World leaders’ annual what-do-we-do-about-the-environment conference started yesterday, and it already accomplished a longtime goal—teeing up a global market for carbon-credit trading.

Day one, down: Negotiators at the UN’s 29th annual summit on climate change, COP29, agreed on standards for the sale of carbon credits between countries after years of gridlock. Carbon credits let wealthier nations like the US, Switzerland, and Japan meet climate targets by “buying” smaller countries’ emission reductions—like carbon captured by new trees—without necessarily reducing their domestic emissions.

Some critics decried the agreement as a “back-door deal” that didn’t give enough representatives a chance to chime in.

Another goal: Figuring out how much money vulnerable nations need in climate financing to support disaster relief and clean energy. Some experts say member nations’ current annual target of $100 billion per at-risk country needs to be raised tenfold.

COP29 has extra controversy

This year’s conference is in Baku, Azerbaijan, where drilling rigs are visible from the COP29 stadium venue, according to the New York Times, and oil and gas accounts for 90% of export revenue. Russia helped secure Azerbaijan’s host status by blocking unanimous approval for any country that opposed the invasion of Ukraine, per NYT.

“We are not famous as a green-transition ideas developer,” said Mukhtar Babayev, the COP29 president and former head of Azerbaijan’s state oil company, back in July.

Vibes could be better: Forty-eight fewer heads of state are addressing COP29 than last year. Xi Jinping and Joe Biden—presidents of the two biggest oil-producing countries—won’t be there, and the island nation of Papua New Guinea is boycotting the 12-day-long summit, which it called “a “total waste of time.”

Looking ahead…Uncle Sam’s updated climate pledges will reportedly be released by the end of the year—but they’ll be based on many policies that President-elect Donald Trump plans on reversing. Top US climate diplomat John Podesta called the election results “bitterly disappointing” at COP29 yesterday.—ML

Trump named his “border czar.” Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Donald Trump’s first term, “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” the president-elect said in a social media post yesterday. Homan was one of the architects of the Trump administration’s controversial family separation policy, and will now be tasked with overseeing the mass deportations that were a focus of his 2024 campaign. Private prison stocks rose sharply after Trump announced Homan’s appointment.

FTX sued Binance for ~$1.8 billion. Binance’s former CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, was also named in the suit. The estate of FTX—the crypto exchange that collapsed in 2022, sending co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried to prison for 25 years for fraud—alleges that it’s owed $1.76 billion after funds were fraudulently transferred by SBF to Binance as part of a share repurchase deal. FTX also claims that CZ made “a series of false, misleading and fraudulent tweets” that “triggered a predictable avalanche of withdrawals at FTX.” Binance has denied all of the allegations. CZ, meanwhile, was released from a US prison in September after he pled guilty to charges of money laundering.

Salesforce is hiring 1,000 people to sell its new AI product. Agentforce, which launched last month, can provide customer support and perform other tasks without human intervention. CEO Marc Benioff said the product already has “amazing momentum” as Salesforce seeks to dominate the emerging AI agent space, which counts Microsoft as an entrant. Benioff has criticized Microsoft’s autonomous agents, calling the company’s Copilot assistant “disappointing.” Salesforce stock jumped 2.5% to a record high last week.—AE

Just as JFK promised to send a man to the moon, Trump is doing the same with cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin gained 29% since Trump became president-elect last week, hitting a record price of nearly $88,000 yesterday. Other tokens, including Ethereum and Dogecoin, also continued to surge this week—as did the stock of the crypto exchange Coinbase, reflecting the industry’s belief that it will have a staunch ally in the White House.

Crypto champion president-elect

Formerly a crypto critic, Trump recently became a crypto entrepreneur himself and embraced digital asset evangelism on the campaign trail.

• He promised to promote crypto mining in the US and vowed to create a national crypto stockpile by holding bitcoin seized by federal law enforcement.
• Trump also said he’ll push to remove Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, a notorious crypto skeptic, from his post.

But the rally isn’t just a celebration of Trump: The crypto world accounted for almost half of all corporate donations this election cycle, spending an estimated $245 million to support crypto-booster candidates, the majority of whom have won, or are projected to win their races.

Looking ahead: Many investors believe the crypto bonanza isn’t over, with the odds of bitcoin hitting $100,000 this year rising to 61% on Polymarket yesterday. Despite the prospect of friendlier regulators, crypto still faces an uphill battle to get risk-averse legacy banks to service it.—SK

If Amazon has its way, that scene in every ‘90s comedy where the delivery person is startled by someone’s bloodthirsty Rottweiler will be a relic of the past. According to Reuters, the e-commerce giant is working on a version of its Echo Frames smart glasses for drivers that could shave time off each delivery by directing them in and around buildings.

In addition to reconnoitering the locations of big scary dogs, the glasses would provide turn-by-turn navigation, like whether to go left or right after exiting an elevator. Amazon believes that the literal few seconds that saves would add up, allowing its drivers to deliver more packages.

But...the glasses are a long way from becoming a staple of the Amazon delivery wardrobe. Per Reuters:

• The company is having trouble making the battery last for the drivers’ entire eight-hour shift.
• Gathering data on each house and its surroundings (street, driveway, porch, etc.) could take years.
• Drivers would still have to be convinced to wear the glasses, which could be heavy and ugly.

Zoom out...Amazon’s consumer version of the Echo Frames isn’t exactly selling like hot cakes: The company has sold fewer than 10,000 units of the latest model, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Apple is exploring its own push into smart glasses to catch up to Meta. It’s unclear if those will provide canine detection services.—AE

It’s not a great time to be an online education platform where students go to cheat get help on their homework. Chegg, which grew exponentially during the pandemic as students around the world used its on-demand network of experts to do their calculus problem sets for them, is on the verge of collapse. Its stock is down 99% since 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported, wiping out nearly $15 billion in market value.

Why, you ask? ChatGPT now offers students a free alternative that can answer homework questions before you can spell “plagiarism.” Since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, Chegg has lost more than half a million paid subscribers. In response, the company has started to use AI, too, and even redesigned its website to look more like a chatbot.—AE