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Samara Asset Donates $10,000 To Support Bitcoin Education For Women in Africa

In a commendable move to advance financial literacy and inclusion, Samara Asset Group has donated $10,000 in bitcoin to Bitcoin DADA, per a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine. 

This Kenya-based non-profit initiative is steadfastly working towards empowering African women through extensive financial education, emphasizing Bitcoin’s power to bring about transformative change.

Bitcoin DADA, anchored in the belief that knowledge is empowerment, is convinced that arming African women with the understanding of Bitcoin can pave the way for their financial autonomy. This, in turn, empowers them to play a pivotal role in the burgeoning global digital economy.

The notable donation by Samara will significantly aid Bitcoin DADA in launching novel educational programs and initiatives, furthering its mission to uplift African women in the digital financial realm.

“Samara’s generous donation to Bitcoin DADA is a beacon of support for the empowerment of African women,” Lorraine Marcel Atieno, the founder of Bitcoin DADA, remarked. “The contribution will fuel our mission to educate, uplift, and inspire women in Kenya and across the continent, fostering a brighter future for African females. We’re grateful for Samara being a pillar in this journey of empowerment.”

Echoing these sentiments, Patrick Lowry, CEO of Samara, emphasized the organization’s core belief. He stated, “At Samara, we believe in a future where financial empowerment is accessible to everyone, irrespective of gender, race, or geographical location. Our donation to Bitcoin DADA is a testament to this vision. We’re not just investing in Bitcoin businesses, we are investing in a more inclusive and decentralized financial future for all.”

The commendable efforts of Bitcoin DADA continue, and for those inspired to contribute to this noble cause, you can extend your support by donating to further Bitcoin education for women in Africa through their official donation link.

#Samara #Asset #Donates #Support #Bitcoin #Education #Women #Africa

G20 Summit 2023 Agenda To Key Deliverables: Here’s What To Expect

The G20 Summit 2023 under India’s presidency is set to take place this weekend.

India’s legacy to the group of 20 nations could be on issues such as cryptocurrency regulation, multilateral development bank reform, furthering digital public infrastructure, climate financing, formulating common debt relief frameworks for distressed countries, and improving the lines of global value chains.

Although the language around the Russia-Ukraine crisis and the subsequent global food and energy insecurity is likely to impact the joint communiqué, the summit in New Delhi is expected to yield a chair summary similar to the G20 Bali Summit in 2022.

The lack of consensus on certain topics is highlighted by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping from the list of leaders due to visit New Delhi this weekend.

The event will conclude with India passing the G20 baton to Brazil—the host for the next summit in 2024.

The G20 is primarily an economic grouping, conceptualised to include the voices of key advanced and emerging market economies. This puts much focus on India’s financial priorities and the progress it chooses to showcase as the host country.

As the leading nations meet while the Russia-Ukraine crisis continues, concerns about global economic recovery, supply chain breakdown, inflation management, and monetary tightening have impacted much of the discourse, with a difference of opinion seen among various countries.

Some of the key issues laid out by the Indian delegation include digital public architecture, virtual digital assets, climate financing for developing nations, reforming multilateral development banks, improving financing methods for urban infrastructure, the debt vulnerabilities of distressed low and middle-income countries, and international taxation.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while speaking in Gandhinagar at the end of the third Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, said that delegations have shown interest in the agenda laid out by India, as evidenced by the long hours of the finance deputies’ meeting.

India’s agenda has seen significant progress among the 27 deliverables of the finance track, according to a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

An IMF-FSB synthesis paper, released to the public on Sept. 7, stated that its expected outcome is to have test estimates of flows and stocks of crypto-assets used as means of payment broken down according to type, sector, and counterpart country by Q4 2025 (October–December 2025).

The paper, which has been circulated among the G20 delegations, and the subsequent regulation that is anticipated come on the heels of FTX’s fall and the crypto boom of recent times.

India’s presidency, however, will officially end with the fourth and final FMCBG meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the expert group report on MDB reform and extending their lending capabilities will be discussed.

A ‘Multilateral Development Banks Capital Adequacy Frameworks’—developed under the aegis of the G20—proposed that an additional lending capacity of $200 billion could be made available by MDBs over the next 10 years.

Among other notable outcomes, the Trade Minister’s meeting in August under the authority of Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal agreed upon establishing a ‘Jaipur Call for Action’. This includes creating a database of information aimed at aiding MSMEs. The trade and investment group also decided on mapping out global value chains and setting down principles for digitising international trade.

In terms of the Sherpa Track, India’s diplomatic contribution to the G20 grouping, there could be inclusion of the African Union—a grouping of 55 nations—as a member of the G20, subject to the leaders signing off on it.

Picking up from the last drafting session of the leaders’ declaration in Hampi in July, the Sherpas and heads of delegations covered six priorities. It included sustainable development goals, green development, MDB reforms, digital public infrastructure, and gender equality, drawing on the outcomes from the various working groups.

The Business 20, or B20, is a grouping under the G20 that brings together international business doyens and their policy recommendations to the heads of state.

Chaired by Tata Sons’ N Chandrashekaran, the B20 communiqué featured recommendations such as:

  • Improving service trade and enhancing technology in trade

  • The rollout of digital public infrastructure to boost financial inclusion and healthcare access

  • Accelerate the net-zero transition through a harmonised international carbon market.

  • Harmonising cybersecurity standards and data privacy regulations

  • Allow for cross-border R&D and technology transfer of best practices.

  • A universal labour information management system.

  • Incorporate tech-driven frameworks in an AI age.

  • Integrate Africa into the global economy.

The B20 also proposed that the leaders establish a few institutional mechanisms.

These include a B20 Global Institute to pursue the recommendations made, financing decarbonisation, putting in place a Global SDG Acceleration Fund—a credit enhancement fund to draw in private capital for more public resources and achieving 2030 targets—and a compendium of best practices on innovation projects to serve as a knowledge repository.



#G20 #Summit #Agenda #Key #Deliverables #Heres #Expect

AMC Stock Closes at a Record Low as Meme Music Fades

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Leadership Doubts Threaten Fortescue Founder’s Green Reinvention

Three years after he first embarked on a mission to transform an iron ore giant into a clean-energy powerhouse, Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. founder Andrew Forrest is facing a governance storm that may yet imperil his green ambitions.

Bloomberg News

Jason Scott and Sybilla Gross

Published Sep 07, 2023  •  5 minute read

(Bloomberg) — Three years after he first embarked on a mission to transform an iron ore giant into a clean-energy powerhouse, Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. founder Andrew Forrest is facing a governance storm that may yet imperil his green ambitions.

Last week, in an unexpected move, Chief Executive Officer Fiona Hick resigned from the world’s fourth-largest iron ore producer after less than six months in the role. Two more senior leaders in the group were soon gone, including Guy Debelle, the high-profile former deputy governor at Australia’s central bank, raising difficult questions that are now dominating post-earnings meetings between Fortescue executives and investors.

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While Forrest and the executives have discussed few details, the sudden departures — the first announced shortly before Fortescue’s annual earnings — have resurfaced long-simmering questions over the billionaire’s leadership, and whether his sweeping green plans are at odds with the priorities of a lucrative core business. Iron ore still provides nearly all of Fortescue’s $17 billion of annual revenue, even in the face of a sputtering Chinese economy.

“It really is a cause for concern for Fortescue shareholders about what is going on at a board and management level,” said Gavin Wendt, founding director of industry analyst MineLife, though he added the core business was still operating well. “Shareholders and the market want to see board stability, coherent decision-making, and consistency. They’re not really getting that.”

Fortescue has declined to comment on the meetings or specific concerns, but Forrest himself has brushed worries about exits or China’s property sector aside.

In an interview with Bloomberg this week, he cited the need for focus as the company tries to reinvent itself: “They were good people, but we need constant alignment of interest,” he said. “It’s difficult to grow a new industry, and it’s difficult to break into a new industry while you’re growing.”

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He said the number of departures — in quick succession — was also not a concern as new talent would be brought in: “We’re upgrading all the time.”

Investors are less sanguine. 

Some interviewed by Bloomberg, who declined to be named as they were not authorized to discuss individual holdings publicly, said they were concerned about cash being ploughed into Fortescue Energy, the green arm established in 2020, and the impact of turnover at the top. They also expressed unease over a perceived lack of transparency in the company’s governance.

Fortescue’s shares have fallen 5% since their close on Aug. 25, ahead of Hick’s resignation and annual profit figures dented by China’s disappointing post-Covid rebound.

Analysts from UBS AG, who have already met with Fortescue executives this week, said leadership changes, capital allocation and the economics of energy projects had dominated the discussion.

“FMG explained that while former CEO Fiona Hick and CFO Christine Morris were highly regarded, the fit had not worked,” analysts including Lachlan Shaw said in a note. “A quick response was seen as in the best interests of shareholders and governance.”

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Bloomberg wasn’t immediately able to reach Morris or Hick. In a LinkedIn post, Hick said: “I have valued the experience at Fortescue and I thank the company and its people for the opportunity.” Debelle, who was CFO of the energy arm, declined to comment on the reasons for his departure.

Green Giant

Forrest is an Australian mining heavyweight with a storied history. The great-nephew of Baron John Forrest, the first premier of Western Australia state, he transformed a fledgling resources explorer into Fortescue, an iron ore giant. The company built a new mine, port and railway in Western Australia just as China’s infrastructure boom sent commodity prices rocketing, transforming him into Australia’s richest man.

Now, as part of a climate commitment he attributes to four years spent studying marine biology — he gained a Ph.D in 2019 — Forrest wants to produce 15 million tons globally of green hydrogen using renewable power by 2030. That equates to nearly half of the total global supply anticipated by BloombergNEF that year. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, he’s gunning for a hydropower and green hydrogen project that would be the biggest renewables project in Africa.

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Even laudable ambitions are hard to push through when structural economic changes in China are raising questions over the company’s core iron ore business, which expanded on the back of a then-surging property sector now in the doldrums.

And yet, along with annual results, Fortescue dropped a policy to allocate 10% of earnings to the green-energy arm. Now, metals and energy projects will compete for capital on an equal basis.

Leap of Faith

The firm’s reputation for capital discipline seems to have “gone out the window” with the green-energy push, said David Coates, analyst at Bell Potter Securities Ltd. Jefferies Inc. analysts wrote in a note there was now the risk of a strategy that “prioritizes projects that have relatively low returns” versus higher-returning mining projects.

Fortescue’s capital expenditure for the current financial year will be between $2.8 billion and $3.2 billion, of which $400 million will go to clean energy, according to Fortescue. The latter figure doesn’t, however, include hydrogen investments, which are expected to be announced later this year.

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The UBS analysts said Fortescue executives had described the removal of the 10% rule as a “natural evolution” as the company approached final decisions on a range of energy projects which should compete on their merits. The company is set to decide on five hydrogen or ammonia projects this year.

Forrest, meanwhile, is to be found doubling down. A Perth speech last week, posted online and cited widely by investors and analysts, did little to assuage concerns over the extent of the founder’s fervour for the green businesses. “Individual ambition comes second because what I’m talking about is the future of humanity,” he said, addressing his own “galloping herd” of employees.

He appealed to world leaders before discoursing at length on the ravages caused by extreme temperatures on the human body to an audience including former People’s Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan. 

“The bulls will argue that Fortescue has proven the skeptics wrong in the past as many in the market dismissed the company’s chance of success in iron ore early on,” the Jefferies note said, “but to buy FMG now requires some new leaps of faith.”

—With assistance from Martin Ritchie and David Stringer.

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Binance CEO brushes off negativity, assures firm has ‘no liquidity issues’

Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao has hosed down recent rumors against his firm, assuring its balance sheet and employee retention remain robust, despite the recent market uncertainty.

The Binance boss blamed negative news, rumors, bank runs, lawsuits, the closing of fiat channels, product wind-downs and employee turnovers for creating an environment of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) in a Sept. 7 post on X (Twitter). 

He then used the opportunity to clarify Binance’s current financial position:

“Guess what we don’t have? No liquidity issues,” CZ emphasized. “All withdrawals (and deposits) are properly handled. All customer funds are #SAFU, and 100% reserved.”

However, observers have noted at least 10 Binance executives have left the helm between July and September alone, including Patrick Hillmann, former chief strategy officer, Mayur Kamat, former product lead, Leon Foong, former head of Asia-Pacific and Steven Christie, former senior vice president for compliance.

CZ however explained in July that employee turnovers are a reality for every single company, especially those in a rapidly changing environment like crypto.

In a recent post, CZ said Binance “probably also [has] the lowest founding team turnover of any tech startup of our size and age, in the world.”

Related: Binance to reimburse users $1M for Cyber Earn incident

Meanwhile, the Binance CEO pointed to some wins in the cryptocurrency industry lately, such as the launch of new fiat channels and products, new hires, and new markets in addition to some wins in the courtroom — notably Ripple and Grayscale Investment’s victories against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Magazine: Crypto regulation: Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?