Tag Archives: attract

Health

Your Smell Could Attract Mosquitoes

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A new study finds that some people attract mosquitoes much more than others, and it probably involves the way they smell.

The researchers found that people who attract mosquitoes the most produce a lot of certain chemicals on their skin. These chemicals are connected to the scent that attracts the mosquitoes.

Leslie Vosshall is one of the authors of the study and a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York. She said, “If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you’re going to be the one at the picnic getting all the bites.”

For many years, there have been a lot of ideas about who is likely to get bitten more. But those ideas have not been supported by strong evidence, Vosshall said.

For the study, researchers designed an experiment to have people’s scents compete against each other.

They asked 64 volunteers to wear stockings around their forearms to absorb, or take in, the scent from their skin. The stockings were put in separate traps at the end of a long tube. Then, dozens of mosquitoes were released.

The mosquitoes came to some traps much more than others. The scientists did the experiment several times, always changing which stockings were competing against each other. At the end, they discovered a huge difference between stockings. The most attractive stocking was around 100 times more attractive to the mosquitoes than the last-place finisher.

The experiment used a kind of mosquito that spreads diseases like yellow fever, Zika and dengue. Vosshall said she would expect similar results from other kinds of mosquitoes. But additional research needs to be done to know for sure.

FILE – An Aedes aegypti mosquito is seen through a microscope at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 14, 2019. (Photo by MAURO PIMENTEL / AFP)

By testing the same people for over a year, the study showed that these big differences remain, said Matt DeGennaro, a neurogeneticist at Florida International University. He was not involved in the research.

“Mosquito magnets seem to remain mosquito magnets,” DeGennaro said.

The researchers found a common factor: Mosquito magnets had high levels of certain acids on their skin. People produce them in different amounts, Vosshall said. The healthy bacteria that live on the skin eat up these acids and produce part of the way our skin smells, she said.

The research could help find new ways to repel mosquitoes, said Jeff Riffell, a neurobiologist at the University of Washington who was not involved with the study. There may be ways to affect the skin bacteria and change the smell that attracts mosquitoes, he said.

However, he said that would be hard to do. Researchers also did the experiment with mosquitoes whose genes were changed to damage their sense of smell. But they still flew to the same mosquito magnets.

Vosshall said mosquitoes have ways to find us even if we change some conditions. “They have many backup plans to be able to find us and bite us,” she said.

I’m Andrew Smith.

Maddie Burakoff wrote this story for the Associated Press. Andrew Smith adapted it for VOA Learning English.

Quiz – Study: Your Smell Could Attract Mosquitoes


Start the Quiz to find out

_____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

attract –v. to bring attention to something or make something come towards another thing

scent –n. an odor or smell

picnic –n. a meal eaten outdoors, often in a park or other natural setting

stockings –n. tight-fitting covering for legs, feet, or arms, usually made of nylon

dozen –n. a group of twelve items

factor –n. a thing or element that has an effect on a situation or event

repel –v. to force or move away something coming towards an object

backup –n. alternatives, other options

_______________________________________________________________________

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Health

Do you attract mosquitoes more than others? Here’s why

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Are you a “mosquito magnet?” Based on a study published Tuesday, there is real evidence that proves some people really do attract mosquitoes more than others — and it has to do with your smell.

What smell attracts mosquitoes?

In a paper published in Oct. 18 in the scientific journal Cell, researchers found that mosquitoes are drawn to certain body odors, which is why some people get bit more than others.

Mosquitoes are enticed by people with high levels of carboxylic acids. Every person has unique levels of chemical compounds that create their individual scent. Those who produce high levels of carboxylic acids on their skin are the ones who attract mosquitoes.

“If you have high levels of this stuff on your skin, you’re going to be the one at the picnic getting all the bites,” said Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York, per Scientific American.

Researchers also found that changes in grooming habits or diet did not impact an individual’s attractiveness to mosquitoes, meaning that the levels of these acids — and therefore attractiveness to mosquitoes — remained steady over time.

Scientists have theorized about why mosquitoes prefer certain individuals for years. Many believed odor played a role, but until this experiment, no one knew which smell was most popular among mosquitoes.

What happened in the study?

Researchers gathered 64 participants and asked them to wear nylon stocking on their arms for six hours. During this time, each individual’s scent profile was absorbed into the nylon.

“Those nylons would not have a smell to me or, I think, to anyone really,” said Maria Elena De Obaldia, lead author of this new study. However, the smell was certainly strong enough for the mosquitoes.

The stockings were put head to head in closed containers with dozens of mosquitoes to see which scent was most popular.

“They would basically swarm to the most attractive subjects,” De Obaldia said, according to The Associated Press. “It became very obvious right away.”

The experiment went on for months, and it was clear that some participants were far more attractive to mosquitoes than others. One subject received an attractiveness score “over 100 times greater” than the least favorable subjects.

Once enough evidence was gathered, researchers took a closer look at each subject’s scent profile and found a pattern — those with high levels of carboxylic acids were the most attractive to mosquitoes.

What does this mean for mosquito repellent?

DEET is the active ingredient used in many insect repellents. The chemical compound deters mosquitoes once they land. Mosquitoes can taste with their feet, so when they land and get a taste of DEET, they are driven away.

“Mosquitoes are repelled by its smell and by its taste,” Vosshall previously told NPR.

Although DEET was developed in the 1940s, it is still considered the most effective insect repellent today, with one major downside — it has to be reapplied often.

Researchers are hopeful that the new research will lead to a more state-of-the-art insect repellent that will protect even the biggest mosquito magnets in the future.

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Business

Tesla, Ford attract new investments from George Soros’s fund

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Billionaire investor George Soros’s investment fund has bought stakes in Tesla Inc. and Ford Motor Co. and added to existing stakes in EV makers Lucid Group Inc. and Nio Inc., according to a filing late Friday.

The fund acquired 29.5 million shares of Ford
F,
+2.21%
in the reporting period ended in June, the filing showed. It snapped up nearly 30,000 Tesla shares
TSLA,
+4.68%
in a new position as well.

New positions for the fund also included bets on Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
+0.73%,
the social-media company in the middle of a dispute with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk over their soured deal.

The Soros fund offloaded some of its holdings in Rivian Automotive Inc.
RIVN,
-0.13%,
however, ending the reporting period with slightly less than 18 million shares, down from a previous holding of around 20 million shares.

See also: Rivian loses nearly $2 billion in second quarter as expenses mount

New stakes for the fund also included Las Vegas Sands Corp.
LVS,
+2.60%
and Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
+0.71%.

The fund sold all of its shares of Bank of America Corp.
BAC,
+1.09%
and Citigroup Inc.
C,
+0.70%
as well as gaming company Take Two Interactive Inc.
TTWO,
+2.05%,
among others.

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Health

Viral Infection Might Attract Mosquitoes to Humans

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This article was originally published in The Conversation.

Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal. Hundreds of thousands of deaths a year are attributed to mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya fever.

How mosquitoes seek out and feed on their hosts are important factors in how a virus circulates in nature. Mosquitoes spread diseases by acting as carriers of viruses and other pathogens: A mosquito that bites a person infected with a virus can acquire the virus and pass it on to the next person it bites.

For immunologists and infectious-disease researchers like me, a better understanding of how a virus interacts with a host may offer new strategies for preventing and treating mosquito-borne diseases. In our recently published study, my colleagues and I found that some viruses can alter a mouse’s, and perhaps a person’s, body odor to be more attractive to mosquitoes, leading to more bites that allow a virus to spread.

Mosquitoes locate a potential host through different sensory cues, such as your body temperature and the carbon dioxide emitted from your breath. Odors also play a role. Previous lab research has found that mice infected with malaria have changes in their scents that make them more attractive to mosquitoes. With this in mind, my colleagues and I wondered if other mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue and Zika, can also change a person’s scent to make them more attractive to mosquitoes, and whether there is a way to prevent these changes.

Read: Shazam for mosquitoes

To investigate this, we placed mice infected with the dengue or Zika virus, uninfected mice, and mosquitoes in one of three arms of a glass chamber. When we applied airflow through the mouse chambers to funnel their odors toward the mosquitoes, we found that more mosquitoes chose to fly toward the infected mice than toward the uninfected mice.

We ruled out carbon dioxide as a reason for why the mosquitoes were attracted to the infected mice, because though Zika-infected mice emitted less carbon dioxide than uninfected mice, dengue-infected mice did not change emission levels. Likewise, we ruled out body temperature as a potential attractive factor when mosquitoes did not differentiate between mice with elevated or normal body temperatures.

Then we assessed the role of body odors in the mosquitoes’ increased attraction to infected mice. After placing a filter in the glass chambers to prevent mice odors from reaching the mosquitoes, we found that the number of mosquitoes flying toward infected and uninfected mice were comparable. This suggests that there was something about the odors of the infected mice that drew the mosquitoes toward them.

To identify the odor, we isolated 20 different gaseous chemical compounds from the scent emitted by the infected mice. Of these, we found three to stimulate a significant response in mosquito antennae. When we applied these three compounds to the skin of healthy mice and the hands of human volunteers, only one, acetophenone, attracted more mosquitoes compared with the control. We found that infected mice produced 10 times more acetophenone than uninfected mice.

Similarly, we found that the odors collected from the armpits of dengue-fever patients contained more acetophenone than those from healthy people. When we applied the dengue-fever-patient odors on one hand of a volunteer and a healthy person’s odor on the other hand, mosquitoes were consistently more attracted to the hand with dengue-fever odors.

These findings imply that the dengue and Zika viruses are capable of increasing the amount of acetophenone their hosts produce and emit, making them even more attractive to mosquitoes. When uninfected mosquitoes bite these attractive hosts, they may go on to bite other people and spread the virus even further.

Next, we wanted to figure out how viruses were increasing the amount of mosquito-attracting acetophenone their hosts produce. Acetophenone, along with being a chemical commonly used as a fragrance in perfumes, is also a metabolic by-product commonly produced by certain bacteria living on the skin and in the intestines of both people and mice. So we wondered if it had something to do with changes in the type of bacteria on the skin.

To test this idea, we removed either the skin or intestinal bacteria from infected mice before exposing them to mosquitoes. Though mosquitoes were still more attracted to infected mice with depleted intestinal bacteria compared with uninfected mice, they were significantly less attracted to infected mice with depleted skin bacteria. These results suggest that skin microbes are an essential source of acetophenone.

Read: Two ways of making malaria-proof mosquitoes

When we compared the skin-bacteria compositions of infected and uninfected mice, we identified that a common type of rod-shaped bacteria, Bacillus, was a major acetophenone producer and had significantly increased numbers on infected mice. This meant that the dengue and Zika viruses were able to change their host’s odor by altering the microbiome of the skin.

Finally, we wondered if there was a way to prevent this change in odors.

We found one potential option when we observed that infected mice had decreased levels of an important microbe-fighting molecule produced by skin cells, called RELMα. This suggested that the dengue and Zika viruses suppressed production of this molecule, making the mice more vulnerable to infection.

Vitamin A and its related chemical compounds are known to strongly boost production of RELMα. So we fed a vitamin-A derivative to infected mice over the course of a few days and measured the amount of RELMα and Bacillus bacteria present on their skin, then exposed them to mosquitoes.

We found that infected mice treated with the vitamin-A derivative were able to restore their RELMα levels back to those of uninfected mice, as well as reduce the amount of Bacillus bacteria on their skin. Mosquitoes were also no more attracted to these treated, infected mice than uninfected mice.

Our next step is to replicate these results in people and eventually apply what we learn to patients. Vitamin-A deficiency is common in developing countries. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where mosquito-transmitted viral diseases are prevalent. We will investigate whether dietary vitamin A or its derivatives could reduce mosquito attraction to people infected with Zika and dengue, and subsequently reduce mosquito-borne diseases in the long term.

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World

Funerals for three suspected Palestinian militants killed in West Bank by Israeli forces attract large crowds

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The three belonged to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah organization, according to the militant group, which named them as Mohammad Al Dakhil, Adham Mabrook and Ashraf Mubaslat.

Israel said the men were responsible for at least five shooting attacks on Israeli army positions in the West Bank over recent months and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the operation showed there was “no immunity for terrorists.”

But the Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry described the men’s deaths as an assassination.

Video of the immediate aftermath of the fatal incident shows a silver car, with its doors open and what appear to be multiple bullet holes in the front windscreen, surrounded by two vans.

About 10 Israeli security personnel can be seen moving around the vehicles, with others taking up defensive positions close by. The operation had been several weeks in the planning, according to an Israeli police commander, who said that the suspects had opened fire on Israeli forces, who then responded in kind. Two M16 assault rifles were found in the suspects’ car, Israeli police said.

In a tweet, with a photo of the bullet ridden vehicle, the PLO said soldiers jumped out of a Palestinian public taxi and shot and killed three Palestinians.

“This is what the aftermath of an extrajudicial killing by Israeli occupation forces looks like,” it reads.

A few hours later, thousands of people gathered in the center of Nablus as the bodies of the three men, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were born aloft on their way to be buried. Many mourners fired guns into the air in tribute.

A tweet from a senior Fatah leader, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, captured a widely held sentiment, “May the souls of the martyrs of the Mountain of Fire [which overlooks Nablus] rest in peace, those who sacrificed their blood for the land, on the way to freedom and independence.”

Three days of mourning have been declared and the Palestinian news agency WAFA reports a general strike is underway across the West Bank with shops and schools closed.

Israel’s Prime Minister hailed the operation that led to the deaths of the men saying it showed there was “no immunity for terrorists.”

Palestinian Authority officials say the deaths should be examined by the International Criminal Court as part of its investigation into suspected Israeli war crimes in the West Bank.

This story has been updated with new developments.

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World

Saudi Arabia’s race to attract investment dogged by scepticism

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  • Saudi minister says FDI up 33% in first six months of 2021
  • Investment remains below earlier targets
  • Riyadh raises stakes with more ambitious investment goals
  • Lack of major FDI announcements could dent credibility

DUBAI, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia could have a credibility problem if it keeps shifting the goal posts for the amount of foreign investment it wants to turn its vision of a future beyond oil into a reality, financial sources and analysts said.

Five years since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Vision 2030 to end the kingdom’s dependence on fossil fuels, foreign direct investment (FDI) remains well short of targets.

When Riyadh unveiled the plan in 2016, it aimed to boost annual FDI to nearly $19 billion by 2020 from $8 billion in 2015, but last year it was just $5.5 billion. The longer-term goal was for FDI to hit 5.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030, though Riyadh did not give a dollar target.

Now the kingdom has raised the stakes again, saying it wants $100 billion in annual FDI by 2030, a new goal that many analysts consider overambitious.

“(It) does raise eyebrows as to how it looks quite unattainable, particularly that over the past four quarters FDI has totalled $18.6 billion and the total FDI inflow since the start of 2011 is only equal to $92.2 billion,” said Capital Economics economist James Swanston.

To be consistent with its GDP target, the $100 billion goal means the economy would have to expand by 150% to reach $1.75 trillion by 2030 – a level that would have made Saudi Arabia the world’s ninth biggest economy last year, behind Italy and ahead of Canada, South Korea and Russia.

To be sure, the years following Vision 2030’s launch have not been helpful for FDI. A purge of the Saudi business elite in 2017 and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 deterred private investment. Then the pandemic struck.

But analysts say the kingdom, and its grand reform plan, may soon start to lose credibility in the eyes of investors.

“Low year-on-year inward FDI levels will eventually stop being perceived optimistically as room for Saudi Arabia to improve and instead beg the question: what’s going on here?” said Robert Mogielnicki, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

‘FIXING THE SYSTEM’

Saudi authorities say much of the plan is still in its initial phases, which consist mostly of regulations and planning, and money will increasingly start pouring into the kingdom over the next few years.

Saudi Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih said the FDI numbers were already improving.

“We are fixing the system, we are preparing the deals, we are engaging companies,” he told Reuters. “A lot of our transactions are being prepared.”

In the first half of 2021 – excluding the leasing of Saudi Aramco’s (2222.SE) oil pipelines – FDI rose 33% from the same period in 2020 and was already above targets for this year as a whole, he said.

At Saudi Arabia’s annual “Davos in the Desert” Future Investment Initiative last month, several memoranda of understanding were signed but hopes of a major investment announcement were dashed.

Electric carmaker Lucid (LCID.O), for example, which is majority owned by the Saudi sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF) and headquartered in Silicon Valley, did not announce a much-anticipated plan to build a factory in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia did launch a national infrastructure fund, touting it as a strategic partnership with the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock (BLK.N), but the U.S. firm is advising Riyadh rather than committing capital.

“Saudi wealth remains attractive to foreign asset managers. Wall Street titans praised the local economy on stage, signed lucrative deals and walked away without committing any of their own capital. Speaks volumes,” said a senior banker in the Gulf.

A BlackRock spokesperson said it had a consulting assignment with the fund, which would be entirely financed by the National Development Fund, a government body, and would then aim to attract capital from other investors.

“It is certainly possible that BlackRock could be amongst these providers of external capital,” the spokesperson said.

‘NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT’

In a sign of its desire to attract more investors, Saudi Arabia issued an ultimatum this year that foreign firms must set up their regional headquarters in the country by the end of 2023, or risk losing out on government contracts.

Saudi Arabia has a much larger consumer base than regional neighbours and international firms operating in the Gulf may not want to miss out on lucrative opportunities arising from its plans for economic transformation.

Saudi authorities announced at the investment forum that they had licensed 44 international companies to set up regional headquarters in the capital Riyadh.

But ultimatums, combined with abrupt changes in trade deals and taxation regimes, are perceived as another sign of the kingdom’s unpredictable policies. Many Gulf executives believe firms will find workarounds to stay in Dubai, which has a more developed market and a less conservative society.

Forum attendees speaking on condition of anonymity said there were lingering worries about regulations and taxes as well as high operating costs and a lack of skilled local workers.

The Saudi investment ministry did not respond to requests for comment about the criticisms.

“The Saudi business environment is still notoriously difficult to navigate as a foreign investor”, said Swanston.

“In terms of trying to attain some credibility to the investment goals of Vision 2030 it would be fairly crucial for Saudi to get some real commitments from firms and foreign investors,” he said.

‘COUNTRY WITHIN A COUNTRY’

Progress on NEOM, Vision 2030’s $500 billion signature project, also remains difficult to assess, adding to concerns about the kingdom’s financial transparency.

The planned megacity in the desert, announced in 2017 and backed by PIF, is studying its economic and legislative framework, NEOM Chief Executive Nadhmi al-Nasr told Reuters.

Asked how many contracts had been awarded, or how much had been spent, he declined to give detailed answers.

“Honestly, we don’t pay much attention at this time of the progress on how much we awarded, because this is just the start of a long journey. When your ambition is to create almost a country within a country, you’re talking big … we’re not ready to start talking about how much we spent,” he said.

However, giving details of project spending, investments achieved and foreign commitments might help Riyadh gain more credibility, particularly given the size of its targets, analysts said.

Pushing net FDI to $100 billion a year is part of a larger plan envisaging more than $3 trillion in investment in the domestic economy by 2030 and economists fear even local targets will be tough to meet.

“At this stage, moving economic goal posts within the 2030 ballpark is still feasible. Yet there will come a day when the final scorecard needs to be tallied and progress can no longer be measured by the ambition of project announcements,” said Mogielnicki.

Editing by David Clarke

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Risks of Crypto Stablecoins Attract Attention of Yellen, Fed and SEC

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Stablecoins, digital currencies pegged to national currencies like the U.S. dollar, are increasingly seen as a potential risk not just to crypto markets, but to the capital markets as well.

Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen

is scheduled Monday to hold a meeting of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets to discuss stablecoins, the Treasury Department said Friday. The group includes the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“Bringing together regulators will enable us to assess the potential benefits of stablecoins while mitigating risks they could pose to users, markets, or the financial system,” Ms. Yellen said in a statement.

Stablecoins are a key source of liquidity for cryptocurrency exchanges, their largest users, which need to process trades 24 hours a day. In the derivatives and decentralized finance markets, stablecoins are used by traders and speculators as collateral, and many contracts pay out in stablecoins.

Stablecoins have exploded over the past year as cryptocurrency trading has taken off. The value of the three largest stablecoins—tether, USD Coin and Binance USD—is about $100 billion, up from about $11 billion a year ago.

Jeremy Allaire,

chief executive of the USD Coin issuer, Circle Internet Financial Inc., said the meeting of the president’s working group is a good thing for stablecoins and that he supports developing clear standards. “I think it’s good news,” he said.

Tether Ltd., the issuer of the tether stablecoin, said it looked forward to working with officials to support transparency and compliance. Binance Holdings Ltd., issuer of Binance USD, said it sees the meeting as a positive move. Having regulators involved will bring more legitimacy and clarity to stablecoins, Binance Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim said.

Stablecoins and the companies that issue them have been criticized as not being trustworthy.

“There are many reasons to think that stablecoins—at least, many of the stablecoins—are not actually particularly stable,” Boston Federal Reserve President

Eric Rosengren

said in a June speech.

While the startups issuing these stablecoins including Circle and Tether are responsible for assets that make them sizable players in the traditional capital markets, there are no clear rules about how the assets should be regulated to ensure stability.

Share Your Thoughts

Do you think tether poses a potential financial stability risk? If so, what steps should regulators take? Join the conversation below.

In December, the president’s working group released a statement on the regulatory issues concerning stablecoins. Among other things, it suggested that best practices would include a 1:1 reserve ratio and said issuers should hold “high-quality, U.S.-dollar denominated assets” and hold them at U.S.-regulated entities.

Stablecoins operate on the assumption that their reserves are liquid and easily redeemable. Ostensibly, a stablecoin should at all times be redeemable for national currencies, and the amount held in reserve should equal the amount in circulation: currently $64 billion for Tether, $26 billion for USD Coin and $11 billion for Binance USD.

Stablecoin reserves, however, don’t just sit in bank accounts collecting interest. Circle and Tether manage the reserves to provide some level of income.

Neither Circle nor Tether provides a detailed breakdown of where their reserves are invested and the risks users of the tokens are taking. This lack of information has alarmed central bankers and lawmakers in the U.S. and overseas. Binance has said its stablecoin’s reserves are backed 1-1 by U.S. dollars held in custody by the New York-based crypto services company Paxos.

Both Circle and Tether have separately defended the level of information they share with the markets.

Stuart Hoegner,

general counsel at Tether, said the company has a highly liquid portfolio that has been stress-tested. He said the company has a risk-averse approach to managing its reserves and operates in a way to ensure that its dollar peg is maintained.

“Our transparency allows people to decide whether they are happy holding that token or not,” he said.

“
‘Bringing together regulators will enable us to assess the potential benefits of stablecoins while mitigating risks they could pose to users, markets, or the financial system.’
”


— Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

What the companies have disclosed is that they have invested the reserves in corporate debt, commercial paper and other markets that are generally considered liquid, and in cash equivalents.

Tether, according to a report it released earlier this year, held about half of its reserves in commercial paper—short-term loans used by companies to cover expenses. The credit ratings of the commercial paper and whether it came from the U.S. or overseas couldn’t be determined.

In 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed as part of an investigation that executives of Tether, who also own and operate the exchange Bitfinex, took at least $700 million out of the tether reserve to shore up the balance sheet of Bitfinex.

The case was settled in February. As part of that settlement, Tether agreed to release quarterly reports on the composition of its reserves.

Regulators don’t have to look far for examples of what can go wrong in the world of finance. Money-market funds came under pressure last year during the pandemic-driven selloff and required support from the Fed. Dozens of money-market funds needed to be propped up during the 2008-09 financial crisis to prevent them from “breaking the buck,” or falling under their standard of a $1-a-share net asset value.

Building trust was one of the biggest reasons that Circle decided it would go public, according Mr. Allaire.

“It is about being a public company and being an open and transparent company,” he said in an interview earlier this month.

Write to Paul Vigna at paul.vigna@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Lawyers warn Elon Musk’s Bitcoin tweets could attract SEC’s ire

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Legal advisors have warned that Tesla chief executive Elon Musk could come under scrutiny from the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission over his social media activity around Bitcoin.

On Monday, Feb. 8 Tesla announced in an SEC filing that it had purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and will soon start accepting BTC payments. Shortly afterwards, prices of the asset skyrocketed to a new all-time high of a little over $48,000.

Partner at Linklaters and former branch chief of the SEC’s division of enforcement, Doug Davison, told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper:

“It would not be surprising—given the focus on the chief executive’s Tweets, Bitcoin pricing and recent dramatic market moves—for the SEC to ask questions about the facts and circumstances here,”

Former vice president of the European Central Bank, Vitor Constâncio, echoed the sentiment concluding that the “SEC will look into this,”

The SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have the ability to investigate should they suspect market manipulation.

Musk has been vocal on Twitter shilling Bitcoin and DOGE on a number of occasions which contributed to Bitcoin activity on the social media platform spiking to its highest levels. DOGE spiked to new all time highs following Musk’s endorsement.

There is little doubt that Tesla’s public foray into Bitcoin, and Musk’s influential tweets to his 46.5 million followers, have contributed to this latest price spike.

He is still currently shilling Dogecoin with this recent tweet late on Feb. 10 stating he is buying the asset. DOGE spiked 13% following that particular tweet a few hours ago.

Musk is no stranger to Twitter controversy; he has been previously accused of posting misinformation on the platform regarding Covid-19 and the closure of one of his factories.

In another incident he suggested that Tesla stock price was too high, resulting in a subsequent price slide. The SEC sued Musk for fraud, charging the Tesla chief with making “false and misleading tweets,” but he settled with the regulator soon after.



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