Elon Musk bought $45M in Tesla stock since ‘that weed joke’ — now it’s worth double-Computerfanfield

Remember when Elon Musk wound up in big trouble for joking about taking Tesla private if its stock price hit $420 — all to (allegedly) impress his pop-star girlfriend Grimes?

That turned out to be arguably the most costly tweet of all time. Not only did Musk and Tesla each have to pay $20 million in civil penalties, but the SEC’s security fraud settlement also demanded that he step down as the company’s chairman for at least three years.

In an apparent response to being punished for cracking wise about high-powered business shit, Musk quickly notified the SEC that he’d be soon purchase an equivalent $20 million worth of company stock directly from Tesla.

He actually followed through — and then some. Since settling with the SEC, Tesla‘s founder has bought a gut-busting $45 million worth of Tesla shares split across three trades: $10 million for $334.98 per share in October 2018 ; $25 million for $243 per share in May 2019 ; and another $10 million for $767 per share on Valentine’s day this year .

As it turns out, Musk has paid a touch under $45 million for 145,761 Tesla shares since the 420-fiasco. If sold today (when its price was $705.63), those shares would be worth nearly $103 million, earning in excess of $57.8 million.

Indeed, Musk could effectively use those shares to pay both his and Tesla’s $20 million civil penalties and still be up almost $18 million.

Musk is worth so many billions that a few million won’t matter

It’s realistic that Musk really doesn’t care about the fine. The SEC’s $20 million infringement was equal to 0.1% of Musk‘s wealth, not to mention he’s sitting on $24 billion in Tesla stock in total.

The SEC forcing Musk to give up the position of Tesla‘s chairman is likely to have hurt him more. Not long after settling, Musk tweeted that Tesla would retire the board chairman position sometime in 2021.

And considering how chipper Musk seems about SpaceX‘s recent Starlink success , I’m sure he’s totally over it.

Rent, food, and other nice things I can’t afford — can fintech solve our money problems?

In her ode to the big apple, Alicia Keys said (echoing Frank Sinatra), ‘if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.’

Only to sing a verse later, ‘someone sleeps tonight with a hunger that’s more than an empty fridge.’

The song is 12 years old, but the message is current. Major cities like New York, London, and Hong Kong have become symbolic of ‘making it’. The wins are big, the falls are crushing. Innovation thrives, and so does inequality.

This polarity has caused chaos for young people. Armed with expensive educations, low credit scores, and limited access to loans, young professionals have been thrust into a world of zero hour contracts, back-to-back financial crises, and Covid-19.

Dutifully flocking to the city for a ‘proper’ job, but lacking the necessary luck (read: connections) to make it, many of them end up stuck behind a coffee machine, dishing out lattes to those lucky enough to land a lucrative career.

The one thing they do have on their side — more so than any other generation — is tech. And now young people are using it to take charge of their finances. Fintech s offering peer-to-peer lending, neobanks, and alternative credit scoring systems have placed them closer than ever to their (dwindling) funds, and stimulated a new age of financial activism.

Who better to take advantage of the new age of money than the internet generation.

Where did all the money go?

Gen Z is set to be the most educated generation to date — knocking their Millennial predecessors off the podium.

One obstacle both generations come up against is what they do with that education. Believe it or not, we’re still recovering from The Great Recession, and the jobs market ain’t what it used to be.

Unlike previous financial crashes, the 2008 fiasco hollowed out middle income jobs more than low paid ones. Boomers got pushed down the corporate ladder, and the majority of Millennials had to settle for the bottom rung. A slow recovery meant the jobs young people should have landed no longer existed.

We’re still seeing the impact of these events. According to research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2019, 58.5% of people in accommodation and hospitality jobs were aged 20-44, some of the lowest paid jobs on the market. In the meantime, the median age of homeowners has been steadily creeping up.

Hop forward a year, and one in 10 UK workers between the ages of 16-24 were on zero hour contracts. In the US, Millennials, and Gen Z adults suffered the highest percentage of layoffs during the pandemic, with 35% of 18-29 year olds saying at least one person in their household lost their job . The story is worse for people of color; Black and Latinx Americans are more likely to have these jobs than their white counterparts.

Author and creator of Young Money Blog, Iona Bain highlights the disproportionate impact for young people, citing a 40% increase in their financial vulnerability during the pandemic, according to the FCA. Without sustainable jobs or assets to liquidate, Iona points out that many young people would have likely accrued debt, lost income, and let their pension contributions slide.

A whopping 65% of adults across the world felt pessimistic about rising wealth inequality long before COVID reared its ugly head. The pandemic isn’t responsible for wealth inequality, it just exposed and exacerbated it.

All the responsibility, none of the funds

Millennials and Gen Z will be responsible for solving some of the world’s greatest challenges. Everything from climate change and overpopulation, to the increasing prevalence of deadly viruses.

These challenges require innovative solutions. But research has shown that financial worries are so intrusive that they negatively impact our work performance . If all you can think about is affording next month’s rent, the sparkle of a big city job soon fades.

As author Joseph C. Sternberg argues in his book, The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials’ Economic Future , this generation finds themselves in a paradox. While daily life, on the whole, is much easier, milestones like landing a secure job and buying a home couldn’t be further from reach.

Children of the [fintech] revolution

There’s a glimmer of hope, though. During the pandemic, we all spent too much time on our phones. Young people were no exception, but what they did with them was fascinating.

A report by Mambu , a SaaS cloud banking platform, identified two up-and-coming ‘financial tribes’ growing amongst the under 35s.

One of these personas is the Neo-Asset Hoarder.

In a world in which traditional assets such as property and bonds seem unattainable, this group is getting in the door early on the new wave of digital assets.

31% of global consumers have already invested in cryptocurrencies

22% have invested in-game assets or currencies

11% in NFTs

Most of them are under the age of 35. And almost 20% of them switched banks during the pandemic. In countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, people hold similar levels of crypto as they do property.

According to Mambu, Neo Asset Hoarders are the tribe to watch when it comes to future banking trends as they push decentralized finance into the mainstream. While you may not have them yet, 49% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy neo assets in the next few months.

The second tribe is Covidpreneurs.

The wave of furloughs and redundancies experienced during the pandemic made it both difficult to maintain a job or to break into the career market for young workers who came of age during this period. But, according to Mambu’s report, a growing group (49%) have used this moment to start their own business or side hustle, with another 75% thinking of becoming entrepreneurs in the future.

One major gap this has highlighted is the ability for traditional banks to provide much needed loans to these new business owners. This is pushing forward the momentum of decentralized, peer-to-peer lending websites, like FIBR , that connect borrowers with private investors who, together, can provide the needed funds.

But it’s not just the entrepreneurial and investment minded who are getting into the game.

The future of personal finance

Long before the pandemic, challenger banks and open banking had become popular. But as the need to monitor, manage, and control our finances from home became a necessity, many more of us enlisted the help of digital solutions.

Countless neobanks have trading features, which means investment has become more accessible. And if the older folks think new age investors won’t tip the scales — they’re wrong. After all, a cohort of kids sent Gamestop’s stock through the roof .

When we look at the financial products that resonate with young people, it shows a generation claiming back their consumer power. Rebellion is a neobank loved by Millennials and Gen Z alike. The platform provides conventional banking tools alongside P2P payments, crypto, and trading. Users get a dynamic relationship with their money that reflects our fluctuating world.

How we use money is changing, and real-time financial products reflect that. Cash may be king, but digital money leaves a data trail. Not only can we map what people spend their money on and when, we can trace it back to their social media habits and the marketing that inspired their purchases.

A study from India goes so far as to suggest this data could take the place of traditional credit scores . The study shows that our mobile and social footprints have far more predictive power than a credit score, and could be used to make more accurate decisions. This could help provide much wider access to financial services.

One such company is ZestMoney , a ‘buy now, pay later’ platform that uses AI to provide users with a no-cost EMI which allows them to pay for a product in smaller monthly instalments at 0% interest — even if they don’t have a credit card.

It’s no wonder young people are trying to operate outside the usual financial systems — these institutions are simply not equipped to deal with the way we earn, invest, save, and spend money anymore. It’s like trying to measure the temperature of a volcano with your first aid kit thermometer. Sooner or later, you’re going to get burned.

Fintech won’t fix the generational wealth gap. But financial products that challenge the status quo could inspire the next generation to make personal finance an act of rebellion. By taking ownership of what they’ve got, and using products that do the work for them, our brightest hope might still have a shot at a better future.

Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Elon Musk says Bitcoin is good for illegal payments — and that’s about it’

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Schopenhauer used to say: Prepare to open the imaginary money chest…

Bitcoin price

We closed the day, January 23 2020, at a price of $8,406. That’s a notable 3.15 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$274.12. It was the lowest closing price in nine days.

We’re still 58 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).

Bitcoin market cap

Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $152,813,329,633. It now commands 67 percent of the total crypto market.

Bitcoin volume

Yesterday’s volume of $25,770,680,779 was the highest in two days, 48 percent above last year’s average, and 42 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 514 tons of gold.

Bitcoin transactions

A total of 329,759 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 1 percent above last year’s average and 27 percent below last year’s high.

Bitcoin transaction fee

Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.22. That’s $3.48 below last year’s high of $3.71.

Bitcoin distribution by address

As of now, there are 12,252 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.8 percent of the total supply, the top 100 15.1 percent, and the top 1000 34.9 percent.

Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin

With a market capitalization of $153 Billion, HSBC HOLDINGS has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.

Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million

On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.

He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 95.6 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $190,816 by now, according to dickline.info.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption

Bitcoin used an estimated 200,454,669 kilowatt hour of electricity yesterday. On a yearly basis that would amount to 73.17 terawatt hour. That’s the equivalent of Austria’s energy consumption or 6,774,625 US households. Bitcoin’s energy consumption now represents 0.33% of the whole world’s electricity use.

Bitcoin on Twitter

Yesterday 18,546 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 1.8 percent above last year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day last year about Bitcoin was 41,687.