Bitcoin

Greece is "fixed" - so no need for safe havens, alternative currencies, or any hedges...

Today, an unholy alliance was born when Blythe Masters, the mother of the credit default swap and former member of the fabled "Morgan Mafia" was named chairman of Santander Consumer, the largest subprime auto lender in the US.

In a January 2013 report “Report of the Working Group to Study the Issues Related to Gold Imports and Gold Loans by NBFCs”, the Reserve Bank of India estimated that the ratio of paper gold trading to physical gold trading is 92:1. That is a lot of unbacked paper gold instruments. This has almost entirely separated the “gold price”, such as it is (the clearing price for vast volumes of paper gold “representations” with a fractional backing) from the fundamental supply and demand dynamics for actual physical gold bullion.

As Mr L. famously quipped. "Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?"

Demand for Silver Eagles spiked in the first week of this month leading the U.S. Mint to run out of its entire August inventory of coins. This coincided with a counter-intuitive 3.8% plunge in price last Monday. It would appear that prices are being forced down. This is likely being done to scare investors away in order to protect some large banks who are net short silver - and for whom a surge in price would be damaging - and possibly to facilitate large unknown entities to accumulate large volumes of silver at a knockdown prices.

It was a weekend in which, according to traders, Greece facing an "absolutely final" was going to be saved. Instead, it may go down in history as the weekend in which the Eurozone finally split and its long-overdue disintegration began.

Despite the exuberance in US and European equity markets, it appears Bitcoin is sending a different (avoid the looming capital controls) message... Does someone know something?

If the early bitcoin markets are an indication of what will happen once New Zealand opens for illiquid FX trade, it will be a risk off kinda day...

There is at least one legal way to get your euros out of Greece these days, to guard against the prospect that they might be devalued into drachmas: convert them into bitcoin. As Reuters reports, although absolute figures are hard to come by, Greek interest has surged in the online "cryptocurrency", as new customers depositing at least 50 euros with BTCGreece, the only Greece-based bitcoin exchange, open only to Greeks, rose by 400% between May and June. With Bitcoin having surged from $238 to $268 in the last few days since Greek PM Tsipras announced Greferendum, it is clear it's not just the Greeks that are losing faith in faith-based fiat currencies.

Over the weekend, the lines in Greece stretched along the street. Around the corner. Down the block. Lines to get cash. Lines to buy gas. Lines of people eager to get their hands on something of value. Food. Fuel. Cash. Pity the poor guy who was last in line... As more and more people turn to gold as a way to avoid standing in lines, the feds could ban it again. But when we close our eyes and try to peer into a world where gold is illegal, what we see is a world where we want it more than ever.

Like it or not, Bitcoin is an alternative to the fiat fraud money that is the backbone of the status quo. Since Tsipras proposed the Greferendum, Bitcoin has surged 12% as perhaps - away from the cornered and manipulated precious metals markets - faith in fiat is faltering...

The faith in fiat currencies is faltering...