After the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the number of crypto fund products with significant carbon footprint grew dramatically.

In light of this, Zumo, the B2B digital assets infrastructure prioritising compliance and sustainability, is joining forces with the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI), which provides data on the carbon exposure of investments and business activities related to blockchain, to help financial institutions better measure, mitigate, and report on the carbon footprint of their crypto activities.

Research from Zumo and CCRI highlighted that as of March 2024, the annualised carbon footprint of all physically backed Bitcoin fund products stood at 4487.93 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide (ktCO2). To put this into context, this is equivalent to a person flying from London to New York and back over 1.5 million times.

The environmental impact of blockchain also stands to get worse, with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) now also accepting crypto fund products.

Furthermore, the annualised carbon footprint of the US ETF cohort that went live in January 2024 following approval by the SEC was 2056.86 ktCO2, meaning it had captured 45.8 per cent of the market share and carbon footprint – for physically-backed Bitcoin funds within just a couple of months.

CCRI will now provide the data and methodologies to enable Zumo to further develop its Oxygen solution. The first of its kind, Oxygen uses blockchain technology and strategically sourced market instruments, including renewable energy certificates (RECs), to enable financial institutions to measure, mitigate, and report on the carbon footprint of their digital asset activities.

Embedding sustainability ‘at the heart’ of digital assets

Nick Jones, founder and CEO of Zumo, commented: “As providers’ share of crypto holdings increases, so must their responsibility when it comes to ESG considerations. We’re proud to be partnering with CCRI, which is recognised as the gold standard for sustainability data in our sector.

“Together, we can help responsible financial institutions embed sustainability at the heart of their digital asset propositions, in line with investors’ growing ESG awareness and new regulations, such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires companies to report Scope 3 emissions.”

Last year, Zumo helped Jacobi Asset Management deliver Europe’s first ESG-aligned Bitcoin spot ETF, listed on Euronext Amsterdam. Zumo will now work in partnership with CCRI to help more financial institutions address the carbon footprint of the new wave of Bitcoin ETFs and other financial instruments coming to the global market.

Christian Stoll, co-founder of CCRI, also added: “Transparency and data are key to measuring and managing environmental impacts linked to financial products. Unfortunately, most funds are still not measuring or reporting on the carbon footprint of their crypto activities. We are happy that Zumo builds on our dataset and leverages our complementary capabilities to provide an end-to-end solution to help financial institutions understand and mitigate their crypto-related carbon exposure.”

Fintech has reclaimed its dominance as the most-funded startup sector in the UK, with $1.4billion raised across 73 rounds in the first quarter of 2024, according to analysis from HSBC Innovation Banking and Dealroom.

Despite energy briefly surpassing fintech in 2023, fintech has regained its supremacy with notable late-stage investments in companies like Monzo, Flagstone and PPRO. While fintech is back on top as UK’s most-funded startup sector, semiconductors and quantum computing are also gaining momentum.

London still holds its position as the top city in the UK and Europe for venture capital raised in 2024. However, funding is now spreading to various innovation hubs across the country. Edinburgh  Brighton and Cambridgeshire have experienced the most significant growth in venture capital this year compared to 2023.

Significant rounds for a diverse set of companies largely drove this, including those for videogame developers Build a Rocket Boy (Edinburgh), drug discovery company Enterprise Therapeutics (Brighton), and quantum computing firm Quantinuum (Cambridge).

Simon Bumfrey, head of technology and life sciences at HSBC Innovation Banking UK, commented: “This data reflects a busy start to the year for the UK innovation ecosystem – from growth in investment in established and emerging areas like fintech and quantum computing to expansion of regional tech hubs across the length and breadth the country, there is much to celebrate.

“We remain optimistic and excited about UK innovation in 2024 and are committed to supporting and partnering with innovators, investors and the broader ecosystem.”

In the first quarter of 2024, UK startups collectively raised $3.9billion, indicating a potential stabilisation of VC investment levels in the UK following a sharp global reset from H2 2022.  Early-stage investments in Q1 surpassed the levels of the two previous quarters, reaching $1billion.

The first challenge in ranking fast-growing ecommerce companies is the definition. Should “ecommerce” include only companies that sell their own inventory? Or does it also include platforms and tech providers that serve those sellers?

Yahoo Finance adopted the latter last month when it ranked the fastest-growing, publicly traded ecommerce companies. The list includes retailers and platforms with at least $100 million in annual revenue in fiscal 2023.

According to Yahoo, the Chinese firm PDD Holdings Inc. (owners of Temu, the consumer marketplace) experienced the greatest annual percentage revenue increase in 2023 at 51.91%. Turkey-based D-Market Elektronik Hizmetler ve Ticaret A.S. (an electronics marketplace) was second with a growth of 36.25%.

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In terms of market capitalization (stock price times the number of outstanding shares), Amazon holds the lead by far with $1.85 trillion in March 2024.

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According to Insider Intelligence, in 2024 global retail ecommerce sales will surpass $6 trillion, accounting for approximately 20.1% of all retail sales.

Atome, the digital financial services platform for Southeast Asia, is partnering with payments giant Mastercard, helping Atome cardholders in the Philippines convert rewards points into gaming credits via the ‘Mastercard Gamer Xchange’ (MGX).

MGX, a new turnkey solution, facilitates a convenient exchange to help consumers convert their Atome reward points into gaming credits across nearly 4,000 of the world’s most popular gaming titles.

The Philippines currently ranks as the world’s number one gaming country, with over 95 per cent of internet users in the country between the ages of 16 to 64 playing online games; according to a 2023 Global Digital Report by Meltwater and We Are Social.

Magic Tang, head of cards business at Atome, discussed the partnership: “We’ve seen a very strong take-up for the Atome Card, especially among digital-native Gen Z and millennial users in the Philippines, with one of the top use cases for the Atome Card being online purchases.

“We see a strong synergy in this partnership with Mastercard’s MGX platform as it provides Atome Card holders and gamers access to a wide range of gaming credit options.”

Atome recently launched an upgraded version of the Atome card, enabling Filipino consumers the ability to shop and buy now, pay later wherever a Mastercard card is accepted, in-store, online and even overseas. New features include the ability to choose ‘Pay in three’ or ‘Pay in six’ month options.

Connecting ‘consumers to their passions’

Kaveri Khullar, senior vice president of consumer marketing and sponsorships at Mastercard, also added: “MGX bridges the world of rewards to the thriving global gaming community, offering an innovative and seamless redemption solution in a new category.

“From eSports viewers to console and smartphone gaming enthusiasts across a range of demographics, it opens new connections to the world’s fastest-expanding entertainment market.

“As the Philippines gaming market anticipates further growth in the next few years, this partnership with Atome is a fantastic example of how innovative payment experiences are evolving to connect consumers to their passions.”

Overall fraud rates in North America in 2023 increased by 70 per cent, according to a recent Featurespace report. As fraud continues to rise across the globe, many are left scratching their heads when considering how best to approach consumer protections. 

In an effort to fight back against fraudsters, payments giant Mastercard is now adopting generative AI techniques to enhance the protections that keep consumers, and the entire payments network, safe.

Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence (DI), a real-time decisioning solution, already helps banks score and safely approve 143 billion transactions a year. New generative AI technology will scan an unprecedented one trillion data points to predict whether a transaction is likely to be genuine or not, building Mastercard’s existing ability to analyse account, purchase, merchant and device information in real time.

The next-generation technology, ‘Decision Intelligence Pro’, works by assessing the relationships between multiple entities surrounding a transaction to determine its risk. In less than 50 milliseconds, this technology improves the overall DI score, sharpening the data provided to banks.

Mastercard explained that initial modelling shows AI enhancements boost fraud detection rates on average by 20 per cent and as high as 300 per cent in some instances.

‘Instilling trust into every interaction’

Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber and intelligence at Mastercard, commented on the use of AI to tackle fraud: “With generative AI we are transforming the speed and accuracy of our anti-fraud solutions, deflecting the efforts of criminals, and protecting banks and their customers. Supercharging our algorithm will improve our ability to anticipate the next potential fraudulent event, instilling trust into every interaction.

“The precision of the solution – achieved by scanning potential points of sale in real-time – has been shown in our own analysis to not only increase accuracy but also reduce the number of false positives by more than 85 per cent.”

The enhancement of DI looks to improve banks’ abilities to protect cardholders from fraudulent transactions and mitigate false positives: legitimate transactions which are incorrectly flagged as fraudulent ones.

Australians are increasingly looking to cryptocurrency to secure a peachy retirement, with allocation to the asset class from self-managed retirement funds increasing 400% in just four years — with the growth rate surpassing stocks and bonds.

As of the quarter ending in September, the nearly 612,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs) are holding a total of $658.6 million (992 million Australian dollars) worth of cryptocurrencies, statistics released on Nov. 26 from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) show.

The latest figure is a 400% increase from the same quarter in 2019 — which closed out at just under $131.5 million (198 million Australian dollars).

In Australia, self-managed super funds — also known as private superannuation funds — allow individuals to control how their retirement funds are invested. The retirement scheme is overseen by the Australian Tax Office, and the SMSFs are still required to comply with superannuation laws.

Crypto tax provider Koinly’s head of tax Danny Talwar told Cointelegraph this makes crypto the “largest growing asset class in SMSFs.”

In comparison, listed shares — representing the largest allocation category for SMSFs at the end of the last quarter — grew 28% over the same time. Allocations to debt securities, such as bonds, fell 5.8% over the past four years.

However, total SMSF allocations to crypto saw a slight 0.8% drop from the quarter ending June 2023 and a 2.4% drop compared to the previous year.

However, the amount of crypto held in self-managed funds is down 38% compared to the all-time high of nearly $1.06 billion (1.6 billion Australian dollars) in the quarter ending June 2021 during the last crypto bull cycle.

Related: Australia’s tax agency won’t clarify its confusing, ‘aggressive’ crypto rules

However, Talwar highlighted that crypto only made up 0.1% of the total net assets held in Australian SMSFs at the end of the last quarter. He also noted that small-sized SMSFs tended to have a larger allocation to cryptocurrencies in their portfolios.

Holding crypto within a super fund is something Talwar said he’s seeing “more and more” of, and local crypto exchanges offering crypto superannuation products are “on the rise.”

“People want to want to hold crypto. You can hold crypto in super, but there are some stricter rules around it,” Talwar warned.

“Your SMSF strategy must allow you to hold crypto. It must be for the sole purpose of providing you with a retirement benefit. You need to get everything audited. You need to segregate SMSF holdings from personal holdings, you can’t have a blurred line between the two.”

Specific cryptocurrencies SMSFs hold and what gain or loss has been made is unknown as the ATO doesn’t provide information on portfolio holdings or performance.

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