☕️ Good morning friends,

We are big fans of Japan, but since yesterday we’ve been a bit more worried about traveling to the country. Takaichi's party won the election, in part, by using narratives such as “foreigners kicking deer”...

Also in today’s edition:

• Bithumb typo: Exchange accidentally pays out $44 billion in Bitcoin instead of Won

• South Korea overtakes: Stock market climbs to 8th place worldwide with $3.7 trillion market cap

• Tesla China push: AI training center goes live—local data stays in the country

Enjoy the read! 📰

👉🏻 China captured the EV industry; now it’s doing the same with humanoid robots. Check out our graphic on this.

Asia slides again as tech sell-off deepens: Asian markets extended losses after another tech-led rout on Wall Street. South Korea was hit hardest, with the KOSPI down sharply as Samsung and SK Hynix slid. Japan briefly dipped before stabilising, as risk aversion spread across equities, crypto and commodities.

TOP BIT

Japan's "Iron Lady" wins historic election

Japan's first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, has won her risky bet: With a landslide victory in the snap lower house election, she secures a supermajority and thus a clear path for her radical reform agenda.

A legislative hammer

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won over 310 of the 465 seats alone. Together with its coalition partner "Ishin," Takaichi now has a two-thirds majority.

• This means: She can override upper house vetoes and has enough political capital to amend Japan's pacifist constitution for the first time since World War II.

Who reacted how?

China 🇨🇳

Beijing is likely to watch the election result with concern. Shortly after taking office, Takaichi triggered the biggest dispute with China in over a decade when she publicly outlined how Japan might react to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Beijing responded with export restrictions on rare earths and travel warnings.

USA 🇺🇸 

US President Trump congratulated the "LANDSLIDE Victory" on Truth Social and confirmed a White House meeting in March.

Markets 📈

Financial markets reacted euphorically to the prospect of political stability and new stimulus packages. The Nikkei 225 shot up by over 4% on Monday morning, reaching new all-time highs. Investors are betting that Takaichi can now push through her record $783 billion budget without resistance.

What’s next

📊 All details & data: CNBC, Aljazeera, The Straits Times

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NUMBER OF THE DAY

That’s how big South Korea’s stock market is now.

📈 No. 8 worldwide: The combined market capitalization of KOSPI, KOSDAQ and KONEX stands at $3.7 trillion, pushing South Korea past Germany and Taiwan into 8th place globally.

🚀 Outperformance effect: Since the start of the year, the Korean market is up +20.4%. By comparison: Germany +0.9%, Taiwan +9.7%.

Watch: JPMorgan sees the KOSPI at 6,000 in its base case and up to 7,500 in a bull case. Local forecasts go as high as 7,300 over the next 12 months.

MARKET BIT

South Korea: Bithumb glitch hands out $44bn in Bitcoin

South Korea’s crypto market just saw one of its strangest moments: during a promo event, Bithumb accidentally paid out Bitcoin instead of won — worth roughly US$44bn.

A simple input error briefly triggered a mini flash crash and put regulators on alert.

🤦‍♂️ Expensive typo: Instead of 2,000–50,000 won, some winners received thousands of BTC, effectively hundreds of millions of dollars per person.

The details

Bithumb’s “Random Box” promo was supposed to pay 2,000–50,000 KRW per user. But during payout, the unit was set to BTC instead of KRW.

Private jets instead of coffee: According to Bithumb, 620,000 BTC were credited internally to 695 users. The mistake was spotted after about 20 minutes.

• Then it moved fast: accounts were frozen, affected logins restricted, and deposits/withdrawals blocked.

Recovery: Bithumb says 99.7% has been clawed back. In the brief window, about 1,788 BTC were sold; roughly 93% of those have since been recovered. Around 125 BTC remain outstanding.

The investment plan

A price dent on Bithumb: panic market sells briefly pushed BTC on the platform down to ~81.1m KRW (about -17%). After the freeze, prices normalized within minutes.

Bithumb says it will compensate users who sold at bad prices during the chaos, and financial regulators are reviewing the incident.

👉 Full story: Chosun, Business Times, Korea Herald, Straits Times

WORD OF THE WEEK

🇸🇬 Kiasu 怕输

In Singapore, kiasu literally means “afraid to lose.” But it’s less about fear and more about a mindset — the urge to stay one step ahead, never miss out, and always be prepared.

It shows up everywhere:

• People queueing early for the best food

• Parents signing their kids up for extra classes

• Shoppers hunting for the best deal before anyone else gets there

Competitive, yes — but also driven, practical, and quietly ambitious.

In one of Asia’s most competitive cities, being prepared is a survival skill — and part of what keeps everything running so efficiently.

HIGHLIGHTS 

🇨🇳 Tesla launches AI training center in China: Tesla has put a local AI training center into operation for assisted driving, allowing it to train models on China-based data domestically, as exporting driving data to the US is off-limits. A concrete timeline for a full FSD rollout remains unclear, and Musk’s expectations of near-term approval in China are widely seen as uncertain. The move intensifies competition with domestic EV makers, many of which are pushing Level 3 autonomy in 2026.

🇨🇳 Shein doubles down on China bet: The fast-fashion giant is investing around USD 500 million in a self-owned logistics mega-hub in Guangdong to boost efficiency and tighten cost control as the US and EU curb cheap imports with new tariffs. Spanning 600,000 square meters near “Shein Village,” the facility is designed to keep prices low despite the end of de minimis rules and to safeguard Shein’s ultra-fast, AI-driven production model.

🇰🇷 Korea’s battery giants pivot from the EV slump to robotics: LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI are increasingly targeting service and humanoid robots as a new growth avenue as EV demand and margins weaken. Robotics requires smaller, more powerful and more expensive batteries with higher margins, but analysts caution that the market will remain tiny relative to EVs through 2030 and is unlikely to offset current multibillion-dollar losses in the near term.

🇨🇳 USD 432 million Qwen kickoff crashes Alibaba’s site: Alibaba’s landing page briefly went down under heavy traffic as it launched a CNY 3 billion Lunar New Year campaign for its Qwen app, using milk tea coupons, referral rewards and lotteries to drive downloads. At the same time, the AI app battle is spilling across platform boundaries: WeChat is blocking red-envelope campaigns with Qwen links, ByteDance is pushing Doubao to mass audiences via the CCTV Gala, and Baidu and Tencent are rolling out billion-yuan subsidy programs to entrench their own AI apps.

FORTUNE COOKIE

Monday mindset: focused, strong, unstoppable! 💥

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