First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Drops to Lowest Level Since June

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Bitcoin (BTC) has broken out from its very tight trading range, but not in ways the bulls would have liked to see. The leading cryptocurrency slipped to as low as $28,346 early Thursday, its weakest level since June 21. The decline extended a slide that began earlier this week and mirrored risk aversion on Wall Street. The formerly red-hot stock market averages have been slumping in August, with interest rate fears, banking sector concerns and worry heading the reasons to sell. The downside volatility in BTC comes days after the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) Commitment of Traders (COT) report showed leveraged funds – hedge funds and commodity trading advisors – ramped up bearish bets in the CME-listed cash-settled bitcoin futures in the week ended Aug. 8.

Payments giant PayPal will temporarily pause crypto purchases in the United Kingdom until early 2024, the company said Wednesday, citing stricter rules by the country’s financial regulator. Customers who have previously purchased crypto assets through their PayPal account can keep them on the platform or sell them at any time, said the company. Starting October 1, however, the ability to make new purchases will be disabled. “We're taking this measure in response to new rules enacted by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that require crypto firms to implement additional steps before customers can purchase crypto,” PayPal said in a statement. This comes as the company has accelerated its footprint in crypto in recent weeks, specifically in the United States with the launch of a stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), which the payments giant announced earlier this month.

Jada AI, an artificial intelligence project that harnesses blockchain technology, has raised $25 million from alternative investment group LDA Capital. The project aims to offer AI services that aid decision-making for organizations and scale up their operations, according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk. The capital will be used to grow the project’s team of developers and add new organizations. Jada operates in a blockchain-based environment where AI computations are executed among the nodes participating in the network. “This allows for the AI’s processing to be untampered, cross-verified and equally distributed to enable an efficient allocation of compute resources,” Jada AI founder Diego Torres told CoinDesk in an email.

- Omkar Godbole