 million at home and distributed them to its 27 member states, but its efforts to run mass vaccination campaigns have been set back by a series of missteps.

Liberal overseas exports when domestic supply is low was a significant part of the problem, and the bloc was criticized for allowing exports at all when the United States and Britain practically closed domestic production through contracts with pharmaceutical companies .

The result was a problematic introduction of vaccines for the richest group of nations in the world. The impact of the outages is compounded by a third wave that puts health systems across the continent on emergency mode and instigates painful new lockdowns.

Updated

March 23, 2021, 8:03 p.m. ET

The European Commission, which ordered the vaccines, and individual governments in member states responsible for their national campaigns, have been banned by voters fed up of being banned and increasing the number of Covid-19 cases because of their failure , heavily criticized. Public anger and political costs have risen as the bloc has fallen behind several wealthy counterparts in the world in promoting vaccination campaigns, despite major manufacturers based here.

The bloc has seen recipients of vaccines made in its member countries as well as other rich countries drive their vaccination campaigns. Almost 60 percent of Israelis have received at least one dose of vaccine, 40 percent of British and a quarter of Americans, but only 10 percent of EU citizens have been vaccinated, according to the latest information released by Our World in Data.

The export restrictions are being enforced by the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, and while changes to the new rules could take place before the law is finalized, officials said they are unlikely to be substantial. They are expected to enter into force quickly.

EU officials said the rules would allow for a degree of discretion, meaning they would not result in a blanket export ban, and officials still expected many exports to continue.

“The proposed measures concern,” said Youmy Han, spokeswoman for Canada’s Minister for International Trade, Mary Ng.

“Minister Ng’s colleagues have repeatedly assured her that these measures will not affect vaccine shipments to Canada,” said Ms. Han. She added: “We will continue to work with the EU and its member states, as we have done throughout the pandemic, to ensure that our essential health and medical supply chains remain open and resilient.”

Canada depends on the European Union for almost all of its vaccine supply: all of Canada’s Moderna and Pfizer vaccines come from Europe, although the country received a small shipment of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India.

The new rules come after months of escalating tensions between the European Union and AstraZeneca in a situation that has become toxic to the bloc’s fragile relations with its recently deceased member, the UK.

The problems started in late January when AstraZeneca notified the block that it would cut its shipments by more than half in the first quarter of 2021, which turned plans to launch vaccines upside down. In response, the European Union has put in place an export authorization process whereby pharmaceutical companies must obtain permission to export vaccines and give the European Union the power to block them if they are seen as a breach of a company’s contractual obligations to the bloc.

As of February 1, the European Union has blocked just one of more than 300 exports, a small shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia, on the grounds that the country is virtually Coviden-free while the block struggles with increasing infections.

The new rules will introduce more reasons to block exports, the drafts show. They will encourage blocking shipments to countries that do not export vaccines to the European Union – a clause clearly targeting the UK – or to countries that have “a higher vaccination rate” than the European Union, “or where the current epidemiological situation is less serious “than in the block according to the Times.

In recent days, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tried to use a conciliatory tone to avert an EU export ban that would deal a severe blow to his country’s rapidly advancing vaccination campaign.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Johnson said he was against blockades and was “encouraged by some of the things I’ve heard from the continent.” The UK news media reported that his government would be ready to have the block produce four million AstraZeneca cans in an EU factory.

Benjamin Mueller reported from London, Sharon LaFraniere from Washington and Ian Austen from Ottawa.

Categories
Business

Cement giants flip to inexperienced hydrogen, carbon seize to curb emissions

Cement giants turn to green hydrogen, carbon capture to curb emissions

The device is in a converted shipping container.

RICE, Energy Security Research Institute, Swansea University

A subsidiary of the multinational building materials company HeidelbergCement is working with researchers from Swansea University to install and operate a demonstration unit for green hydrogen at a location in the UK

The collaboration is another example of how companies involved in energy-intensive processes are looking for ways to maintain productivity while reducing emissions.

In a statement last week, Swansea University said the green hydrogen unit, housed in a converted shipping container, has been installed at Hanson UK’s Regen GGBS facility in the town of Port Talbot, South Wales.

The term GGBS refers to ground granulated blast furnace slag that can be used in place of cement in concrete production.

The effects of cement production on the environment are significant. According to a 2018 report by the British think tank Chatham House, over 4 billion tons of cement are produced annually. According to the political institute, this corresponded to around 8% of global CO2 emissions.

Regen GGBS, while having a smaller carbon footprint than Portland cement, remains an energy-intensive product that requires significant amounts of electricity and natural gas.

According to Swansea University, the idea behind the Port Talbot project is “to replace some of the natural gas used in the facility with green hydrogen, which is considered a clean source of energy as it only gives off water when burned”.

The facility at the Hanson UK site produces hydrogen through electrolysis, which splits water into oxygen and hydrogen.

When the electricity comes from renewable sources – the project in Wales uses on-site wind and solar panels – the end product is called “green hydrogen”.

The system was put together as part of the Industrial Carbon Emission Reduction initiative led by the Energy Safety Research Institute at Swansea University.

In a statement, Charlie Dunnill, a lecturer at ESRI, described cement making as “one of the most energy and carbon intensive industries, and therefore a perfect place to have an impact on carbon reduction”.

Last week, the world’s largest cement company, LafargeHolcim, also announced that it would be part of a collaboration to “explore” the development of carbon capture and storage solutions.

In a statement, the company said it will “study the feasibility of carbon capture” at two facilities, one in Europe and one in North America, using Schlumberger New Energy’s carbon sequestration technology.

The United States Geological Survey describes carbon sequestration as “the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide”. Carbon capture can occur naturally – for example through forests – or through man-made systems developed by humans.

Cement making is just an industrial process that can be significantly improved in terms of emissions and other sustainability metrics.

The production of aluminum is different. BMW recently announced that it has started sourcing and using aluminum, made using solar power, for example.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” last Friday, the CFO of aluminum manufacturer Hydro spoke about the market for more sustainable offers.

“We are seeing a demand for our specific products, Hydro REDUXA and Hydro CIRCAL, which are low carbon or recycled … and really pick up again,” said Pal Kildemo.

“And we can charge a premium for these products compared to other ‘more normal’ products.”