Bitcoin

"We've had 12 consecutive years of silver deficits" which "can begin to apply upward pressure to prices in subsequent periods" - Thomson Reuters

European Union countries are preparing to crackdown on virtual currencies such as bitcoin, and anonymous payments made online and via pre-paid cards "in a bid to tackle terrorism financing after the Paris attacks, acording to a draft document."

Power? Power! You can't handle POWER!!! Most people are still busy counting coin prices....

Editors Note: GoldCore believe that blockchain technology will revolutionise the world of finance, payments and money and may have an impact on the world on a scale of that of the internet. If you thought the “internet” was disruptive, well you ain't seen nothing yet ... the blockchain cometh!

It’s easy to be frightened by these proposals. But if governments think they can force us to accept negative interest rates on our savings by abolishing cash, they need to think again. It’s preposterous to assume that savers will passively accept outright confiscation of their assets via negative interest rates or a ban on cash. Instead, people will simply revert to other stores of value.

There’s no reason to sweat a drop in the gold price or cheer a rise.

Prepping has not only gone mainstream, it's infected even the billionaire culture as referenced recently on a ZH article:

Prudent companies internationally are allocating capital to gold and silver bullion as a way to diversify their assets and as a form of financial insurance to protect against bank bail-ins, capital controls, currency debasement and other risks posed by another financial crisis.

Repeated dosages of quantitative easing to kick-start economic recovery have proved totally ineffective everywhere. Yet central bankers are talking about doing it again – in larger amounts. The obsession with spending rather than saving has led governments everywhere to suppress interest rates to near zero. Under this destructive economic model governments are the worst offenders. In their craze to spend cheap money they allocate resources blindly into projects of dubious viability, for which there was no public demand in the first place. Result: huge taxpayer-borne losses.

Bitcoin is an easy way for people to swap out of yuan. Goldman Sachs analysts estimated earlier this year that 80% of bitcoin volume is exchanged in and out of the Chinese yuan. Once converted to bitcoin, the owners can then swap back into other fiat currencies and indeed physical gold.

Zero Hedge first revealed the contingency plans that libertarian online retailer Overstock has implemented "in preparation for the next collapse" ten days ago. Today, the strategy outlined by Overstock Chairman Jonathan Johnson has resonated across the Atlantic and this morning as the Financial Times catches up to the story of an "online retailer hoarding gold as crisis defense" in which it calls the retailer a "redoubt of doomsday conservatism" adding its policy to prepare for the loss of central-planning control is "redolent of the small band of US survivalists preparing for the end of civilisation."

• BOE Stays Cautious on Rate-Hike Timing as Inflation Outlook Cut (BBG)
• China Enters Bull Market (WSJ)
• Britain says Islamic State likely brought down Russian plane (Reuters)
• Dollar jumps as markets fix on December rate expectations (Reuters)
• Activist Investor Bill Ackman Plays Defense (WSJ)
• BOJ Survey Data Reveals Signs of Growing Inequality in Japan (BBG)
• UAW Warns of General Motors Strike If Workers Fail to Approve Contract (WSJ)

For those eager to cut to the chase and curious if overnight we have had another standard USDJPY ramp levitating US equity futures on low volume, the answer is yes. And since the USDJPY carry was patient enough, it managed to trigger the 2100 ES stops and as of this moment the futures were comfortably on the politically-correct side of 2100.

It appears a double in a week has prompted - just as we saw yesterday - some more profit-taking in Bitcoin as after topping $500 earlier today, the virtual currency has plunged (considerably more than yesterday) to $368 in late US trading as a high volume selling program was unleashed on the virtual currency.