Gold and silver fall to two-week lows as surging global bond yields weigh on precious metals.

Gwangju Police Agency in South Korea announced today that it has arrested and indicted four Uzbek nationals on charges of allegedly providing funds to the UN-listed terrorist group Katiba Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ) via cryptocurrency. The four were arrested in April this year on suspicion of violating South Korea’s Act on the Prohibition of Funding Terrorism; one is the main suspect, who was previously listed on Interpol’s Red Notice. Police stated that between August 2024 and April 2025, the main suspect transferred a total of 4,267 USDT to KTJ through seven transactions. He is also suspected of receiving cryptocurrency from KTJ, using the funds to purchase 11 used cars and two excavators worth approximately 170 million won (around $121,000), before transporting the vehicles and equipment to Syria. The other three suspects are accused of assisting in procurement and export. South Korean police noted that previous terror-related cases mainly involved one-way fund transfers to terrorist groups, while this case marks the first discovery of a fund cycle model: "receiving cryptocurrency from a terror group and then returning it in the form of physical goods." The main suspect denied the core allegations, claiming the funds were used for household expenses and that he was unaware of the actual buyers of the vehicles.

Crypto analyst CW said in a post that as BTC spot demand has turned negative, the market has entered a phase of "spot contraction, futures growth", with the prior green signal now shifted to purple. CW noted that during BTC's sideways consolidation period after a rally, spot demand turned negative once more, adding that the critical factor for the current market is whether spot demand can rebound. He advised investors to closely track changes in this indicator.

AI firm Anthropic has reached a $35 billion computing power procurement agreement with Lambda, an AI cloud service provider backed by NVIDIA. Part of the computing power will be supplied by Bitcoin miner Hut 8’s Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas. Hut 8 previously disclosed that the campus had signed two 15-year long-term leases covering 704MW of IT capacity, with a total contract value of $19.6 billion over the term, but had not revealed the tenant’s identity before. The 525-acre campus has a maximum power access capacity of 1GW and ready grid connections. Per the disclosed deal structure, NVIDIA holds the lease for the facility, Lambda will deploy NVIDIA chips, and Anthropic will purchase the resulting computing power. Hut 8 has not yet confirmed how much of the 704MW capacity is tied to Lambda and Anthropic, nor whether NVIDIA is the previously undisclosed tenant. As AI data centers’ demand for power and computing power surges, Bitcoin miners with existing power and grid access are accelerating their shift to AI infrastructure. Miners including Hut 8, TeraWulf, IREN, and Bitdeer have all entered the AI data center market by selling or leasing computing power and power infrastructure. Hut 8’s second-quarter revenue this year stood at $74.93 million, up 81% year-over-year; its two Beacon Point leases total $19.6 billion, and the campus is expected to generate approximately $1.31 billion in annual operating profit once fully operational.

Beating AI News (Dongcha) Flash Report: AI e-commerce infrastructure firm Rezolve Ai has announced its H1 2026 financial results, reporting $130.8 million in revenue, representing a year-over-year increase of roughly 1970% — nearly triple its full-year 2025 revenue. The company’s client base has expanded to over 1,640, up from 950 at the end of 2025. Rezolve Ai noted that partners including Microsoft, Google, TCS, and Tech Mahindra are providing it with global enterprise-grade distribution channels. Google has completed an evaluation of Rezolve Ai’s distributed database technology and deployed it on Google Cloud infrastructure, delivering indexing and data pipelines for Web3 datasets, with the initial deployment covering approximately 100TB across 10 blockchain networks. Financially, the firm posted $63.9 million in gross profit for the first half, with a gross margin of 48.9%; it raised around $250 million via equity financing during the period. As of June 30, Rezolve Ai held $33.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, plus $67.4 million in restricted cash. The company reaffirmed its 2026 fiscal year revenue guidance of roughly $360 million, and projects its annual recurring revenue (ARR) will reach at least $500 million by year-end.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently stated that the AI revolution will not only eliminate jobs but also create "hundreds of thousands" of new employment opportunities, especially for skilled tradespeople such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and technicians. He pointed out that as chip factories, packaging facilities, data centers, and "AI factories" continue construction, U.S. demand for skilled workers who can "build things with their own hands" will grow significantly. Huang noted that technological revolutions often reshape employment structures: "Some jobs will be eliminated, but many new jobs will also emerge." He added that white-collar roles will not disappear in the short term, and AI infrastructure construction will drive a boom in the skilled trades sector. According to reports, the U.S. could face a shortage of around 2.1 million unfilled skilled trade positions by 2030, including roughly 130,000 new electrician roles. Meanwhile, data center construction is rapidly expanding employment demand; QTS projects its on-site workforce will rise from approximately 10,000 in 2025 to 40,000 by the end of 2026. Huang previously referred to AI infrastructure construction as one of "the largest infrastructure builds in human history." As data centers, power, and cooling facilities continue to expand, the shortage of skilled workers may become a key bottleneck for the further expansion of the AI industry.

Over the past month, gold mining stocks have rallied nearly vertically, drawing back investors who had previously faced frequent market volatility due to mixed signals from Washington policymakers. Geopolitical turmoil and fiscal uncertainty drove gold mining stocks to their best August performance since at least 1994, with gains more than triple those of spot gold. Despite sharp market swings at the end of August following Federal Reserve Chair Waller’s pledge to curb inflation, the NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index still rose 33%, staging a strong rebound after falling 39% from its March record high. The VanEck Gold Miners ETF (GDX) recorded its highest monthly inflows since February. By contrast, spot gold prices themselves rose just 10% in August. The U.S. Treasury’s efforts to lower long-term borrowing costs have driven investors back to gold and related assets. Thanks to their relatively fixed costs, mining firms can amplify gains from rising gold prices, positioning them as a leveraged instrument for betting on further precious metal rallies.