KakaoPay Securities is planning to tokenize Korean stocks for US retail investors, working with Siebert Financial (where KakaoPay Securities is the second-largest shareholder) to enable 24-hour trading under US regulatory frameworks. Target launch is as early as H1 next year. CEO Shin Ho-cheol framed the problem as a global access gap: K-food and K-content have found global audiences, but Korean corporate equity value hasn’t been “exported” the same way. Foreign retail investors can already access Korean stocks through omnibus accounts, but time-zone mismatch has been a persistent friction point. Tokenization is Siebert’s leading candidate for solving the 24-hour trading problem, with the added benefits of real-time settlement. This was part of a broader three-pillar vision announced at the company’s first standalone press conference: globalizing Korean equities, expanding capital markets participation to all citizens, and what they’re calling “warm capitalism.” On the AI side, Shin wants an AI investment agent that knows each user personally, with a goal of bringing 20 million people into stock investing within three years (two-thirds of Koreans currently don’t invest). KakaoPay Securities trading will also become available through Kakao Bank starting August, leveraging the Kakao ecosystem’s built-in distribution. The more unusual announcements: KakaoPay Securities will gift up to ₩100K in stock to every couple who registers marriage this year, and is planning to extend that to ₩100K in stock for every baby born next year. On the newly-approved trading license, near-term focus is IPO underwriting, with ETF liquidity provider business and institutional sales and trading under consideration as mid-to-long-term expansion areas.

China reportedly halts some rare earth shipments to US. Not a new blanket ban, or any mention of specific rare earths. But… if I had to guess, Japan is usually a decent indicator of what’s actively important since Japan: - “sources virtually all of its dysprosium and terbium from China.” - gallium, dysprosium, terbium and yttrium from China to Japan all stood at “zero” in June. - Shin-Etsu Chemical has reportedly suspended acceptance of new orders for magnets containing dysprosium. - Global magnet producer Proterial had received no export licenses for Chinese dysprosium as of last month The Reuters piece mentioned yttrium, gallium, terbium, indium phosphide, and tungsten as historical examples (doesn’t say what’s being targeted now). On a side note, $LYC.AX is becoming one of the most important alternatives, as Japan has locked up 75% of Lynas’s medium/heavy rare-earth output. (8 tons of dysprosium + terbium in Q1) Something fun I also read is that Japan’s deep sea resource is enormous (est. at 16 million tons of rare earth rich mud, but commercialization is post-2028) But in the meantime, China seem to be choking off feedstock that would materially affect Japan. Since you’ve already seen the WF6 Japanese industry stressed from tungsten related halts. And indium/others earlier this year that is used to make InP substrates from Sumitomo/JX. But still gradually allowing exports directly eg. $AXTI -> $LITE to allow US/China trade to continue, kinda disrupting that from time to time, then using that as leverage. It’s interesting since Japan has so many different monopolies like ABF, so we’ll see if they do anything back. But if I had to give a prediction, it does look like the US has a countdown timer until China becomes self-sufficient on semiconductors. TLDR: - rare earth disruption to US - China actively targeting Japan for upstream feedstock (which goes to Us supply chains), probably want to focus on that - many many second/third order effects from disruptions - we’ll see what US/Japan wants to do back, but supply chain wars are being fought upstream.