First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Drops Below $64K, Ether Falls

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter, putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, has dropped 4% over the last 24 hours to less than $64,000. Ether also saw a significant downside, losing 6%, and the CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broader crypto market, lost 6% as well. Reuters reported that U.S. issuers expect the Securities and Exchange Commission to deny their applications to launch spot ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) after discouraging meetings with the agency in recent weeks. In traditional markets, tech stocks declined after Meta failed to live up to high expectations for its first-quarter earnings report.

BlackRock’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), which trades under the ticker IBIT on Nasdaq, fell out of favor on Wednesday, preliminary data published by Farside Investors showed. For the first time since going live on Jan. 11, the fund did not draw any investor money, snapping a 71-day inflows streak. Seven of the other 10 funds followed IBIT’s lead. Fidelity’s FBTC and the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) registered inflows of $5.6 million and $4.2 million, respectively, while Grayscale’s GBTC bled $130.4 million, leading to a net cumulative outflow of $120.6 million, the highest since April 17.

U.S. House Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) indicated that the final version of a stablecoin bill could be ready soon. "We are on our way to getting a stablecoin bill in the short run,” the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee told Bloomberg on Wednesday. Waters has previously called a version of the stablecoin bill “deeply problematic and bad for America." “It’s about making sure investors and that the people are protected,” Waters told Bloomberg. “We have to ensure that they have those assets to back up stablecoins,” she said. The latest development strengthens hopes that the U.S. can get a new stablecoin law before the elections this year, which was considered a longshot at the start of the year.

View comments

EarthDaily and CC35 Forge Strategic Partnership to Establish High-Standard for Conservation Monitoring in the Americas

Climate Week Miami Fosters Groundbreaking Collaborations as EarthDaily Analytics (EDA) and CC35 Capital Cities Secretariat Join Forces to Establish a New High-Standard for Monitoring Conservation and Deforestation Across the Americas.

MIAMI, April 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- CC35 Capital Cities Secretariat and EarthDaily Analytics (EDA) are thrilled to announce a pioneering collaboration focused on leveraging Earth observation data to drive forest conservation and mitigate deforestation across the Americas. This strategic partnership, inspired by discussions at Climate Week Miami, represents a significant advancement in the global endeavor to preserve our planet's vital ecosystems.

Deforestation captured over the course of 4 short days, from March 16 (left side of slider) to March 20 (right side of slider) in remote Washington, US.

CC35, renowned for its dedication to reducing local greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing environmental resilience in cities across the Americas, has chosen EarthDaily as its partner for a groundbreaking initiative within its GREEN+WATCH program. This initiative aims to democratize access to information, fostering transparency and global monitoring of protected forests and deforestation activities.

At the core of CC35's initiative lies the need for advanced Earth observation capabilities to effectively monitor changes within protected forests and implement conservation efforts that scale. Recognizing the current gap in the Earth Observation market, CC35 has identified EarthDaily's Constellation as an ideal solution with their satellite imagery built specifically for scalable AI and programmatic insights. EarthDaily's Constellation provides high-quality, standardized data with daily global coverage at the same time and angle. This unique approach delivers images ideal for scalable AI analysis, especially applications requiring consistent, high-volume data, such as what's required for monitoring large areas of forests in near-real-time. This data will serve as a critical component in CC35's efforts to track and address deforestation activities across the Americas.

CC35 will use EarthDaily constellation data plus earth intelligence from OroraTech to detect changes in vegetation cover and potential illegal deforestation activities. Once changes are detected across large areas, CC35 can then direct high-resolution collection from Satellogic & Maxar over areas of concern.

Sebastian Navarro, Secretary-General of CC35, stated: "With EarthDaily's Constellation and AI-driven analytics, CC35 is poised to make substantial strides in our conservation efforts throughout the Americas. Driving GREEN+ Programme with 3 layers of satellites and the creation of Subnational Protected Area Monitoring Centers that will serve as an incentive to increase the areas to 30% by 2030."

Story continues

This partnership marks a pivotal moment in the global conservation movement, demonstrating the power of innovative technology and collaborative partnerships in safeguarding our planet's invaluable natural resources.

About GREEN+ Programme:The program, created in 2022 to begin in 2025 by an alliance of institutions with extensive experience in regions and cities, in biodiversity, energy transition, artificial intelligence, biocapacity, risk, finance, carbon and other sectors, aims to secure all Subnational Protected Areas on the planet and promote the creation of greater conservation incentives with the goal of increasing protected areas to 30% by 2030. With permanent three-layer satellite monitoring, control, and transparency can be achieved. This initiative through GREEN+WATCH will provide global citizens with greater democratization and access to open information on local protected areas around the world that have supporting legislation. In addition, through the Program's partnership with different media outlets, regular conservation status updates will be provided in different languages on the biomass loss of the Earth's last lungs. According to scientific reports, an increase from 30% to 44% of protected forests is needed by 2030 and this will not be possible without new monitoring, penalization, and incentive mechanisms.

For more information about the GREEN+ Programme, visit our website:www.programme.green

For more information about the partnership of CC35 and Earthdaily:www.earthdaily.com/resource/cc35

About EarthDaily:

EarthDaily Analytics (EDA), headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, is a vertically integrated provider of Earth Observation data, analytics, and solutions. Utilizing a unique combination of proven space technologies, ground-breaking AI applications, and cutting-edge big data tools, EDA provides value-added, actionable insights to decision makers and risk managers across the public and private sectors on a global basis.

Building on a 35-year track record of leadership and innovation in the commercial application of Earth Observation technology, EDA is moving the state of the Change Detection industry forward with the 2024 launch of the EarthDaily Constellation. Supported by best-in-class project partners including Loft Orbital, Airbus, ABB, and SpaceX, the EarthDaily Constellation will provide spectrally robust, analytics-ready data covering nearly 100% of the world's landmasses and maritime regions, collected at the same time every day. Pairing the unmatched data collection of the EarthDaily Constellation with EarthPipeline, the world's first fully managed, endlessly scalable ground segment pipeline-as-a-service, EarthDaily Analytics is bringing the world's most advanced change detection system to bear on the biggest challenges facing businesses, governments, and humanity as a whole.

For more information on the EarthDaily Constellation built for AI as well as EDA's game-changing Change Detection offering, visit our website:https://earthdaily.com/constellation/

CONTACT:

For media inquiries in Spanish, please contact Eloise Stancioff, CC35 (media@programme.green; +1-786-605-5000)

For media inquiries about EarthDaily, please contact Elizabeth Duffy liz.duffy@earthdaily.com +1 612 271 2167

EarthDaily Logo (PRNewsfoto/EarthDaily Analytics)

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/earthdaily-and-cc35-forge-strategic-partnership-to-establish-high-standard-for-conservation-monitoring-in-the-americas-302126138.html

SOURCE EarthDaily Analytics

View comments

The need for green: Sustainable takeaways from Concordia Americas 2024 at UM

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to a third of the Earth’s freshwater and nearly a quarter of its forests, making it one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. This rich biodiversity translates into billions of dollars worth of ecosystem services. It is also quickly emerging as the new favorite sector for investment into the Americas.

At the annual Concordia Americas Summit, the largest nonpartisan assembly alongside the United Nations General Assembly, private and public sector leaders honed in on the need for sustainable investments into Latin America and the Caribbean. The two-day Summit, hosted at the University of Miami, challenged leaders to think about how environmental preservation can support development instead of standing in the way of it.

It is part of a transition to prioritize green economies among some of the biggest names in the Americas including the Libra Group, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), New York Mayor Eric Adams and former President of Bolivia Jorge Quiroga alongside corporate leaders and prominent scholars.

“We wanted to use our platform, and especially our significant private sector engagement, to be this catalyst to advance market-led solutions to the different issues and challenges facing the environment,” Matthew Swift, the CEO and co-founder of Concordia, said.

The Summit kicked off Climate Week Miami on Monday with a commitment to the environment through a partnership with CrossBoundary Group’s Fund for Nature — a group focused on investing in sustainable solutions in underserved communities. The collaboration was announced by former President of Colombia Iván Duque who has worked to preserve the Amazon Rainforest that stretches across a third of the country.

“We have to act and we have to act promptly,” Duque said. “We have to combine not only the enforcement against environmental crimes but we have to bring those players who can massively mobilize capital associated with conservation and restoration projects in the whole Amazon biome.”

A moment to connect finance with nature

Latin America has experienced firsthand how damaging the loss of an ecosystem can be with the deforestation of the Amazon. Hundreds of thousands of square miles of the rainforest have been lost in only a few decades with record high losses reported in 2022. Studies now estimate that between $1.7 and $2.8 billion must be invested into Amazon every year to maintain it at 80% capacity.

Getting ahead of this curve and trend in climate response was a prominent concern and hope among speakers.

“How do we attach a value to the tree before we cut it down?” Chris Ballard, Ontario’s minister of environment and climate change & minister of housing, said. “We’re looking at ways of making our cities habitable in the face of climate change and it costs a lot more money to fix this after the fact than it does to plan properly.”

The consensus among attendees was that the push for sustainable change will come down to cities and private market investments.

“It’s looking at public private partnerships as the answer versus saying, this is just a government problem or this is just a business problem,” Swift said.

Throughout the sustainability panels, mayors were present, from Miami-Dade and New York, to Kingston, Jamaica Quito and Ecuador, to talk about the initiatives they are leading, or have led, to build climate resilience and finance urban nature in their cities.

“I think regulations and the combined work between the cities and the leadership of the cities is going to be absolutely key to preserving that,” Alejandro Guerrero, the president & CEO of Lockton Argentina and Uruguay, said. “You have to understand where the government is going to come in.”

Major international conferences are coming to South America

The role of government in Latin America at the international level will become increasingly important through 2025. Within the next year and half, South America will be home to the G20 Summit, COP 16 for the Convention on Biological Diversity and COP 30, the UN Climate Change Conference. Hosting these conferences will allow Latin America to start the conversation for private-public sector collaboration in the environment.

“The biggest and most important events about climate, about economics, about nature will be in Latin America,” Carlos Correa, former minister of environment and sustainable development in Colombia, said. “That’s a huge responsibility. We have to take advantage of that and leverage that.”

Biodiversity is likely going to take a main stage at these platforms. Throughout the Summit, leaders, including Duque and Guerrero, discussed the potential for biodiversity credits, a new initiative by the World Economic Forum that would allow companies to earn biodiversity credits as a reward for preserving or restoring a set amount of land, helping meet company sustainability goals.

“At one point in our history we are going to have to understand that countries are not only valuable for what they produce but for what they have, it’s also what they preserve,” Guerrero said.

The story was originally published by The Miami Hurricane, the student newspaper of the University of Miami in Coral Gables, as part of an editorial content partnership with the WLRN newsroom.