BITPRESS | Where the money moves behind the news

Real Estate

Korea plans to move people into 100,000 public homes near Seoul. How many are new?

The government says it is working to move people into about 100,000 public homes near Seoul by the end of next year. But only 17,000 (public sale and built-for-rent homes) can be...

Government Policy

Oil nears $110. Why have Korean pump prices fallen for 22 weeks?

Brent crude rose to $109.69 a barrel on Oct. 16, yet pump prices for gasoline fell for a 22nd week in a row, to KRW 1,856.6 per liter. No source names a cause for the 22 weeks of declines...

Korean Stocks

Samsung and SK hynix fell together. Why did one bounce back 3x as much?

On Oct. 16, Samsung Electronics rose 2.62% and SK hynix rose 0.79%. The same day, foreign investors were net buyers of Samsung Electronics for the first time in 13 trading days (KRW 181.9 billion) but net sellers of SK...

Crypto

Bitcoin ETFs lost money, so why are big wallets at a record?

On Oct. 14, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $261.5 million flow out, and two days later (reported Oct. 16) wallets holding 10 to 10,000 Bitcoin hit a record...

Global Stocks

Tesla rose 5% on crypto exchanges overnight. Why did the real stock fall?

While U.S. markets were closed, a Tesla contract on crypto exchanges rose about 4.9% to roughly $378, yet the next day Tesla shares opened at $368.51 and closed down 2.13% at $354.72. The...

Real Estate

Why once-shunned Seoul villas saw sales jump 19% in a year

In the year after Korea's Oct. 15 housing rules, Seoul villa sales reached 37,440, about 45% more than two years earlier, and villa prices rose 3.7 times as fast in...

Investing 101

Private credit funded AI data centers. Why the bubble warnings?

On Oct. 15, bonds of AI cloud company CoreWeave traded at around 79 cents on the dollar, and doubts are spreading to AI debt as a whole, which made up more than a third of...

Global Stocks

Chips fell 7 days in a row. Why are U.S. drug stocks at records?

On Oct. 15, as the U.S. chip index fell for a seventh straight trading day, the S&P 500 health care index hit a record and the S&P 500 itself rose 0.33%. Amid inflation and rate...

Crypto

Stocks crashed and gold rose. Why did bitcoin fall with stocks?

On Oct. 15, as Korea's KOSPI fell 7.57%, gold rose more than 1%, yet bitcoin briefly dropped below $80,000 for the first time in a month. Spot...

Korean Stocks

KOSPI fell 5%. Why do forced sales of margin stocks hit two days later?

The KRW 59.35 billion in forced sales on Oct. 13 came not from that day's crash but from margin purchases whose money never arrived by the Oct. 12 settlement date. Margin purchases are sold the morning after...

Real Estate

Korean mortgages at 5% or more grew 14-fold in 8 months. When will your loan rate rise?

New mortgages from Korea's five biggest banks at rates of 5% or more grew from KRW 166.5 billion in December 2025 to KRW 2.3362 trillion in August 2026, a 14-fold jump, but that is...

Investing 101

U.S. rate-hike odds jumped after the inflation report. Who sets that number?

After the September U.S. inflation report, the odds of an October rate hike jumped from 22.1% a day earlier to 51.5%, but the number does not come from the Fed. It is...

Government Policy

The dollar hits a 17-month high. Why is the won holding near 1,340?

Hot U.S. inflation pushed the dollar to its strongest level since May 2025, yet right after Seoul's open on Oct. 15 it took 1,341 won to buy a dollar, more than 40 won less than the 1,382.2...

Crypto

Banks sell Bitcoin, crypto exchanges buy banks… Why do they want each other's business?

On Oct. 14, Standard Chartered let affluent professional investors in the UAE trade bitcoin inside the bank, custody included, while Kraken's parent agreed to buy Lithuania's Saldo Bank. An exchange...

Korean Stocks

Anthropic sales up 45%. Why did SK hynix drop 7%?

Anthropic's third-quarter revenue rose 45% to $16.8 billion, but four times that, $67.2 billion a year, fell short of the $100 billion annual pace the market had expected. Because the...

Real Estate

Half of Seoul's jeonse leases are renewals. Why do tenants use their renewal right less?

Renewals made up 50.8% of Seoul apartment jeonse leases in January–August, yet the share of renewals using the legal renewal right fell from 56.7% last year to 53.3% this...

Investing 101

KOSPI's 5% drop paused auto-selling for 5 minutes. What changed?

On Oct. 13, Korea's sell-side sidecar paused only one thing: computer-driven program sell orders, for five minutes. Program trading still ended the day net sold by 2.04...

Government Policy

The Fed says no rate hikes next year. Markets disagree. Where does the gap come from?

New York Fed President John Williams says no further rate hikes are needed in 2027, yet rate futures put the odds that the Fed's rate ends 2027 at...

Korean Stocks

China's CXMT teases next-gen DRAM, SK hynix falls 10%. How real is the threat?

Chinese chipmaker CXMT's preview of a next-generation server DRAM came with a date, the end of the year, but no speeds, capacities or customers. The threat you can measure is not the announcement but its DRAM market share, which already...

Crypto

Korean stocks fell over 5%. Why did bitcoin hold up?

While the KOSPI fell 5.46% on Oct. 13, bitcoin dipped just below $81,000 in the morning and soon climbed back above $83,000. The day's bad news was tied to chips...

Investing 101

US accounting board moves to count stablecoins as cash. All of them?

Under the FASB's August proposal, a stablecoin a company could sell for about $1 on the market still would not count as a cash equivalent unless the company can redeem it directly with the issuer. Coinbase...

Global Stocks

Bitcoin miner IREN rents AI chips to Anthropic. Better than mining?

IREN borrowed at an average rate of 6% against income from its Microsoft contract, while the same company paid 9% on a loan for a different project (the two are not directly comparable)...

Crypto

France moves to make crypto self-custody wallets report holdings: can coins kept off exchanges still avoid tax?

A French parliamentary finance committee adopted an amendment requiring people to declare crypto held in personal wallets if it is worth €100,000 (about $112,000) or more on Dec. 31. If it...

Crypto

Bitcoin ETFs lost $681M in a week. Why do rising rates hurt crypto?

In the week U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost a net $681 million (Oct. 5-9), the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield hit 5.70%, its highest since 2002, and...