Bitcoin

What currency is feared by the European Central Bank as a threat to fiat monetary institutions?  What currency is cash like but digitally transmittable allowing for ultimate anonymity and global mobility? What digital currency is up over 2,200% over the last year? The answer?  Bitcoin. From mining, supply, demand, and security, Visual Capitalist's infographic covers it all.

With all three major non-Fed central banks on the tape today, all economic data will be merely "noise" as the market digests what the central-planners' intentions are. The BOJ came and went, and following its substantial balance sheet expansion announcement, which many called "shocking and awing" the USDJPY has pushed higher by 2.5 big figures, although not reaching the 96 levels seen prior to Kuroda's actual announcement. In fact, from this point on there is likely downside as Japan's biggest export competitor, South Korea, has no choice but to join the race to debase which in turn will be JPY-positive. The Bank of England is next, which as expected did nothing moments ago, and will keep doing nothing until Carney joins officially this summer. In some 45 minutes, the ECB headlines will hit the tape where Draghi may bur more likely may not lower deposit rates, and instead will focus on recent deterioration in the economy. None of this will be surprising, and the EUR continues to trade sufficiently weak in line with sub-200DMA levels seen in the past few weeks. What we look forward to the most will be Draghi once again discussing the legal term-sheet details of the ECB's OMT program. His answer will be amusing as there still is no answer, and the OMT is for all intents and purposes the biggest straw man ever conceived by a central bank.

I asked the question: is Bitcoin money? (It's price sure is rising parabolically like silver in 2011) In brief, I said no it’s an irredeemable currency.  This generated some controversy in the Bitcoin community.  I took it for granted that everyone would agree that money had to be a tangible good, but it turns out that requirement is not obvious.  This prompted me to write further about these concepts.

The old 'new normal' precious metals smackdown has made a few appearances since the Cyprus debacle started but this morning's drop is impressive (given the lack of movement elsewhere) as gold drops back below pre-Cyprus levels. There is one 'currency' that is surgung in value though - Bitcoin is now trading at $107.36, up from $46 pre-Cyprus...

"Soon, whether via Bitcoin or whatever comes next, it will be possible to strip banking away from bankers, and money away from governments." From a recent article in the Spectator titled “How Bitcoin Could Destroy the State”. Support for Bitcoin amongst Austrian economists is growing by they day and in this interview, the highly admired and respected Tom Woods, discusses Bitcoin with Erik Voorhees of Bitinstant (a popular, rapid way of converting fiat into BTC).  This interview very poignantly addresses many of the layperson’s concerns about it that I have heard over the past several months.  Remember, despite the price rise, Ben Bernanke is still creating the equivalent of 75 Bitcoin markets every month with his money printing.

From a January 2nd price of $13.16, the price of a Bitcoin in USD had risen to $46 on March 16th - right before the Cyprus 'solution' was announced. Since then, in two short weeks, the price of a Bitcoin has more than doubled, reaching $101 today. This 'exuberance' in non-fiat currency, should perhaps warrant caution as we noted here, the US is now not only actively monitoring but has commenced regulating the Bitcoin market and those who participate should be well aware that when uncle Sam is involved, things tend to have an unhappy ending.

It begins here: Introduction of cold, hard evidence of bank shenanigans (with complete documentation) that A) should be prosecuted & B) cause enough concern to make you worry about your bank's integrity. 

One of the prevailing false conventional wisdoms about the Cypriot cash confiscation is that it primarily affected rich, tax-evading individuals of Russian origin. Alas, those same individuals are likely to have been least affected, as subsequent discoveries of capital control breaches by the "richest and best connected" reveal, while increasingly it appears that the uninsured depositors on whose back the nation of Cyprus was bailed out are small and medium corporations, who had been parking cash for net working capital purposes with Cyprus' banks, cash which is now gone forever to feed the creeping insolvent Euro-monster, and which can't be used to fund such day to day business activities as payroll, purchases, and business operations. Such as this one.

While Friday's 'hope' triggered some selling pressure in Bitcoin (in EUR), it appears the dismal reality of Europe's new normal has spurred a 'great rotation' as BTC just hit EUR60 for the first time ever...(from EUR36 before the initial Cyprus news last week).

There are no regulated financial markets open today; no BIS-buffered FX market, no Fed-spoon-fed US equity market, no BoJ-jawboned Nikkei 225, and no ECB-sponsored Spanish bond market to judge today's news and rumors. But there is one 'market' open - a market that prices in the belief (or lack thereof) in the status quo to a lesser or greater extent. Illiquid as it may be, today's Bitcoin prices (and volume) says a lot about the headlines of the day...

While depositors in Europe are having their money confiscated outright by their less than friendly governments and despotic, tyrannical politicians who will do everything in the name of "equality, fraternity and of course liberty" or, said otherwise, preserving their careers and the status quo while throwing their taxpayers and voters into the firepit of Keynesian and monetarist idiocy, in the US a different form of capital control may be taking shape. NBC reports from Rhode Island, where a local restaurant chain is now demanding that any clients paying with $100 bills also provide their name, phone number, and drivers' license. By doing this - supposedly in the name of avoiding counterfeiting but don't you dare mention fake bill spotting markets or UV light - it eliminates the only upside that paper money had over electronic transactions: anonymity. How soon before all other retailers and vendors decide that it is a good idea to demand their clients' personal info, for the sake of avoiding counterfeiting of course, first in all $100 bill transactions, then $50, then $20, and so on?

Last November, in an act of sheer monetary desperation, the ECB issued an exhaustive, and quite ridiculous, pamphlet titled "Virtual Currency Schemes" in which it mocked and warned about the "ponziness" of such electronic currencies as BitCoin. Why a central bank would stoop so "low" to even acknowledge what no "self-respecting" (sic) PhD-clad economist would even discuss, drunk and slurring, at cocktail parties, remains a mystery to this day. However, that it did so over fears the official artificial currency of the insolvent continent, the EUR, may be becoming even more "ponzi" than the BitCoins the ECB was warning about, was clear to everyone involved who saw right through the cheap propaganda attempt. Feel free to ask any Cypriot if they would now rather have their money in locked up Euros, or in "ponzi" yet freely transferable, unregulated BitCoins.  And while precious metals have been subject to price manipulation by the legacy establishment, even if ultimately the actual physical currency equivalent asset, its "value" naively expressed in some paper currency, may be in the possession of the beholder, to date no price suppression or regulation schemes of virtual currencies existed. At least until now: it appears that the ever-benevolent, and always knowing what is "in your best interest" Big Brother has decided to finally take a long, hard look at what is going on in the world of BitCoin... and promptly crush it.

While Cyprus grabs the headlines, there are stirrings in Spain, New Zealand, and the UK with regard to how depositor funds (and their apparent insurance) is considered in the new normal banking system. As John Aziz notes, essentially, if there is to be any confidence in the banking system, the possibility of depleting liquidity insurance funds to bail out banks needs to be taken off the table completely. The possibility of insured depositor haircuts needs to be taken off the table completely. If banks need bailing out, the money must not come from insured depositors, or funds designed to compensate insured depositors. If banks fail, the losers should be the uninsured creditors.

It would appear that physical assets trump digital assets this morning in Europe as Silver has just spiked over 1% (and Gold back over $1615) as Bitcoins plunge on heavy volume... Did the Europeans run out of Bitcoins?