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A Google document attached to the U.S. government sentencing memorandum reveals “random probably bad ideas” Sam Bankman-Fried had to repair his public image.

President Joe Biden hasn't taken a particularly friendly stance toward cryptocurrency. On the contrary, he's been a lot like his predecessor.

The total value locked in DeFi protocols has breached $110 billion — but it’s still short of the $189 billion all-time high recorded in November 2021.

Bitcoin enthusiasts have suggested the Qatar Investment Authority is considering adding Bitcoin to its portfolio, but the odds of a multibillion-dollar purchase are low.

Bitcoin would still preserve its bull market even if the current BTC price retracement approaches -40%.

With geopolitical conflict and climate change roiling global shipping corridors from the Suez Canal to Panama and elsewhere, enterprises rely increasingly on cloud-based business networks and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to extend visibility, facilitate collaboration, and ensure they stay one step ahead of the looming threat of disruption.

Meanwhile, as legislation to bolster transparency in supply chains takes hold around the world, the digital platforms through which trading partners carry out interconnected operational processes have become indispensable for managing risk, advancing sustainability objectives, and verifying adherence to ethical business practices – even as volatility in international commerce gathers pace.

After rebounding from several years of logjammed seaports, idled factories, and quarantined workers, many businesses find that though COVID-19 has receded, disruption stubbornly persists. Yet visibility across all aspects of the supply chain – from sourcing raw materials and managing logistics capacity to securing working capital solutions and managing dispersed physical assets – remains paramount in the quest to ensure business continuity, instill operational resilience, and deepen competitive advantage.

SAP Business Network powers transparency, resiliency, and sustainability Learn more

To help provide businesses with the 360-degree visibility and collaborative capabilities they require across complex trading relationships, SAP Business Network can connect people, processes, and systems across multiple enterprises to help digitize transactions, harness data-driven insights, and create transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains. Through SAP Business Network for Procurement, trading partners can gain process efficiencies, improve supply assurance, and achieve business process and regulatory compliance by increasing operational transparency. With SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, companies can achieve supply chain visibility by enabling plan-driven automation, optimizing capacity and inventory, and streamlining workflow. Aided by SAP Business Network for Logistics, shippers and carriers can work together in unison, track and trace goods in transit, and achieve transparency throughout the supply chain by optimizing logistics processes, increasing on-time deliveries, and mitigating third-party risk. Relying on SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, owners, operators, and service providers can strengthen joint processes and the flow of shared information through a single, consistent version of asset master data to help streamline asset maintenance processes and reduce maintenance costs. With the benefit of SAP Business Network for Finance, trading partners can enhance payment security, free up working capital through early-payment discounts, and leverage access to capital bound up in outstanding receivables.

By linking together the routine business processes of trading partners, cloud-based networks establish the breadth of data necessary to apply predictive and generative AI applications to yield meaningful insights and outcomes. Through large language models and other forms of machine learning, cloud-based applications create new content with characteristics resembling that which precedes it. With every successive effort, generative AI sharpens its ability to tailor desired content.

As the world’s largest platform for business-to-business commerce, SAP Business Network can present an ideal setting for generative AI, in that it helps bring together an extremely large volume of trading partners across hundreds of millions of transactions representing US$5.3 trillion in commerce annually. Later this year, generative AI capabilities in SAP Business Network will be able to help detect errors and present automatic summaries when businesses create invoices. AI will also enable the network to help enrich catalog content and discovery posting responses for suppliers.

SAP Business Network has accumulated significant structured content over many years to help generate broad operational insights for trading partners. When buyers, suppliers, carriers, and financing solution providers share operational data with each other in real time, the mutual value they create can be exponential rather than additive, enabling all participants in commerce to plan ahead with confidence, continuity, and enduring resilience.

For further information on SAP Business Network and how we are equipping enterprises large and small with the digital tools needed to counter disruption, visit sap.com/businessnetwork.

Jörn Keller is executive vice president and chief product officer of SAP Business Network.

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Bitcoin may have fallen to its lowest levels in over a week, but BTC price optimism is anything but fading.

Ethereum takes a significant step towards a layer-2 centric future after the Dencun hard fork, leading Vitalik Buterin to call for a shift in mentality.

Approximately $700 in satoshis were sent to El Salvador’s new “Bitcoin piggy bank” across dozens of donations.

Nearly 100 million shares of BlackRock’s Bitcoin funds were traded on Thursday, setting a new daily volume record.

Two Democratic senators argue that any further approvals would expose investors to risks including “fraud and manipulation.”

Gaming firm to invest another $100M in Bitcoin and ETH after stock triples, Hong Kong’s in-kind Bitcoin ETF, Bybit warning: Asia Express.

BTC price strength wobbles on the release of problematic U.S. inflation data as traders brush off Bitcoin’s moves around all-time highs.

The home of Crypto Banter offers Bitcoin arbitrage opportunities and welcomes crypto digital nomads: Crypto City Guide to Cape Town.

Composable payment options enhance the customer experience at
checkout and accelerate retailers’ business growth

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a new composable payment solution to help retailers stay ahead of changing customer expectations. The new solution, SAP Commerce Cloud, open payment framework, helps retailers become more agile as new payment options – such as buy now, pay later – gain popularity.

Unlock business agility and transform customer experiences with SAP Commerce Cloud Learn more

The framework integrates SAP Commerce Cloud with numerous third-party payment service providers (PSPs), including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay and Airwallex, based on their specific use case. Additionally, SAP’s composable architecture allows retailers to cherry-pick payment partners tailored to their unique needs and international markets, enabling them to build at their own pace, scale their business faster and avoid being confined to a single provider.

“Retailers want to extend more payments options to shoppers and quickly, and SAP is leveraging its vast partner ecosystem to fulfill this need,” said Leslie Hand, group vice president, Retail & Financial Insights, IDC. “With SAP’s deep understanding of retail and commerce and new offering to have a quick connection to the PSPs, retailers can adopt the plug and play framework they need that greatly reduces the complexity of a traditional integration. It’s great to see SAP delivering on its promise to offer composable solutions, so customers can adjust to new market requirements when and where it works best for them.”

SAP Commerce Cloud’s seamless and native integration capabilities ensure PSPs can be rapidly adopted, and it reduces complexity by eliminating the need to integrate and deploy extensions to the commerce codebase. The framework is extensible and headless, helping ensure the front end and back end are decoupled and operate independently, creating an opportunity to cater to a wide range of channel requirements and add on new solutions, including prebuilt payment experiences available on SAP Commerce Cloud, composable storefront. It also ensures customers have the freedom to pick their preferred payment method, which enhances the checkout experience.

“SAP’s unmatched industry expertise is the foundation of our strategy, as it enables us to deeply understand the complexities of delivering seamless and positive customer experiences that reinforce the brand promise with every interaction,” said Sven Denecken, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Product Marketing for SAP Industries & CX. “SAP’s unique, industry-led approach to composability places the retailer’s digital commerce needs front and center while we work with them to manage their digital transformation, navigate pathways to sustainable growth, and deliver on industry expectations.”

This no-code, low-code framework gives retailers a low-cost, adaptive, and agile payments system that can best fit their business and customer needs. It covers common payment needs and end-to-end payment processes across authorization, capture, refunds, and re-authorization as well as automatic updates with security and compliance standards.

• Example use case: A jewelry retailer that leverages a leading PSP wants to expand its payment options to offer a buy-now, pay-later payment option. They can add the new offering with a few clicks, immediately make the option available while meeting security requirements, and help guarantee an end-to-end payment experience for the customer.

SAP Commerce Cloud helps deliver profitable digital commerce growth, from discovery to delivery and beyond, and can be implemented with agility across industries such as retail, automotive, consumer products, utilities, and many others globally through its headless and composable offering. The open payment framework for SAP Commerce Cloud is in beta and SAP customers can join now. It is planned to be generally available in H2 2024.

Read comments from SAP partners here.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

Media Contact:
Jillian Baker, +1 (212) 653-9600, jillian.baker@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

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Partner Quotes: SAP Announces New Commerce Cloud Payment Solution with Partners

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a new composable payment solution to help retailers stay ahead of changing customer expectations.

The new solution, SAP Commerce Cloud, open payment framework, helps retailers become more agile as new payment options – such as buy now, pay later – gain popularity. The framework also integrates with any third-party Payment Service Provider (PSP), including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay and Airwallex, based on their specific use case.

SAP partners are an extension of our business, bringing experience and domain expertise that help retailers innovate, transform, and simplify. SAP’s payment partner ecosystem is made up of many providers who are solving some of the most critical industry or region-specific business needs to empower shoppers to buy and pay on their own terms.

SAP partners are important to this initiative. Read the following comments from SAP partners, many of which have apps available on the SAP Store online marketplace, about their involvement.

Adyen

“Adyen has a strong foundation of servicing customers through our existing SAP Commerce Cloud integration, and the open payment framework is the first step of a larger strategic partnership with the goal of enabling digital payments for customers across a larger range of SAP solutions. Adyen and SAP support some of the world’s largest enterprise organizations, and this partnership provides a gateway for those companies to easily migrate to a single global payments platform with the flexibility and support that Adyen is known for. Working closely with SAP, we intend to scale our already considerable payments processing volumes to the next level.”

– Kyle Jenke, VP, Global Head of Partnerships, Adyen

Worldpay

“Worldpay’s collaboration with SAP using the new open payment framework for SAP Commerce Cloud aims to revolutionize the way businesses manage their payment processing, offering seamless and secure solutions for our customers around the globe. By combining SAP’s industry-leading software with Worldpay’s innovative payment technology, we can provide businesses with a comprehensive payment ecosystem that optimizes efficiency, enhances security, and drives growth. We look forward to the exciting opportunities this collaboration around SAP Commerce Cloud will bring, and we are committed to continuing to innovate and provide cutting-edge solutions in the payment industry.”

– Maria Prados, SVP, Global Enterprise Go to Market, Worldpay

Airwallex

“This is an important first partnership between Airwallex and SAP, as we mutually look to support merchants with their international expansion plans. As one of four official payment service providers added to the SAP Commerce Cloud solution, Airwallex’s global payments and proprietary financial infrastructure will provide merchants with even more choices and payment options that suit their growing customer base. This is the start of a long-term relationship in which we look forward to strengthening our enterprise playbook and further scaling into the Americas and EMEA while supporting SAP’s business in APAC.”

– Ravi Adusumilli, EGM, Americas, Airwallex

Media Contact:
Jillian Baker, +1 (212) 653-9600, jillian.baker@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Whether you’re searching for a partner, looking to join our ecosystem, or trying to find resources — discover the power of partnership with SAP Learn more

The connection between net-zero emissions and the circular economy is backed by research. When it comes to cutting greenhouse gases, the main focus is on improving energy efficiency and transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables, but that only accounts for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 45% is tied up in products, materials, and food.

Key administrations are aware of this and are starting to act accordingly. Accelerating innovation in industrial products and fuels for a net-zero, circular economy is one of five priorities in U.S. President Joe Biden’s Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. Meanwhile, the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) is a main element of the European Green Deal.

In parallel, the UN is collaborating multilaterally to create policy to regulate plastics. The UN Plastics Treaty is a consensus by 175 nations to deliver a legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution by the end of 2024. This is significant because plastic has become fundamental to the products we create and the packaging we use to contain and ship them. Plastic has an enormous impact on the environment due to the emissions involved in its creation and mismanaged plastic waste polluting the air, the oceans, our food, and even our blood.

Currently, the linear economy dominates, as only 7.2% of the world’s resources are reused or recycled. In the case of plastic, we take oil from the ground, turn it into products and packaging, use them, and throw them out when we’re finished. Continuing like this isn’t an option because we will run out of resources, worsen global warming, and cause further damage to our ecosystem. The circular economy is about running the resources around in loops, so materials retain their value and can be reused.

It sounds logical, so why aren’t we doing it already? The first reason is financial. In the long term, the circular economy will create jobs, cut costs, improve profitability, and secure supply lines. Achieving this, however, requires massive capital investment in the short term. Additionally, more data is required to help us understand the impact of our decisions. And we need a new, more collaborative way of working.

Capital investment-wise, we must invest in designing and manufacturing products with circularity in mind. We need to adapt and build machinery and systems to rescue resources from existing products and turn them into new items. The labor market must evolve to train people in the skills required and to make circular economy jobs attractive, with good remuneration and benefits packages. More wealth must also flow back up the supply chain to ensure the sustainability of raw materials and to enable growth and sustainable manufacturing. To help companies and financial institutions understand the benefits and necessity of the circular economy, more education is required.

Record, report, and act on your sustainability goals with SAP solutions Learn more

Data systems need to evolve to give companies insights on material flow and traceability, help them avoid waste, extend periods of use, recover and regenerate materials, and make informed decisions about products and packaging. This is where SAP comes in, with 80% of the world’s businesses using our software.

Take plastic again: the SAP Green Token solution can help businesses trace plastics back to their source polymer to understand what type of material is used in every plastic element in a product. This can help companies prove the environmental credentials of a given plastic. SAP Responsible Design and Production can be used to understand how recycled and recyclable a component is and can help a company understand the true end-to-end cost of a material. This can be useful in regulating certain materials for comparison and decision-making purposes as well as in helping businesses anticipate taxes and fees associated with their products.

We can interrogate upstream supply chain data, which relates to what a product is made from, but we don’t yet have a complete downstream picture of what happens to a product at its end of life. Recyclability varies wildly between countries, so to understand how recyclable materials are in certain countries or jurisdictions, a partnership approach with national governments, local authorities, NGOs, and others is required to build a database that can inform companies which types of plastic to use or avoid for certain markets to achieve circularity. SAP can add value by collecting this data and pulling it into solutions.

At the same time, to embrace the circular economy, our way of working must evolve. Instead of working in silos within our individual businesses and in vertical supply chains, we need to work collaboratively to share the data and bring the skill sets and processes together. For example, SAP works with groups of companies, such as with the WBCSD, to establish frameworks for exchanging data. SAP Sustainability Data Exchange started with embedded carbon in products, but the application can be extended to track other important material information for the circular economy like recycled content or water content.

Collaborations between businesses and non-corporate bodies accelerate progress. A clear example of this is how, by working with the WBCSD and the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network, SAP works towards updating solutions to help customers respond to new requirements that arise from the negotiations.

The ambition is to replicate this approach to plastic for other products, such as steel, batteries, electronics, textiles, and even food. With a circular economy across these industries, I’m convinced we can get halfway to net zero and if, in parallel, the energy experts continue to move the needle on energy efficiency and renewable power generation, we’ll get the rest of the way.

Learn more about SAP Sustainability solutions at sap.com/sustainability.

Darren West is a product expert in Circular Economy at SAP.

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BTC price records keep coming with $74,000 on the table in advance of another day's Bitcoin ETF inflows.

Musk started advocating for Dogecoin after receiving requests from Tesla factory employees and SpaceX visitors to include the memecoin as an official mode of payment.

A developer uploaded the entire Bee Movie script to the Ethereum network to show off reduced data costs brought about by Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade.

The firm only just completed a $800 million raise earlier this week which was used to scoop up another 12,000 Bitcoin.