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Big U.S. banks are holding internal discussions about expanding into cryptocurrencies as they get stronger endorsements from regulators, but initial steps will be tentative, centering on pilot programs, partnerships or limited crypto trading, according to four industry executives. Wall Street giants that had been largely blocked from many crypto activities by strict regulations are poised to grow quickly. Yet the biggest lenders are still hesitant to be the first among rivals to expand too heavily into crypto in case they fall afoul of changing rules, said the four executives, who declined to be identified since they were discussing internal business plans. If a major firm expands without issues, others will be fast followers to run small-scale pilot projects and weigh other business prospects, the executives said. Jamie Dimon, CEO of the largest U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase, ruled out getting into custodystoring crypto assets for clientsor expanding significantly even if regulations ease. “When I look at the bitcoin universe, the leverage in the system, the misuse in the system, the money laundering issues, trafficking, I’m not a fan of it,” Dimon, a longtime crypto skeptic, told investors last week. “We’re going to allow you to buy it, we’re not going to custody it. . . . I don’t think you should smoke, but I defend your right to smoke. I defend your right to buy bitcoin,” he added. U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to become the first “crypto president” before he took office. He has since wooed the industry’s elite at the White House, promised to boost the adoption of digital assets and said he aims to create a strategic bitcoin reserve. While there are welcoming signs, banks are seeking even clearer guidelines from the government clarifying what they can do in crypto, more than half a dozen industry executives said. “The shift in the stance is encouraging for traditional lenders, but they are still approaching it with caution and viewing the changes in regulation as an opportunity to engage and not a free pass,” said Dario de Martino, A&O Shearman M&A partner who works on crypto-related issues. Custody businesses to store and manage crypto assets are promising, bankers and executives said, but they have thin margins and potentially pose high risks. Most banks are likely to enter custody businesses through partnerships with existing crypto firms, sources said. Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster told Reuters earlier this month that the traffic lights from financial regulators were flashing “pretty green” for large firms to grow in crypto. The signals have reinforced Schwab’s plans to offer spot crypto trading within a year, he said. New regulators under Trump have also signaled more bank-friendly crypto policies. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency paved the way for lenders to engage in some crypto activities, such as custody, some stablecoin activities and participation in distributed ledger networks. The Securities and Exchange Commission also scrapped earlier accounting guidance that made it expensive for banks to deal in crypto. Bank of America could launch stablecoins, its CEO Brian Moynihan said earlier this year, and the U.S. banking industry will embrace cryptocurrencies for payments if regulations permit them. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley wants to work with regulators to see how it can be a middleman for crypto-related transactions, CEO Ted Pick said earlier this year. The lender is also exploring adding crypto to its e-trade platform, a source said. Some of the large banks are also exploring issuing a joint stablecoin, with the conversations in initial stages, another banking source said. Big banks seek more clarity around anti-money laundering rules and supervision before diving deeper into crypto. They are also asking for consistent guidelines across banking and market regulators before launching new businesses in digital assets, whose values are volatile. For now, banks are weighing their crypto prospects and running small-scale pilot programs. “While a much-improved environment, banks will continue to have concerns around anti-money laundering and regulatory compliance,” said Matthew Biben, co-head of the global financial services group at law firm King & Spalding. Shifting landscape Banks want to understand if they can engage in crypto lending, or if they are allowed to become market makers for digital assets, one of the banking sources said. The rules for traditional banking businesses are very well defined and there is complete clarity over what a bank is allowed to do and what is outside their ambit, similar well-defined guidelines are needed for digital assets too. The working group on crypto under David Sacks, the Trump-appointed crypto czar, has no representation from banking regulators, which needs to be amended if the big banks are allowed to play any meaningful role in the business, two banking sources said. Nupur Anand, Reuters Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar.
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Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world’s top weather agencies forecast.There’s an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it’s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office.“Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stronger precipitation, droughts,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the calculations but said they made sense. “So higher global mean temperatures translates to more lives lost.”With every tenth of a degree the world warms from human-caused climate change “we will experience higher frequency and more extreme events (particularly heat waves but also droughts, floods, fires and human-reinforced hurricanes/typhoons),” emailed Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. He was not part of the research.And for the first time there’s a chance albeit slight that before the end of the decade, the world’s annual temperature will shoot past the Paris climate accord goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and hit a more alarming 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of heating since the mid-1800s, the two agencies said.There’s an 86% chance that one of the next five years will pass 1.5 degrees and a 70% chance that the five years as a whole will average more than that global milestone, they figured.The projections come from more than 200 forecasts using computer simulations run by 10 global centers of scientists.Ten years ago, the same teams figured there was a similar remote chance about 1% that one of the upcoming years would exceed that critical 1.5 degree threshold and then it happened last year. This year, a 2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial year enters the equation in a similar manner, something UK Met Office longer term predictions chief Adam Scaife and science scientist Leon Hermanson called “shocking.”“It’s not something anyone wants to see, but that’s what the science is telling us,” Hermanson said. Two degrees of warming is the secondary threshold, the one considered less likely to break, set by the 2015 Paris agreement.Technically, even though 2024 was 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, the Paris climate agreement’s threshold is for a 20-year time period, so it has not been exceeded. Factoring in the past 10 years and forecasting the next 10 years, the world is now probably about 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter since the mid 1800s, World Meteorological Organization climate services director Chris Hewitt estimated.“With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape,” said Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter.Ice in the Arctic which will continue to warm 3.5 times faster than the rest of the world will melt and seas will rise faster, Hewitt said.What tends to happen is that global temperatures rise like riding on an escalator, with temporary and natural El Nino weather cycles acting like jumps up or down on that escalator, scientists said. But lately, after each jump from an El Nino, which adds warming to the globe, the planet doesn’t go back down much, if at all.“Record temperatures immediately become the new normal,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson. Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer
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Kristina Smithe was running the California International Marathon in 2019, grabbing cups of water to stay hydrated, when she started to think about how much waste such events produce. On the flight home, she did the math: 9,000 runners, 17 aid stations, and something like 150,000 cups used once and thrown away.“I was just shocked that, even in California, it’s not sustainable,” Smithe said.That sparked her idea for something more durablea lightweight, pliable silicone cup that could be used again and again. After working out a design, Smithe ordered her first shipment and tested them at a race in 2021.Now her business, Hiccup Earth, has 70,000 cups that Smithe rents out to interested races to replace the typical white paper cups that can pile up like snowdrifts at busy water stops.Billions of disposable cups are used around the world each year. These cups are often made of plastic, but even if they are made of paper, they typically have a plastic lining that makes it difficult for them to biodegrade. And making these cups, and disposing or burning them, generates planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.“That’s just a small subset of the amount of plastic waste that we produce, but it’s a pretty visible one,” said Sarah Gleeson, solutions research manager and plastics waste expert at climate nonprofit Project Drawdown. “It’s something that generates a lot of waste, and wastedepending on what exactly it’s made ofcan really last in landfills for hundreds of years.”As she was getting her business off the ground, Smithe emailed race directors to ask if their event used disposable cups.“The answer was always yes,” she said. Her response: “If you’re looking for a sustainable solution, I have one.”Now, she rents out the cups by the thousand, driving them to events in massive totes and leaving bins with the company logo for collection after use. Smithe picks up the used cups and washes them in a proprietary dishwasher.At the PNC Women Run the Cities race in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, in early May, Smithe helped quench the thirst of thousands of runners, dropping off 17-gallon tote bags full of her flexible blue cups.After that race, Smithe, 35, estimated she’s taken her cups to 137 races and spared 902,000 disposable ones from the landfill. She also says her washing process needs only 30 gallons (114 liters) of water per 1,500 cups. An average efficient household dishwasher uses three to five gallons (11 to 19 liters) for far fewer dishes.“It’s just a solution to a problem that’s long overdue,” Smithe said.One trade-off is that the cup rentals cost race directors more than other options. Disposable cups might run just a few cents each, while 10,000 Hiccup cups would rent for about 15 cents each. That price drops if more cups are needed.Gleeson, of Project Drawdown, sees the reusable cups as just one of many ways that innovators are looking to cut down on waste. Such solutions often have to be rooted in convenience and grounded in local or small applications to get more people to adopt them. Some cities, for instance, are experimenting with reusable food takeout containers that customers return to nearby drop-off spots later on.While no one solution can fully tackle the problem, “The scalability is there,” Gleeson said. “I think in general, high adoption of these kinds of solutions is what is able to bring costs down and really maximize environmental benefits that you could get.” Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org. Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Alexa St. John, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Accenture announced on Wednesday that David Droga, CEO of its technology-focused creative group Accenture Song, will step down from his role in September. Droga will transition from his day-to-day leadership role into a broader strategic role as vice chair of Accenture. As part of the transition, Ndidi Oteh, who currently serves as the Americas lead for Accenture Song, will become the CEO of Accenture Song, the company said. He will also join Accenture’s Global Management Committee. Meanwhile, Nick Law, current creative chairperson for Accenture Song, is set to become the creative strategy and experience lead. ‘Once-in-a-generation creative leader’ An award-winning creative executive, Droga founded his New York-based namesake advertising agency, Droga5, in 2006. Under his leadership, the creative agency won numerous awards for its innovative advertising campaigns. In 2019, Droga sold Droga5 to Accenture Song (formerly Accenture Interactive). The agency has offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Tokyo, and So Paulo. He became CEO of Accenture Song in 2021 after Accenture chair and CEO Julie Sweet asked him to step into the leadership role, as Sweet told Modern CEO in January. She saw the benefit of bringing his creative perspective to the leadership team. Droga’s ideas helped to transform Accenture Song and accelerated the company’s growth. As CEO, he introduced an operating model that merged creativity, design, technology, AI, data, and strategy into one connected platform. Droga spoke about how AI was transforming the advertising industry on Fast Company‘s Brand New World podcast in February. In a news release, Sweet described Droga as a “once-in-a-generation creative leader and business builder” who has “lived our core value of stewardship and has developed the next generation of leaders who will build an even better Song.” ‘I am ready to catch my breath’ In todays company news release, Droga expressed appreciation and conveyed his optimism for the future of Accenture Song. “With such extraordinary leadership in place, it felt like the right time,” he said. He also discussed his next chapter. “After 30 plus years of leaping, I am ready to catch my breath. And being vice chair will allow me to do that, but also to contribute in new ways.” Shares of Accenture Plc (NYSE: ACN) were flat in early trading on Wednesday.
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E-Commerce
Between reports of travelers being arrested or hassled at border crossings and boycotts due to President Trumps divisive rhetoric, its no surprise that the number of international visitors to the United States has taken a sharp downturn. Now new research from Tourism Economics predicts an 8.5% decline in international tourism to the United States this year. As a result, the country could see an $8.5 billion downtick in international visitor spending, according to Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company. Meanwhile, the World Travel & Tourism Council has an even bleaker prediction, estimating a loss of $12.5 billion for 2025. The formers predictions are an improvement from a report two months ago, which put the decrease in arrivals at 9.4% and spending down to 5%, compared to 4.7%. However, theyre shocking when you consider that the researchers had initially predicted a 9% increase in international travelers and a 16% boost in their spending for 2025. ‘Negative sentiment effects’ The largest decline for a single country is predicted to reach 20.2% from Canadathe independent nation that President Trump has posited should go from neighbor to 51st state. Western Europe follows at an expected 5.8% decrease in visitors to the U.S. Canada and Europe already have a significant drop in flights booked for May to July, down 33% and 10.4%, respectively. Overall, the strained relationship between the U.S. and its key trading allies and tourism source markets will continue to weigh heavily on travel demand, stated Aran Ryan, the reports author and the director of industry studies. These negative sentiment effects referenced in our prior research, explain our view that Trump administration rhetoric and policies have contributed to a mix of traveler backlash and concerns about traveling to the U.S.
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E-Commerce
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