First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Extends Decline for a Fifth Day, Touches $26.6K

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Bitcoin extended its losing run to a fifth consecutive day, dropping below $27,000. The cryptocurrency fell 2% on Thursday to around $26,600 after starting to drop on Sunday. Equities also dipped after gaining earlier in the week and gold edged higher. September’s consumer price index (CPI) is due at 8:30AM ET, and is expected to have slowed slightly. Looking at altcoins, Bricks (BRICK), the native token of Reddit's Fortnite community, surged 110% in 24 hours after having lost over 80% of its value in the past two months. The majority of trading volume occurred on Kraken, with the figure across all exchanges nearing $750,000, an 800% rise from the previous 24-hour period, according to CoinMarketCap. There is no clear catalyst for the increase in price.

Caroline Ellison wept on the witness stand near the end of her second day testifying against her former boss and ex-boyfriend, the fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried. The diminutive, soft-spoken former CEO of Alameda Research described the unraveling last November of her hedge fund and its sister company, the FTX exchange, and the “relief” she felt as revelations about their fraud became public. “I felt a sense of relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore,” Ellison testified. Her voice trembled and cracked as she recalled one particular text message exchange between her and Bankman-Fried during what she described as the “overall worst week of my life." "I felt indescribably bad about all the ... people that lost their jobs ... and the people that trusted us that we had betrayed," Ellison told the packed courtroom as she reached for a tissue.

Membrane Labs, a cryptocurrency-focused trading and lending platform, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round, with participation from big names like Brevan Howard Digital and Point72 Ventures. The capital will be used to help build the type of grown-up trading infrastructure the crypto space needs in order to avoid further disasters. Other notable names included in the round were Jane Street, Flow Traders, QCP Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, Electric Capital, Jump Crypto, QCP Capital, GSR Markets, Belvedere Trading and Framework Ventures.

- Omkar Godbole