Home Blog Page 73

Brookfield, La Caisse close $6.5bn Boralex acquisition

0
Brookfield, La Caisse close $6.5bn Boralex acquisition


Brookfield Asset Management and La Caisse have completed the acquisition of Canada-based renewable energy company Boralex for around C$9bn ($6.5bn), including debt.

The deal, announced in March 2026, was carried out through a plan of arrangement under the Canada Business Corporations Act and included Brookfield’s institutional partners such as Brookfield Renewable Partners.

As part of the transaction, the purchasing consortium acquired all outstanding class A common shares of Boralex at a price of C$37.25 per share in cash.

La Caisse, previously Boralex’s largest shareholder with approximately 15% of shares, supported the deal and will hold a 30% stake in the company following a post-closing investment.

Boralex’s headquarters will remain in Québec, Canada, and the company will continue to operate independently following the close of the transaction.

Computershare Investor Services, acting as depositary for the arrangement, has been provided with sufficient funds by the purchasers to pay Boralex shareholders.

These payments are set to be made as soon as is practical in line with the agreement’s terms.

With the completion of the acquisition, Boralex has applied to cease being a reporting issuer in provinces where it currently reports, and the company’s shares are expected to be removed from the Toronto Stock Exchange on or about 17 August 2026.

This investment is intended to help Boralex advance its 2030 Strategic Plan and meet increased energy demand driven by trends such as electrification, reindustrialisation and digitalisation.

The transaction, unanimously endorsed by Boralex’s Board of Directors, delivers immediate liquidity and clear value certainty for shareholders.

National Bank Capital Markets and RBC Capital Markets served as Boralex’s financial advisors.

Stikeman Elliott advised Boralex and its special committee as legal counsel.

Brookfield was advised financially by BMO Capital Markets and legally by McCarthy Tétrault.

CIBC Capital Markets advised La Caisse as financial advisor and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg as legal counsel.

“Brookfield, La Caisse close $6.5bn Boralex acquisition” was originally created and published by Power Technology, a GlobalData owned brand.



Source link

Binance gave Russia client data used in Ukraine donation case

0
Binance gave Russia client data used in Ukraine donation case

Binance gave Russian authorities customer records later used to charge a Russian IT specialist with financing terrorism over donations to Ukrainian groups, according to a report by Reuters on Monday.

The exchange identified Yuri Belenkiy as the source of transfers worth more than $700, Reuters reported, citing law enforcement documents. Binance also allegedly provided his date of birth, address, phone number and passport number, alongside copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit.

Russian authorities detained Belenkiy in September 2025 and he remains in jail awaiting trial.

Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged that Belenkiy made the payments between January 2023 and March 2024 after an appeal by exiled Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko. The funds were intended for the Ukrainian military and a group associated with the Azov Brigade, which Moscow classifies as a terrorist organization.

Investigators reportedly received two responses from case@binanceholdings.ru after requesting Belenkiy’s transaction history. Binance’s website had directed Russian and Belarusian law enforcement agencies to that address.

Binance’s current law-enforcement guidelines say the exchange requires a valid court order, police order or warrant before providing user information in a criminal investigation.



Source link

Billionaire founder agrees with Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos: We will work in space

0
Billionaire founder agrees with Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos: We will work in space

Some of the world’s most powerful tech billionaires think your next job posting could come from another planet. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman have all predicted a future where humans live and work in space. Now, Voyager Technologies founder and CEO Dylan Taylor is backing them up—and he’s putting a very soon timeline on it. 

According to Taylor, you could be commuting to the moon within a decade. 

“Humans will definitely be living and working in space,” the billionaire space exec exclusively told Fortune

“The next step would be the moon. That’ll happen in the 2030s—probably early 2030s,” Taylor added. “We’ll have a moon base, people living and working on the moon. You’ll be able to look up at the moon and see lights on the moon.”

Technically, Taylor points out that a tiny portion of humanity is already working in space at the International Space Station, which has had “humans continuously up there for 26 years.” But the CEO added that the industry is “working actively” on scaling that up from a handful of trained astronauts to the general population.

As for what jobs will eventually exist up there? Taylor points to resource mining, orbital data centers, and power grid construction—work he doesn’t think humanoid robots can fully replace. “You’re not going to be able to program Optimus to do everything on the moon,” he added. “You’re going to have to have humans to figure it out.”

Unlike the moon, Mars is humanity’s backup plan—not its new home

Taylor isn’t just speculating from the sidelines. Despite making millions before even 30 and running public companies across electronics, finance, banking, and real estate, he started again at 37 to chase his childhood dream: working in space. 

In 2007, Taylor became an angel investor in Space Adventures. He was also an early investor in Relativity Space, along with Mark Cuban. In 2017, he founded his first space venture, Space For Humanity, a nonprofit that plans to purchase seats on commercial spaceflight for people who wouldn’t typically have access. And then two years later founded Voyager—and that bet paid off last year, when the company went public on the NYSE, hitting a $3.8 billion valuation, and turning Taylor into a billionaire at 53. Fortune reviewed a summary of his financial records, which verifies his billionaire status.

Voyager is now building the replacement for the International Space Station and holds multiple NASA contracts. Taylor himself has even flown to space on a 2021 Blue Origin flight—and became the 606th human to go to space.

But Mars, he said, is a different story entirely: “Just because it’s so much further away. Radiation is so much more of a bigger problem.” 

For the majority of us regular folk, Taylor doesn’t see Mars becoming our new home—unless a major catastrophe hits Earth. “I agree with Elon (Musk) that we want to have some diversification, in case something really bad happens here—an asteroid or something like that,” he explained. “The moon really isn’t sufficient diversification. The moon and the Earth are really the same planetary system.” 

Who actually goes, he says, will mostly come down to who wants to. 

“A lot of people don’t want to live on Mars,” he said, adding that he’s not one of them. “I’d rather do the adventure. We’re all on a one-way trip, whether we know it or not. It’s just where you want to end up.”

And he believes enough people think like him that you could eventually end up with a town or city on the Red Planet.

“They have the adventurer gene, which I think I have,” Taylor added. “There’s enough people that would do that that you could start a small colony—but this whole notion that we can create an entire civilization, terraform ours, it’s going to take a long time to do that.”

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman have made similar predictions about space and work

It’s not just Taylor who’s predicted that you could be applying for jobs and a mortgage from another planet in the future.

Musk, Tesla CEO and the richest person on the planet, has single-handedly been one of the most influential leaders in pushing for 21st-century space accessibility. After all, he’s the cofounder and CEO of $1.8 trillion SpaceX, which has worked hand in hand with NASA to advance space exploration. He thinks humans will be on Mars as soon as 2028—but it’s worth noting his past predictions haven’t always hit the mark. In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send humans to Mars by 2024, but it didn’t happen.

Bezos, meanwhile, has predicted that by 2045, “millions of people” will be living in space—and robots will commute on our behalf to the moon.

“I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now,” the Amazon and Blue Origin founder said on stage at Italian Tech Week 2025. “If you need to do some work on the surface of the moon or anywhere else, we will be able to send robots to do that work.”

And in less than 10 years’ time, OpenAI’s CEO Altman says college graduates will be working “some completely new, exciting, super well-paid” job in space. The ChatGPT creator even said that he’s jealous of young people because his generation’s early-career jobs will look “boring” and “old” by comparison.



Source link

Why Bitcoin is Falling Despite US Stocks Hitting Record Highs

0
Why Bitcoin is Falling Despite US Stocks Hitting Record Highs


Bitcoin (BTC) had nearly everything going its way this week. Yet the cryptocurrency is still on track to finish roughly 3% lower.

BTC/USD’s weekly performance chart. Source: TradingView

That divergence is particularly striking given Bitcoin’s reputation as a high-beta proxy for US technology stocks.

Wall Street has pushed to fresh record highs as inflation cools and traders dial back expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike in September, conditions that would normally favor speculative assets.

So why is Bitcoin refusing to follow stocks higher? Let’s examine what is holding BTC back and what it could mean for its price heading into next week.

Bitcoin Is Facing Its Own Demand Problem

BTC fell from around $65,000 on Monday to as low as $62,470 (data from Bitstamp) by Friday. In contrast, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 closed the week approximately 1% higher.

Sandeep Pyapali, founder and CEO of payments firm Mesta, told Barron’s this week’s PPI and jobless-claims data was a “clean dovish signal” combining cooler inflation with a weakening labor market.

But he noted that crypto, unlike US stocks, failed to respond as expected, citing weak underlying demand and continued ETF outflows as structural headwinds.

Bitcoin ETF net flows chart showing outflows this week. Source: SoSoValue

Lack of ‘CLARITY’ is Hurting Bitcoin

Washington may have been a key catalyst behind the weaker crypto demand.

The Senate entered its five-week recess without advancing the CLARITY Act, while the Securities and Exchange Commission canceled a scheduled meeting on new fundraising rules for crypto companies.

Prediction-market odds of CLARITY passing this year had subsequently fallen under 20% as of Sunday, Aug. 16.

Chart tracking the odds of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026. Source: Polymarket

NYDIG’s Greg Cipolaro had already warned in late July that the bill lacked a credible path to the 60 Senate votes needed for passage, with disagreements over ethics, banking rules and other provisions remaining unresolved.

Last month, Anthony Pompliano, Founder & CEO of Professional Capital Management, argued that Bitcoin itself already has substantial regulatory clarity because its status as a digital commodity is broadly established.

In his view, CLARITY matters much more for the wider crypto industry than it does for BTC specifically.

That leaves another potentially bigger explanation: artificial intelligence.

AI is Stealing Bitcoin’s “High-Beta” Thunder

Michael Saylor, executive chairman at Strategy (MSTR), the largest Bitcoin-holding public company on record, offered perhaps the clearest explanation earlier this month.

Saylor said the enormous amount of capital being committed to artificial-intelligence infrastructure by companies such as Alphabet (GOOGL), Meta (META), SpaceX (SPCX) and others represents the largest of several near-term headwinds for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s year-to-date performance comparison with top AI stocks. Source: TradingView

In other words, Bitcoin and AI are competing for some of the same speculative and institutional capital. And right now, AI is winning.

Take ETFs for example. As of Aug. 14, US spot Bitcoin ETFs had recorded $5.48 billion in net outflows in 2026, despite recovering $459.6 million so far in August.

Meanwhile, four ETFs explicitly targeting AI and robotics had attracted roughly $2.1 billion combined through late July: ARTY about +$707 million, AIQ +$763 million, CHAT +$384 million, and BOTZ +$232 million, according to data resource ETFCentral.COM.

ARTY and BOTZ AI ETFs net flows and performance comparison. Source: ETFCentral.COM

The gap looks even larger if one includes semiconductors, the infrastructure backbone of the AI boom.

VanEck’s SMH semiconductor ETF alone had taken in $5.42 billion YTD by July, almost matching the entire $5.48 billion withdrawn from spot Bitcoin ETFs this year.

SMH performance and flow charts. Source: ETFCentral.COM

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that retail investors and hedge funds have increasingly shifted money away from cryptocurrencies and toward AI-related stocks and investments.

One investor profiled by the newspaper had exited a six-figure Bitcoin position entirely to concentrate on AI.

Technical Take This Week: Consolidation Above $60,000 or Breakdown Toward $50,000?

Bitcoin’s broader technical structure remains bearish after its bear flag breakdown in June.

The flag formed during BTC’s February-May recovery before price decisively broke below its rising lower trendline. Its measured downside target sits near $50,800, meaning the bearish setup remains active despite Bitcoin stabilizing above $60,000.

Bitcoin’s daily price chart tracking its bear flag breakdown and bear pennant setups. Source: TradingView

Since the June selloff, BTC has formed a smaller bear pennant around $60,000-$65,000, another bearish continuation pattern.

A decisive break below the pennant’s rising support could accelerate the existing flag breakdown, with the pennant’s measured move pointing toward approximately $46,300.

That puts the broader downside target zone at roughly $46,000-$51,000.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

More From FXEMPIRE:



Source link

Why bitcoin’s $48 billion in futures open interest looks like a powder keg?

0
Why bitcoin's $48 billion in futures open interest looks like a powder keg?

Volume, meanwhile, is dead simple as it measures the number of contracts that changed hands during a given period. Think of it as measuring how many times the front door of that exclusive club opened and closed over a given period, regardless of who stayed. It thus represents the degree of churn or liquidity available to manage positions.

So, the latest case of volume falling far behind OI is like a large club with a tiny exit door. What happens if a large number of people try to rush out?

Because overall investor positioning is massive, a sudden catalyst could trigger a wave of contract closures, such as forced liquidations due to margin shortages. Without the underlying daily volume to provide liquidity, the market may not be able to absorb the rush smoothly, leading to volatile, exaggerated price swings.

“The risk is mechanical. When open interest towers over daily volume, liquidations meet little resting flow to absorb them, and adverse moves extend further than they otherwise would. Traders have added substantial risk, most of it long, into a market that shows no matching demand,” blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said in a report.

The risk of an exaggerated move is particularly likely to the downside because of weakening demand and a lack of resting bids or buy orders at lower price levels.



Source link

FET falls below $0.13 as selling intensifies – Can bulls regain control?

0
FET falls below $0.13 as selling intensifies - Can bulls regain control?


Artificial Superintelligence Alliance [FET] extended its broader decline as the token shed 5.82% in the last 24 hours to $0.125 as selling pressure intensified. Later on, the price broke below $0.1311, a level that had repeatedly supported FET, before slipping toward $0.124 on stronger selling volume.

The weakness also reflects a broader repricing of AI-linked tokens after earlier speculative demand pushed the sector higher. Although FET continues to develop its ecosystem, investors increasingly require stronger evidence of adoption before assigning previous valuations.

Source: FET/USDT on TradingView

This shift provides additional fundamental bearishness to FET’s weak technical structure. Meanwhile, at press time, the four-hour RSI sat at 21.23, indicating extreme selling pressure. The MACD was also negative and confirmed the downtrend.

However, oversold readings measure selling intensity rather than confirm a bottom. If the price moves above $0.1311, it indicates that buying activity has resumed. Conversely, if the price does not move above that area, it could be considered resistance.

FET sees heavy Binance inflows

FET’s declining price has not been matched by a comparable rise in tokens moving onto Binance, adding another layer to the sell-off. Instead, FET sits at the extreme end of negative altcoin netflows, meaning withdrawals exceeded deposits during the measured period.

This contrasts with assets such as QGN, GMX, and CHZ that showed some of the largest positive netflows. Importantly, this metric only captures token movements and does not determine whether users are building their balance to accumulate or prepare for future activities.



Source link

Block’s (XYZ) EPS Surged 65%, So Why Did the Stock Drop?

0
Block’s (XYZ) EPS Surged 65%, So Why Did the Stock Drop?


Block Inc. (NYSE:XYZ) posted one of its strongest quarters in years on August 5, then watched its shares fall roughly 6% the next day. Adjusted EPS came in at $1.02, well ahead of the $0.87 Wall Street expected, and the company raised its full-year guidance across the board. Investors, it turns out, cared more about one soft number than a pile of strong ones.

Block’s (XYZ) EPS Surged 65%, So Why Did the Stock Drop?

Bull Case: A Cost Structure Built For Leverage

The headline story is what AI has done to Block’s expenses. Back in February, the company cut its workforce by 40%, arguing that AI tools were making engineers more productive and reducing headcount needs. That bet appears to be paying off: code changes per engineer have climbed 150% since the start of the year, and management frames the resulting efficiency as durable rather than a one-time trim. Second quarter gross profit rose 25% year-over-year, with adjusted operating income margin hitting an all-time high of 27%.

The rest of the business backs up the efficiency story with actual growth. Square’s US gross payment volume accelerated to its fastest pace since 2023, helped by more than 200 active ISO partners driving over 150% quarterly growth in new sellers from that channel. Cash App gross profit grew 31%, with consumer lending originations up 59% and commerce enablement volume up 17%. New launches like Cash App Tags, Cash App Mobile, and the general availability of Afterpay Pre-Purchase on Cash App Card add fresh reasons for users to stay engaged, and management is preparing to scale its Neighborhoods program, which connects Square sellers to Cash App customers, more aggressively in the second half of the year.

Bear Case: The Cash App Growth Problem

The number that spooked investors was Cash App’s monthly transacting actives, which grew just 3% year-over-year in June, a deceleration from the prior quarter’s pace. Management is now guiding for only low single-digit actives growth for all of 2026. That is a meaningful slowdown for what has historically been Block’s flashiest growth engine, and it suggests mobile payments have gotten more competitive.

There is also the matter of timing. CFO Amrita Ahuja sold 8,971 shares on the same day as the earnings report, a transaction worth about $770,000 executed under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted back in March. The sale trimmed her direct stake by only about 2%, leaving her with 454,275 shares, but insider selling around an earnings date tends to draw attention regardless of the paperwork behind it. Layer that on top of a stock still down more than 75% from its 2021 peak, and it is easy to see why traders reached for the sell button first and asked questions later.

Market Sentiment Check

Hedge fund interest in Block held steady, with 63 funds holding positions in both the most recent quarter and the one before it, showing neither accumulation nor an exodus. Short interest sits at just 3.11% of float, a level that points to limited organized skepticism toward the stock. As of August 14, the shares trade at 21.37 times forward earnings, a multiple that assumes a solid but not extraordinary growth path from here.

What Would Have To Be True

The tension in this story is straightforward. Bulls need Cash App’s user growth to stabilize while the AI-driven margin expansion keeps compounding, turning a leaner cost base into years of earnings growth well above revenue growth. Bears need that Cash App slowdown to prove structural rather than a temporary lull, which would undercut the network effects Block has built its whole strategy around.

While we acknowledge the potential of XYZ as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you’re looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

READ NEXT: 10 Best Future Stocks to Buy Under $10 and 12 Best Performing Semiconductor Stocks to Invest In.

Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.



Source link