Chris Campbell:

Brazilian Farmers Are Tokenizing Cows to Get Farm Loans – And It's Working

Ten cows on a dairy farm in Paraná, Brazil, just became the first livestock collateral formally registered on the country's stock exchange.

Fazenda Engenho Velho, in Imbituva, used ten cows valued at R$120,000 ($23,310) as collateral to secure a R$100,000 ($19,420) rural credit certificate from BMP, a central bank-authorized direct credit company. BMP then sold those credit rights to Target FIDC (a fund that purchases and monetizes receivables), which registered the whole thing on B3, Brazil's main stock exchange.

The cows were "tokenized." Each animal received a unique encrypted digital ID generated from health, behavioral, and location data captured by smart collars built by Cowmed, an agricultural tech startup that monitors dairy herds using AI.

The deal fits into the broader RWA tokenization wave – the practice of converting physical assets into digital tokens usable as financial instruments – which has already hit over $10 billion in total value locked across DeFi platforms via tokenized U.S. treasuries and real estate. Cowmed's version just happens to come with hooves.

The company currently monitors 100,000 cows across 1,200 farms in Brazil, the U.S., Canada, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia, with a combined estimated value of $395.4 million.

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Enrique Abeyta:

Schools Install Pepper Spray Drones To Stop Active Shooters

It seems almost like something out of a movie – drones armed with pepper gel to fend off attackers. These drones aren't science fiction though, and one company aims to make them the future of school safety.

Austin, Texas-based Mithril Defense operates the Campus Guardian Angel drone service that offers these drones up to school districts. They already have partnerships with schools in Florida, Georgia, and Colorado.

"Campus Guardian Angel's drones are equipped with sirens, pepper gel, and other distraction devices designed to prevent a shooter from harming anyone while providing a critical advantage to law enforcement and first responders in order to save lives," said a July 14 press release.

Participating schools will have storage boxes that house the plastic, non-lethal drones. Teachers will be able to activate the drones, which are said to be able to reach a shooter within 15 minutes.

That speed could be a life-saving development in school safety. One horrifying example of the serious impact of delayed law enforcement action in a school shooting occurred during the 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults. Law enforcement waited over an hour to enter a classroom where the gunman was barricaded.

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Ray Blanco:

Nvidia's $750 Billion Deals Revive Fear of AI Circular Financing

Nvidia Corp. is working on a fresh round of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure deals potentially worth more than $750 billion, accelerating a streak of investments that skeptics warn is artificially inflating demand and valuations across the industry.

An AI initiative with the parent of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. unveiled late Friday is worth more than $500 billion, Nvidia said. The world's most valuable company is also in discussions to provide a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to help OpenAI lease computing from a U.S. data center project, in what would be among the chipmaker's biggest financing deals with a customer.

While critics have for months warned of the circular nature of such agreements – the companies Nvidia finances and takes stakes in typically buy or use its chips – the pace of the deals is only quickening. The risk with these transactions is they may create skewed incentives for business across a plethora of industries, spur bad decision-making and magnify losses if demand for AI fails to match lofty expectations.

Nvidia is also in discussions to finance $350 billion of OpenAI's purchases of its chips for the U.S. project, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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