U.Today – MicroStrategy, the world’s first and largest Treasury Company, continues to make waves in the financial world. In a recent tweet, Michael Saylor, co-founder and chairman of MicroStrategy, highlighted a staggering comparison: The company’s Bitcoin holdings, valued at approximately $26 billion, exceed the cash holdings of global corporate giants like IBM and Nike .

Since 2020, MicroStrategy has embarked on an aggressive Bitcoin accumulation strategy, positioning the cryptocurrency as its primary treasury reserve asset. As of Nov. 10, MicroStrategy holds nearly 279,420 Bitcoins acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $11.9 billion and an average purchase price of approximately $42,692 per Bitcoin, including fees and expenses.

According to Bloomberg, this Bitcoin cache worth nearly $26 billion is larger than the cash and marketable securities of global industry heavyweights including International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:), Nike Inc (NYSE:). and Johnson & Johnson. Only roughly a dozen corporations, including Apple Inc (NASDAQ:). and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc., have more assets in their corporate treasuries.

MicroStrategy shares surge 2,500%

MicroStrategy’s shares have increased by more than 2,500% as the value of Bitcoin has risen by over 700% since the middle of 2020, making it the best-performing U.S. major stock during the period. Bitcoin set a record of over $93,500 last Wednesday.

MicroStrategy created its performance metric, Bitcoin yield, which analyzes the percentage change in the ratio between its Bitcoin holdings and assumed diluted shares outstanding from one period to the next. The year-to-date yield is currently 26.4%.

Saylor chose to invest in Bitcoin in 2020 as a hedge against inflation as MicroStrategy’s revenue growth slowed. The firm first made the purchases with cash from operations but has since turned to leveraging the funds from stock issuance and sale, as well as convertible debt sales, to leverage its purchasing power. It has now emerged as the largest publicly traded corporate holder of Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy is doubling down on its Bitcoin strategy, aiming to raise $42 billion over the next three years to buy more Bitcoin.

This article was originally published on U.Today

By Marvin Valladares

TELA, Honduras (Reuters) – Wading through waist-deep water, residents along the northern coast of Honduras trudged through the streets on Friday carrying their belongings and pets, as heavy rains from Tropical Storm Sara caused widespread flooding across the area.

Sara churned menacingly near the Caribbean coast of Honduras, close to beach resorts and ancient Maya ruins popular with tourists, as the storm also took aim at neighboring Belize and Guatemala.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center forecast between 15 and 25 inches (38-63 cm) of rain in northern Honduras over the next few days, with up to 35 inches striking isolated areas.

Sara was located 35 miles (56 km) southwest of Honduras’ Guanaja island.

That dangerous storm system will likely cause “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flash flooding and mudslides,” according to the Miami-based center.

Sara could also hit coffee production in Honduras, Central America’s top producer.

Over 1,000 Hondurans have sought refuge in shelters, according to officials, while the government declared a national emergency on Friday afternoon.

At a press conference, national head of risk management Jose Jorge Fortin urged locals to avoid flood-prone areas, among other precautions.

He noted that those living near riverbanks were especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides.

Sara is packing 50 mph (80 kph) winds, and the NHC estimates that “some slight strengthening is possible” over the next couple days provided the storm stays offshore.

It will likely shift to the northwest, toward Belize, starting on Sunday, according to meteorologist Victor Ortega.

After leaving Honduras, Sara is expected to dump between 5-15 inches of rain across parts of Belize, El Salvador, eastern Guatemala, western Nicaragua and the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, according to the NHC.

By Gloria Dickie

BAKU (Reuters) -The world’s warming tropical wetlands are releasing more methane than ever before, research shows — an alarming sign that the world’s climate goals are slipping further out of reach.

A massive surge in wetlands methane — unaccounted for by national emissions plans and undercounted in scientific models — could raise the pressure on governments to make deeper cuts from their fossil fuel and agriculture industries, according to researchers.

Wetlands hold huge stores of carbon in the form of dead plant matter that is slowly broken down by soil microbes. Rising temperatures are like hitting the accelerator on that process, speeding up the biological interactions that produce methane. Heavy rains, meanwhile, trigger flooding that causes wetlands to expand.

Scientists had long projected wetland methane emissions would rise as the climate warmed, but from 2020 to 2022, air samples showed the highest methane concentrations in the atmosphere since reliable measurements began in the 1980s.

Four studies published in recent months say that tropical wetlands are the likeliest culprit for the spike, with tropical regions contributing more than 7 million tonnes to the methane surge over the last few years.

“Methane concentrations are not just rising, but rising faster in the last five years than any time in the instrument record,” said Stanford University environmental scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the group that publishes the five-year Global Methane Budget, last released in September. 

Satellite instruments revealed the tropics as the source of a large increase. Scientists further analyzed distinct chemical signatures in the methane to determine whether it came from fossil fuels or a natural source — in this case, wetlands. 

The Congo, Southeast Asia and the Amazon (NASDAQ:) and southern Brazil contributed the most to the spike in the tropics, researchers found.

Data published in March 2023 in Nature Climate Change shows that annual wetland emissions over the past two decades were about 500,000 tonnes per year higher than what scientists had projected under worst-case climate scenarios. 

Capturing emissions from wetlands is challenging with current technologies.

“We should probably be a bit more worried than we are,” said climate scientist Drew Shindell at Duke University.

The La Nina climate pattern that delivers heavier rains to parts of the tropics appeared somewhat to blame for the surge, according to one study published in September in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

But La Nina alone, which last ended in 2023, cannot explain record-high emissions, Shindell said. 

For countries trying to tackle climate change, “this has major implications when planning for methane and carbon dioxide emissions cuts,” said Zhen Qu, an atmospheric chemist at North Carolina State University who led the study on La Nina impacts. 

If wetland methane emissions continue to rise, scientists say governments will need to take stronger action to hold warming at 1.5 C (2.7 F), as agreed in the United Nations Paris climate accord.

WATER WORLD

Methane is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat over a timespan of 20 years, and accounts for about one-third of the 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 F) in warming that the world has registered since 1850. Unlike CO2, however, methane washes out of the atmosphere after about a decade, so it has less of a long-term impact.

More than 150 countries have pledged to deliver 30% cuts from 2020 levels by 2030, tackling leaky oil and gas infrastructure.

But scientists have not yet observed a slowdown, even as technologies to detect methane leaks have improved. Methane emissions from fossil fuels have remained around a record high of 120 million tonnes since 2019, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2024 Global Methane Tracker report.

Satellites have also picked up more than 1,000 large methane plumes from oil and gas operations over the past two years, according to a U.N. Environment Programme report published on Friday, but the countries notified responded to just 12 leaks.

Some countries have announced ambitious plans for cutting methane. 

China last year said it would strive to curb flaring, or burning off emissions at oil and gas wells. 

President Joe Biden’s administration finalized a methane fee for big oil and gas producers last week, but it is likely to be scrapped by the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister Eve Bazaiba told Reuters on the sidelines of the U.N. climate summit COP29 that the country was working to assess the methane surging from the Congo Basin’s swampy forests and wetlands. Congo was the largest hotspot of methane emissions in the tropics in the 2024 methane budget report.

“We don’t know how much [methane is coming off our wetlands],” she said. “That’s why we bring in those who can invest in this way, also to do the monitoring to do the inventory, how much we have, how we can also exploit them.”