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"Don’t Rush For Gold" - What A Real Hard Currency Mine Looks Like
When it comes to mining for alternative currencies, there is this:

Tien Shan mountains, Kyrgyzstan
“Don’t run! Slow down! Just don’t run!” I repeated this non-stop to myself like an incantation. Indeed, it is hard even to pace quickly – let alone run — when you have to breathe in the rarefied air and wear a supplied protective helmet and brand-new rigid boots with steel toes.
I also had to look out for giant trucks the size of three-story houses chugging around. It was difficult to keep my emotions under control during the few hours on this tight assignment. I was at an altitude of over 4,000 meters above sea level near the Chinese border, inside a huge open-pit gold mine at Kumtor, Kyrgyzstan’s largest gold asset, operated by Toronto-based Centerra Gold. Gigantic trucks and excavators worked non-stop in the snow-clad pit, looking like characters from a fantasy movie. As if playing a computer game, an excavator operator elegantly manipulated small joysticks – just five scoops full of ore, and almost 200 tones were loaded into a truck in about one minute.
In line with Centerra Gold’s tough requirements, I passed two medical checks before I started working at these giddy heights. A day before, we had to stay for the night at a guest house located at about 1,700 meters above sea level to get accustomed to high altitudes before ascending to Kumtor. The gold mine is the world’s second highest-altitude gold deposit after Peru’s Yanacocha mine. Some vehicles never even stop their engines in these ferocious conditions of Arctic tundra and permafrost.
Finally, the work of hundreds of workers, dozens of huge machines and the state-of-art gold-extracting mill reached its logical conclusion accomplished by just two workers. Moving like extra-terrestrials in their silvery heatproof overalls and helmets, they slowly poured dazzling, bright orange molten gold from a crucible into molds.
Minutes later, four bars containing around 80 percent pure gold and worth $2.6 million were ready for polishing. A worker wearing a mask closed the curtain of his glass booth to polish a 20 kg bar inside.
I saw gold dust shine in the light of bright lamps illuminating the booth. After being photographed as though they were prestigious models on a catwalk, the four shiny bars were then stamped and sealed in massive vaults. I have seen batches of banknotes worth more than $2.6 million, but beyond all doubt, gold bars look much more attractive!
When I left the hot melting shop, I saw a crystal clear sky over the Kumtor mine outside. As our team prepared for the 400 km (248 mile) ride back to the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, I raised my camera to shoot a final general view of the plateau. In the bright sunlight, a few tiny specks of gold dust were still glittering on my lens and camera.
By Shamil Zhumatov, Reuters
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I loves me some Gold....
Sorry TD, but when you say "Rush", all I think about is "Tom Sawyer". I know, it dates me......
And on the bottom there should be a pic of Bernank near printing press. It takes enormous effort to mine just 1 oz of GOLD and for Bernank it's all under his fingertips, just push that button Until $USD reserve currency status gets somewhat compromised, those paper monkeys can print Gold,Diamonds, Milk, Bread anything. If you have printing press in your basement you don't need Gold, until your prints get worthless or demand gets dried up, then there is always "Arab Spring" and other "Democracy" spread tactics.. Where is all the people who hates $USD? Saddam? Chavez? Omar Kadafi? Where are they? Where is USSR? Ahmadinejad is next. Sometimes I even think, that Euro Zone project was created in Washington. Anywhere where is chaos and revolution local currency been replaced by $USD. Wars, Oil and Chaos needed to prolong $USD Reserve currency status. And so far Pentagon is taking care of that.
Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman working at a gold mine would make a great sitcom.
Nice chemtrail
Stay away from the first one, although Im a miner, BFL still doesn't have a working device, and they're taking preorders from the middle of last year, could be scammy.
Anyone who ACTUALLY reads https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ sees how stupid the ButterFly mining machine is.
And please read: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
As I said before: non-ners playing a nerd game get burned !
Of course if you don't get what a hash function is then go ahead and buy one of those machines. Meanwhile drop me an equal amount that I will deliver the same rsult: ZERO.
Actually I went and read the article you pointed out plus the ones around it. Note that I have some formal knowledge in the areas of compression and cryptography.
Judging from what I saw there, it seems that the more SHA-256 hashes you can compute for any given amount of time, the more attempts vs everybody else you have at finding a hash under the target for the given difficulty.
So if you can make hardware that calculates SHA-256 hashes faster (highly parallel integer calculation units would do that), you have more chances of being the one that finds a hash for the given target. This seems highly feasible - in fact, about 2 decades ago somebody approached the problem of brute force cracking 3DES 64 bits keys (a cryptographically very similar problem) exactly by building custom hardware to generate encrypted keys as fast as possible.
Note that what we're talking about here is not General Purpose CPUs or even GPUs, what we're talking about here is low level electronic circuits (things like Programmable Logic Arrays) configured to calculate SHA-256 hashes. An even more specialized (and faster) solution would be custom designed integrated circuits. I know there is hardware out there to accelerate encryption and decryption, maybe that can be repurposed.
I have no idea if the ButterFly mining machine is something like this or not, just saying that it's possible to design a machine that increases the number of hashes calculated per-second by a factor of at least 100. Wether that's actually worth it or not from a financial point of view is another mater entirelly.
Wow - if only the spooks could harness all this world citizen power to do their decryption for them...
Evolutionary biologists use fruit flies to study the effect of genetic mutations. Since fruit flies have a 3 day lifespan, scientists can study generations of fatal hereditary effects on the order of mere weeks.
When I look at bitcoin, I see a similar model for the destruction of a baseless currency. Instead of the years it is taking for USD, we will see bitcion’s destruction on the order of weeks.
It may make for a great education of the USD’s future.
Bitcoins are indeed an excellent experiment, and will cause a lot of people to question just exactly what money is, how it's produced, what's behind it, and so on.
It may or may not fail, but I don't think it's correct to call it "baseless", though, nor to compare it to a fiat currency such as USD. True, it's not backed by shiny metals, but it's similar to a gold-backed currency in that there's a limited supply of the underlying hashes. You can't simply print more of them any time you feel like it.
Its interesting to thnk that the retained value of my human labor is zero (through ZIRP) and yet my computer can work to generate bitcoins
Experiement is the key word.
Any "artificial" creation of money is subject to manipulation in some form or another.
Bitconis hacked, http://www.cnbc.com/id/100615508
"Online currency bitcoin had 20 percent knocked off its price overnight on Thursday as one of its major exchanges became the victim of a hacking attack leading to a sell-off in the virtual currency after reaching an all-time high."
And that is separate from the information that Bitcoins provideds itself in the deflationary characteristics of its currency. How can you argue with its own creators?
For all the bitcoiners out there...This is the Mises Institute article on them from who else, an EC Economist
DaddyO
http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=bf16b152ccc444bdbbcc229e4&id=a1baf59040&e=50abbe562d
In conclusion, virtual monies, of which bitcoins seem to be the most perfected specimen up to date, do not allow acting individuals to manage the uncertainty of the future as well as material monies do. They could serve to intermediate exchanges among those who invest in the technology that creates them, stores them, and transfers them. Nevertheless, they could never achieve that degree of universality and flexibility that material monies carry with them by nature. Thus, on the free market, commodity monies, and presumably gold and silver, still have a great comparative advantage.
Nikolay Gertchev is an economist with the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium
Virtual monies are great! I have quite a bit set aside at Full Tilt Poker. Safe & sound! /sarc/
"... and... it's gone."
Just imagine a One World Currency, with the Central Bankers in complete control.
COMPLETE CONTROL, Bitches!!
DaddyO
The part that really matters is that the difficulty is adaptative.
That means that if you put the IBM Road Runner 100% cracking the codes, then the system will reevaluate the difficulty and it will make much harder next time to find the next block of BTC.
Simply speaking, it would be like in real world having the ability to move the gold to be mined to deeper depths. As tools for mining become more efficient (fast in case of computers) Gold would be moved from 1,000 feet to 10,000 feet.
Uhh, are you sure?
It does get progressively more difficult to 'mine' a new bitcoin (i.e. find a previously undiscovered hash), but that is an inherent characteristic of the algorithm, rather than some code-induced adaptation. IOW -- the mention of the IBM system seems, uh, perhaps misguided a little bit.
Using your gold analogy, it would be closer to the real thing in that no one or thing is moving the gold (or the bitcoins) to harder-to-reach 'places' it is rather that the easiest-to-mine gets mined first, leaving you with a problem that always gets progressively more difficult.
The part that really matters is that as the difficulty adapts, you still have more hashes per second going against the solution.
I don't know if you think every one is solo mining or something, but with mining pools and nearly ever miner part of a pool, the increase in difficulty is not immediately detrimental to a new miner.
Gold is not supposed to have those pits in it on the side, looks stripped and dipped to me.
It's ~80%. It's not technically "investment grade" or even mint / coin grade. Typically it must be over 92% to be considered "precious metal".
Actually triple nine coinage is not the best use of gold for circulation and an amalgamation would be preferable to prevent premature wearing as it jingles in your pocket.
That's what was meant in the US constitution when our Congress was charged with establishing weights and measures in the coining of money. (and uniform laws regarding bankruptcy) They have abdicated their primary function for which they were sent to DC to maintain from the outset. "Selling" "collectibles" and marketing coins with fraudualent face values is treasonous and a perversion of honor, integrity and trust. imo.
probably a drone in the pic too if you look hard enough
I didn't realize this was a porn site....
LMAO! The Fraud Couple!
Regards,
Cooter
Especially if there is security with reflective sunglasses and shotguns constantly pointed at them.
This continuous full court press on gold and gold mining stocks is just too epic not to look for conspiratorial roots.
Have a careful read of Jim Willie's article:
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1364846400.php
I conclude that the western peoples and especially the Americans and Brits are deliberately being stripped of thier gold and gold producers. The huge spigot of Fed Res fraud fiat debasement is partially being used to keep gold and gold stocks down, while an alternate system to the dollar and ultimately based on gold is being set up by those in the know. As this occurs, the gold maniputation serves two big purposes, to keep the facade of fiat alive as long as possible so that those foolish enough to place value in fiat, may have all their wealth stripped from them (epecially the out of the know Americans and Brits). And the second perhaps more important purpose, to clean out as much of this form of wealth as possible through the outflow of the actual gold (silver, patinum, etc) and gold producers ownership equity. The effort is too sustained and systematic and promoted by big media not to be a full premeditated rape. Consider:
The continuous almost religious chant by big media against gold. Days when gold should be skyrocketing due to news (Cyprus, N. Korea two recent examples), we see big spikes down in price at the open. There is a full court press on mining shares through naked shorting and continuous paid pro-shorting propaganda against miners, espcially those not indebted to or controlled by the bankers and showing the most promise of future earnings growth. Look at the message boards on any stock that meets these criteria and you will likely see a 24/7 full court press of bad mouthing and fear mongering. It is intense and sustained, meaning people are being compensated one way or the other to keep posting no matter what. It has been going on for years now.
My conclusion is that this is all too well coordinated and deliberate. The fiat dollar and its ability to buy press in all forms conventional and electronic, coupled with control over paper corrupted (fiat dominated) markets, is being used as the final weapon against those stupid enough to fall for the probaganda, in the west and most especially the Americans. This can and will be continued as long as possible to strip as much as possible. If I am correct and it is conspiritorial then my expectation is that this will end only when most of these forms of wealth are largely stripped and the deception simply cannot be maintained anymore.
I got news for you folks, those dark ones in the know really do believe in G.O.D.! Let me explain: they belive in Gold, Oil, and Drugs! That is their god. They are well aware that fiat (compared to thier god) truely is a false god, as it fully obeys their commands and can be used to destroy the foolish as it is being done before our eyes. At the final stages I would expect to see the dirtiest of tricks, like, huge taxes passed on gold gains, more MF Global type swindles to steal gold, and I predict similar swindles soon to pry miner equity away from those of us who understand what is happening and refuse to sell our integrity or our mining shares.
Yes, you are more correct than you know. There are armies of them; paid liars. We fight them every day. Sometimes you want to just ignore them, but then they overrun your boards and panic the newbies. It's comforting to know they shall all have their part in the lake of fire forever.
4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
Proverbs 26
King James Bible
Since I hold all life as sacred, and prefer people change for the better and grow out of their misconceptions, I can not take any comfort in seeing people sent to a "lake of fire". Although evil has a way of burning you so that in a some ways, sooner or later you might experience the intense anguish of experiencing what you have done to others, I think we all came from the same place and all return home some day. In the end, their will be love, not anguish or eternal misery.
I just created a gold mining operation in the Yukon that is expected to generate between 1500-2000 ounces of gold this summer. We haven't completely disappeared.
What's in it for the resource/industry rich countries to go to gold if they are not part of the conspiracy? (They're not, since the UK/US are the centres of all financial conspiracies.) So private interests in the UK/US get all the gold and then tell the world, we want to now buy all your useful shit with gold ... I think the world will say "Sure, let me just me print a bit more of my own fiat currency first and you will give me some gold for it alright? Cause you know my fiat currency backed by real goods is worth something more than shiny shit which is just an intermediary for exchange ...".
Also it's a rather small time conspiracy ... even the world reserve currency only ever backs a tiny fraction of the asset base of the world's economy, that's where the real wealth is. TPTB already own more wealth than gold will ever cover and they'll own lots more by the time this game is over.
Gold is small time and gold surpression is a sideshow, it's more about keeping the status quo alive for the real theft.
Sorry TD, but when you say "Rush", all I think about is "Tom Sawyer". I know, it dates me......
A real rush fan would tie in the fact this story comes from the Tien Shan mountains with the song Tai Shan.
High on the sacred mountain
Up the seven thousand stairs
In the golden light of autumn
There was magic in the air
Clouds surrounded the summit
The wind blew strong and cold
Among the silent temples
And the writings carved in gold
Somewhere in my instincts
The primitive took hold
Yet these mining companies continue to let the market set the price for them. They should cease all mining until they get a price that rewards their efforts more accurately.
what a bunch of bullshit.
What they ought to do, is stop forward hedging. Christ, with physical demand being where it is, and mining stocks currently being heavily discounted courtesy of the Fed, there's no reason they couldn't look to a Pro-Gold country for money.
If I was China, or Russia, I'd be buying up certain mining companies at these prices.
Why buy when you can nationalize. All your gold mines is belong to us.
For those of us, why mine when you can go to the coin shop and just buy it there? All my gold coins are belong to me.
That BITCOIN MINING DEVICE also makes it pretty clear how anybody can create wealth :)
my god... the more I read about bitcoins the more stupid it sounds...
countdown to a fullblown bitcoincrash...
I should write down the names of all the bitcoin lovers here... so it's easier to adress them with my "TOLD YA SOW" jokes :)
WHO THE FUCK BUYS THAT 30K MINING DEVICE?!!
WTF!!!!! SO YOU BUY IT....
PLUG IT INTO A SOCKET....
AND BITCOINS ARE CREATED?!?!?!
AND THAT....
IS WHY....
BITCOINS...
ARE SO POPULAR?!!! AND SOME MORONS PAY 140$ FOR A BITCOIN?! THAT CAME OUT OF... nothing?
AND THAT IS BETTER THAN SILVER AND GOLD because.... ...
WTF WTF WTF!!!!
Add me to the list, I'll just smile and nod while I admire the ounces of silver I made via Bitcoins. Sure beats wasting time bitching about BTC on Zerohedge. :)
What's even more important to remember is that BitCoin is open-source technology. Anybody can create another competing BitCoin currency. How long before there are dozens of competitors? (There are already a couple). Sure, BitCoin has first-mover advantage. But a little advertising campaign and pooof: You've got BitCoin Deux.
The notion that BitCoin has "scarcity" because the numerical algorithm provides natural complexity is silly when you can create an infinite number of competing currencies. That's simply not true with Gold or Silver.
BitCoin is the 21st century tulip bubble. Which is not to say that many won't get filthy rich on it (as they did with tulips). But it will end in tears for most...
Bitcoin hit 147 yesterday. Right after that they DDOSed everything. 200 by the end of the week is a lay up. We aren't going back to 2 dollars ever much less 1 penny where we started. At what price do the haters just slink away? 200? 300? 500? 1k? I guess we shall see. In the meantime we are riding daily rallies in LTC and NMC to great riches at btc-e. People cannot see history happening before their very eyes. Oh well, their loss is our gain :-)
Don't get Zhou Tonged
The Bitcoin Channel
Riiggghhhhht. Sounds like you're chomping at the bit.
It is true for silver, it lost to gold :p
Exactly. That's the only reason I can fathom why they're letting this bullshit continue.
Or else TPTB have blackmail photos of dirty laundry so fantastic that it makes regulator midget porn look like a teletubbies rerun.
They should have taken Sprott's advice.
whose to say what that price is fonz???? even in the physical delivery market, its so murky.....nobody really knows who is buying how much....china is believed to be buying lots more...nobody knows if the fed has any gold or not....no way one could ever tell the true price unless the comex implodes due to requests for delivery.............
between the effort expended and costs involved in the mining process, they have some ability to control the price by limiting supply, which is what they should be doing.
I haven't put much thought into it but... shouldn't the market decide. What if the mines should be shut down all together at this point? Maybe there is a over supply already to truly reflect labor?
what market?
There is demand but it isn't circulating
@ kito:
Gold is changing from mark-to-model, to mark-to-market. The great "unmasking" as it were, is that the paper gold price will cease to be relevant.
Looking forward, I expect an announcement from China that revises their stated reserves much higher. Also, the BRICS answer to the IMF may very well incorporate Gold into its settlement structure, both of which will prove to be extremely bullish for physical Gold, and very bad for the Fed, and paper gold holders.
The US will largely cease to be relevant as the world moves away from the dollar, and the exported inflation it has unleashed on other nations.
"The US will largely cease to be relevant..." - man, don't hold your breath waiting on that, you might turn blue in the process. Your children's children will still have to live in the oh-so-horrible future of a US dominated world. You can BANK on it.
Seriously, get over yourself.
@ Post Turtle:
I upvoted you, for your choice of words, specifically: "You can BANK on it."
Don't hold your breath. We are making lots of enemies with very capable people.
"The US will largely cease to be relevant"....meaning that: The USD will lose its reserve currency status, as a natural side-effect of mismanagement via QE. If we didn't export inflation via the petrodollar, high inflation would have been here a long time ago.
The system worked, but only as long as people in other countries kept believing that our fiat paper was somehow better than their fiat paper.
That belief is changing, as the biggest holders of our currency are unwinding their positions, and creating alternative trade infrastructure to avoid using it altogether.
We do not have the economic ability, or military capability to indefinitely continue to force ourselves and our views on the rest of the world.
At this point, we are paying bills on foreign-issued credit, and Ben Bernanke's bullshit.
We have politicians and the Fed seemingly doing everything except the things that would actually turn this country around.
People are mostly debt-serfs, living one paycheck away from disaster.
So think about what the trends are telling you.
duplicate, deleted
Stop with the dated response 'we are paying bill on foreign-issued credit'. We are paying bills on Central Bank issued Xs & Os created with a keystroke.
Right you are, Croesus. It all comes down to the USD's world reserve status and the decline thereof, which doesn't lie in the future but is an onrushing event:
http://silverdoctors.com/jim-willies-most-important-article-ever-usdolla...
The USG's days are numbered accordingly, with full-on secession by the end of the decade.
Bring. It. On.
Although people talk a big game... no one wants the power vacuum that will ensue by dragging down the last superpower in the world. The fact of the matter is, people who assess the value of things are severely underestimating the value of the US. EVERYONE is taking the side that the US is going down and going down soon which tells me this is a bunch of fifth column bullshit from second tier ankle biters.
I appreciate the up vote. I can be a prick at times so I also appreciate your response and patience as well. I still submit the truth of the situation is going to end up being somewhere in the middle. In spite of all the doom and gloom, I fully expect my great-grandchildren to live in a world where the US runs the show.
4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.
Daniel 7
King James Bible
WWIII will be the last gasp for US dollar supremacy. There will be major war over debt and trying to force 100% repayal of odious debt. They are already rigging the game here in the US for the banks by bypassing bankruptcy laws with the use of a thing called orderly liquidation in the Dodd Frank bill. It basically allows the FDIC to take charge of the process and decide how it gets broken up and who is left holding the bag. You can bet your left testicle when they finally unwind the TBFT banks because they are totally insolventeveryone else is going to be forced to pay 100% to the bond holders instead of them getting stiffed in at the expense of picking every last non junk liquid and hard asset available. At some point the theft is just going to get to be too much and people are going to snap.
"...I expect an announcement from China that revises their stated reserves much higher...which will prove to be extremely bullish for physical Gold..."
Why would that be bullish? Wouldn't it simply indicate that any demand from China for increasing reserves was already satiated at gold $1600 more or less?
Because once international trade has a stablished alternative, there's no point in holding huge amount of depreciating USD. The reserves are coming back home. This event will cause massive inflation, which in turn will cause a panic to rush out of the dollar, and onto the only strong currency. This will make the dollar bubble burst, causing hyperinflation very quickly as offers of gold for paper are withdrawn from the market. The end game will be real quick.
In fact, the mere presence of a strong currency is enough to make all the weak currencies burst. This is why gold price manipulation is so necessary for the cartel, they need to destroy the perception that gold is a strong currency at all cost.
They're doing a pretty poor job of that - in USD terms PMs have outperformed most other asset classes over the last decade.
If I was ChiCom, what I would do is wake up one day, get all my US Treasury paper in order and ready to go. Then I would announce that China is buying, physical only in Beijing, at 3k/oz and silver at 50/oz.
Let someone else figure out how to get it there, but if you do, here is a treasury for the balance of the transaction.
A certain bank everyone here loves would go tits up. A certain central banker here everyone loves would be face down.
On top of that, announce a gold back currency.
Check mate.
They chose not to do this, but one day I suspect they will.
Regards,
Cooter
Or maybe the trigger happens earlier as USD reserve status is gradually lost due to bilaterall agreements in oil producing countries.
However the longer it takes, the more profitable for the BRIC to buy more and more gold at discount, so there's no need to rush it.
CrazyCooter - GREAT HYPOTHESIS!!
I’ve been developing a similar idea in my mind that involves the Chinese triggering USD devaluation through its dumping of US Treasuries...
I call it the Chinese Arb: China loads up on US debt and Gold with a calculated optimal proportion of each. Once China begins dumping US bonds, interest rates skyrocket and Fed’s balance sheet becomes insolvent (Paul Brodsky estimates the Fed’s balance sheet cannot withstand a rise of 50 basis points).
At that point a number of things beneficial to China may happen:
US cannot service its constantly increasing debt, causing either default or, more likely, massive printing (I realize we’re headed that way now… this will just rush the process)
USD goes into massive devaluation
Gold goes to the moon (forget $3k/oz, probably more like $10k/oz)
The arb is that China's value lost in tumbling bond prices (of baseless paper) is more than made up in rising gold (a physical asset)
USD falls from its place as the global reserve currency (likely replaced by gold or a gold-backed currency or Special Drawing Rights - SDRs)
If the US/Fed were to try to re-peg the USD to Au, my back of the envelope calculation of monetary base to gold reserves puts gold between $8k and $10k/oz (this is based on the unlikely assumption that the US’s stated gold reserves are truthful – ZH has had some interesting stories pointing out inconsistencies in Fed reporting/Au inventory)
POOF – China’s lone superpower enemy is castrated. China and Russia divvy up the spoils (i.e., resources) of the world.
The dark side of me postulates that this might even be a conspiracy between China and the US… it would explain the massive downward manipulation of gold by the US govt. Keeping it low to allow China to buy on the cheap.
China, Russia, and the US divvy up the spoils, US is given reason to grab all digital financial assets in the US (bank deposits, retirement capital, etc.) to continue to fund the entitlement state. (it won't be theft because you'll be 'compensated' with US debt obligations) ... massive wealth redistribution (again, I realize we’re headed that way now… this will just rush the process)
Not sure how to defend this (let alone the trade it). At that point making profits would probably be last on my list of priorities. Survival of me and my family first. I imagine owning gold, a garden, and guns to defend it would be good advice.
No - The Fed cannot go insolvent because it prints money. If the Chinese decide to dump treasuries, there is nothing stopping the fed from buying all of them.
You realize that SDRs are a FIAT currency, right? In fact they're pegged to a basket which contains the dollar.
double post deleted
Why would the Chinese ever do that?
They can simply sell the Treasuries to the banks and the FED against newly printed USD fiat and then use that fiat to get physical Gold and Silver from whoever is dumb enough to sell it to them at paper-Gold and paper-Silver prices.
I'm afraid the great USD collapse and PM takeoff will only be triggered when a sovereign nation demands back their PMs supposedly stored in a US or UK vault, only to be told "we don't have it".
(Which, by the way, is probably why the PM suppression has gone into overdrive even though sovereigns it's gifting the Chinese with cheap PMs: now that sovereigns are demanding their Gold back, the likes of the US and UK have no other choice but to try and lower PM prices if they want to be able to actually buy the gold back to give it to the proper owners).
The answer, Acet, is that this way China's enemy, the US, gets taken out in the process.
I like your theory on the manipulation of gold downward so that rehypothecated (i.e, lost) gold can be reaquired on the cheap by the Central Banks. Makes sense.
Although plausble, this strikes me as more a Western approach than Chinese. I suspect they will be more patient and take a route less disruptive to their exports -- ie, continue to develop greater internal demand -- before they do the inevitable take-down. The death throes of our empire could be sudden, as has been elsewhere observed, but it could take may years yet. It would be prudent to be prepared for either eventuality.
I agree oldschool. Chinese are nothing if not patient. They will do what benefits them most and that is not to send America into a severe depression or hyper inflation. Their exports to America are too vast and will need to replace that productivity somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else? IMO it will be all the countries that are currently adding gold to their reserves and the general populace. It will turn around to countries with strong currencies not weak.
You think there are buyers out there paying a premium to miners in order to secure the best output?
Moulds, BITCHEZ!
"SELL SELL SELL Mortimer!" - Randolph
I hope to do a story like this re Peru's Yanacocha mine (mentioned above).
Thanks Tyler for a great nightime story!
DoChen,
My brother-in-law worked at the Yanacocha mine for 15 years, and one of my wife's cousins is married to the guy who discovered it. The story of Atahualpa's ransom being a room full of gold delivered in Cajamarca was a huge historical indicator that pointed him to gold in the area.
My wife and I were in Cajamarca about a month ago. Beautiful. I had a chance to speak with the editor of the local paper, who told me about Yanacocha as well as the upcoming Conga mine, which apparently will be much bigger (Yanacocha is the biggest in S. America, Conga would be one of the biggest in the world).
http://tinyurl.com/apttqe2
Nice thing about Peru, they have coca for the miners.
Yanacocha is a high sulfidation copper porphyry mine, with gold by-product. This is technically not a gold mine. Copper is being sold as gold equivalent in terms of dollars. The size of the mine is attributable to sulfides containing mostly copper and other metals.
But people immediately assume that it's a gold mine without looking at the facts, that this mine only produces gold.
All of the large gold producers have essentially become copper miners while retaining the mantle of being a gold miner.
Interesting. I hadn't considered the copper angle, but that makes sense. Incidentally, I have visited Chuquicamata, the world's largest copper mine, outside of Calama in northern Chile, and let me tell you, that is one big hole. <insert joke here> ;-)
Same goes for Bolivia. If you ever get a chance to visit the Bolivian silver mines, you will see some SKINNY miners. They chew the leaf throughout the day for energy and appetite suppression. How very high fashion of them. :-O
You're right about the Conga mine, but there's quite a bit of resistance to it iirc. It'll be interesting to see it play out.
Already been done:
https://vimeo.com/50059350
Little baby trucks, 789 Cats... cute.
Up north we use the real ones, 797s
Last picture with the plane over the mountains. Nice, it's everywhere.
I love the smell of chemtrail in the morning...not.
In gold we trust.
In gold we trust.
In gold we trust.
I prefer to have God as my gold, than gold as my god.
However, thankfully I have both! :-)
Thankfully, I don't believe in fictions.
Me neither.
Once you understand the impossibility of life coming from nothing, saying you're an atheist just sounds like a cop-out. The mathematical chances of there being a creator are much more plausible than the math involved in the Big Bang theory or evolution or whatever " theory" you want to call it. Atheist scientists don't even try to explain how life came to be because they no longer have any theories that make sense or are remotely possible.
So maybe it's not us who believe in "fictions."
If you think the awesomeness of our creator was fully captured in a fictional tale that was then used as a social control device for centuries then ya.... You believe in fictions.
Please, spare me the false dialectic claptrap. We're either Christians or Atheists, Republicans or Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives, etcetera, etcetera?
Yes, in all liklihood there is a Creator, but who is anyone to say that the Creator is a dude named God? It can't be proven, it's the mystery. Let it be! Anyone who chooses to use the mind that they were given by the Creator to think for themselves can develop their own relationship with Spirit. Only the weak-minded among us accept without question what is force-fed to us from birth.
No doubts exist within truth. God is truth. Furthermore, God is a term used as a substitute to Yahweh because the word Yahweh is far too holy for one to use loosely. Yahweh, according to scripture, is the one who creates to be. A human can only find purpose through the creator of human purpose. Just as thirst seeks water to hydrate. It is a false and misconceived notion that one can find a relationship with ones spirit by focusing on themselves and inwardly building a spiritual understanding while rejecting or partially rejecting(which is fully rejecting) the existence of a living God. It is LOGICAL and simple to understand that Everything can not derive from nothing. Complication and confusion without solution and understanding will lead one to a false perspective. And if one does believe everything came from nothing then where do Morals derive from and where does the voice in our brain known as the conscious come from? And why does the conscious acknowledge our actions as bad when we do wrong(aka sin). Theories are fine to the further advancement of Science as long as it is righteous but one must use a relationship skill known as communication to facilitate a better understanding of who and what is God. The false self known as ego is pure sin and will attempt to trap you in a volatile cycle. The wheel is stopping soon. Stay vigilant.
Blah blah blah. The same fantasy-laden religious twaddle we have all heard 100,000 times before.
God is just an invention of weak minds, nothing more.
Look within yourself and contemplate before your project what you have chosen to not understand.
Akak, one can be spiritual without believing in a canned "God" or religion. Is this what disgusts you or are you a vehement atheist?
Miffed:-)
I agree with this statement completely, Miffed.
In fact, I question whether anyone can truly have or develop spirituality within the context of a canned God or organized religion.
But you raise a good point, that being the distinction between spirituality and religiousness. Most people, whether implicitly or explicitly, equate the two, whereas I see them as almost in opposition to each other.
Damn! I was hoping for the avowed atheist. My favorite people to talk to. Listening to them fervently espouse atheism as a Jesuit defending the infallibility of the Pope is one of my treats. After they're through with a feverish rant I love to slip in the fact atheism to them is just as much a religion as Catholicism is to Catholics. Then I get to stand back and watch their heads explode. Such fun. Unfortunately, I must agree with you it is exceeding difficult to be spiritual in the confines of organized religion. I've seen it done but it is rare. By binding oneself to dogma and strictures of defined faith you also shackle the freedom to experience God. You naturely separate yourself from others of " non believers " and your view becomes very parochial. Tragic really. Oh well, you robbed me of some hopeful fun. I'll have to fish around for another topic. ;-)
Miffed;)
Well, Miffed, I could see where you were going with that line of questioning, but I had to disappoint you --- I am an atheist, but a rather lazy one, and I prefer to avoid excrutiatingly long discourses on the nonexistence of God, seeing them as mostly just a waste of time. For the same reasons, I don't seek out members of the Flat Earth Society in order to debunk their, well, bunk --- the very fact of their membership in such an organization strongly suggests the futility of the whole endeavor. If God did exist, he damn well ought to have made his presence unequivocally obvious, something which he has, to all of my knowledge, manifestly failed to do. If he exists, but thinks so little of me, then I will return the favor.
Akak, I was wrong. This actually would be a pretty good topic for discourse. Though I am a bit sad you have told me an untruth. You are not a lazy atheist. Anyone who spent so much time, passion and effort on those silly Pope treads is not lazy. Tyler was fishing for rabble rousers on both sides of that issue and reeled you and many othes in. Perhaps you meant bored atheist. Tired of all those stale repetitive arguments that lead nowhere. I would never offer you that. I think you fear this issue because you see it as a losing of one self into some mindless collective and everything that makes you the fancinating, passionate person you are would be lost in a sea of pudding. I don't offer you a proof of gods existence, I don't know even what the hell I am at times. But I'd like to bounce a few ideas off of you it you don't mind. Please email me, I really would enjoy the interaction. Don't worry I have no desire for some kind of conversion. There is nothing to convert I don't belong to any " club". Just an exchange of thoughts.
zhmiffed@gmail.com
Your friend,
-Holly
Simple question:
- How did the Creator came to be?
If indeed it's mathematically impossible for intelligent live to come to be on its own, then its also mathematically impossible for a Creator to come to be on its own.
The creator is the only uncreated one silly boy, hence Lucifer's folly of trying to be worshipped "as God". How can that which was created be the creator? Get some popcorn, it's all unfolding before your eyes if you are wise enough to see it.
57 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
John 8
King James Bible
8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Revelation 1
King James Bible
"Once you understand the impossibility of life coming from nothing, saying you're an atheist just sounds like a cop-out. The mathematical chances of there being a creator are much more plausible than the math involved in the Big Bang theory or evolution or whatever " theory" you want to call it. Atheist scientists don't even try to explain how life came to be because they no longer have any theories that make sense or are remotely possible"
Oh dear.
Not another delusional believer in the Magic Sky Fairy.....
Right up there with the magic of Keynesianism in my book.
Reality is not controlled by math. Reality doesn't need math to work. Math is a form of description. To even begin to pretend that you can sit back and figure out the chances of the universe having a certain set of physical laws is delusion of the highest order.
A scientist who hasn't figure something out completely yet, or who hasn't figured something out at all yet, doesn't throw up his hands and say without a shred of evidence or justification "Wow, because I don't get it, that means some super-dude created it, makes it run, and is supreme dictator".
The supremely arrogant and ignorant are not the creatures who look up and attempt to make sense of the universe. The supremely arrogant and ignorant are the creatures who look up and say "Gee, I don't get it, so obviously super-dude created the whole thing.". As if they know that, or anything else.
Faith is a form of insanity. Faith is intentional subversion of your own consciousness. Faith is saying "I haven't a clue, so I will pretend I am certain, and burn anyone to disagrees at the stake.".
As for "fiction", most humans have no freaking idea what fiction means, or what common concepts are complete fictions. The state of mankind is so horrific at this point, it appears I will have to write the book I've been putting off finishing for decades. The book is non-fiction, and it's title will be FICTION. The old working title was "the fatal flaw in human consciousness". It will probably be the most important book ever written, and nobody will read it, and those few who do will attempt to have me burned at the stake for proving that 99.999999% of mankind is fundamentally and clinically insane, and that most of the most cherished ideas of mankind refer to nothing whatsoever.
Note: There's nothing wrong with fiction. Fiction is crucial and can be a wonderful thing in many ways. What's wrong is not distinguishing fiction from reality, and not being able to. That is a problem, a huge problem.
Humans are chimps with delusions of grandeur and delusions of knowledge.
I read your post and felt hopelessness, restlessness, and confusion. Then I read more and felt pride and assurance in self gratification. It is obvious you are intelligent and blessed in many ways, more so than what you lost here on ZH... My question is simple. Why does Love complete you?
Why do you presume love is sufficient to complete me? Who are you do decide what constitutes "complete" for me or anyone but yourself? Are you the supreme being?
Being able to make sense of the universe is liberating, encouraging, invigorating, wonderful, and a lot of hard work. But mostly it requires what few humans dare risk --- being absolutely, completely, totally honest with oneself. The mere thought of never deluding oneself about anything whatsoever is enough to scare people to death.
Turn your neck 90 degrees and look in the mirror if want a real scare.
What is clear needs no clarity. You answered my question with a question of your own. You then wrote about being truthful with oneself, yet avoided answering with the truth. Look for what you can not see with your eyes- that IS faith. Only the ego can attack another as attempting to be a supreme being because only the false self is pure sin so it rejects the true words inspired by the holy spirit which comes from God. Anyone can tap into this source. Anytime and anywhere. One simply must accept, believe and practice. I have not made the rules but I have played by them and I have learned both the hard way and the easy way. Love completes a newborn child as so it completes an elderly person. Do you not believe so? Visit a newborn and show affection from your heart if there is. Visit an elderly center and spend time for the simple sake of the elderly. Then you will experience the healing powers of Love. If we are in the middle stages of our lives, we not excluded to be completed by it. Time will continue. Humans have decisions to be made as free willed entities of the highest order on this planet.
If you can't read that form of sentence, fine.
Love does not complete me.
Love is a wonderful experience, when love is justified. When not justified, it is a setup for pain, destruction and enormous waste of time.
I exhibit "love" (I generally call this benevolence), but only to those who I have significant evidence are worthy (good folks). Unconditional love is psychosis.
When I need to look for what I cannot see with my eyes, I try my ears, touch sensors (skin), electron microscopes, spectrographs, oscilloscopes, and a wide variety of instrumentation. That does NOT require FAITH. Faith is a disease, an aberration, a malfunction.
PS: Funny that you noticed one of my sentences was a question (and made a big deal about it)... but then immediately failed to notice that another sentence was a question (you labeled it a statement, and then attempted to extrapolate something about ego from that intentional deception). Which proves my point about honesty, something you simply cannot and will not tolerate, given your total immersion in self-righteous fiction and insanity.
If you ask me questions that make presumptions, like the classic "When did you stop beating your spouse", don't expect me to accept your presumptions, assumptions or conclusions. You'll need to find a much weaker-minded fool than me to get away with such scammery.
JesusHchrist on a Popsicle stick
A truly embarrassing post.
Hopelessness , confusion.... What sort of faggot shit is that?
Self gratification ? You goddam pervert
Boy that was thirsty work reading that...
But now I know for sure that you know, that I don't know, what you know, which is fiction anyhow I am much happier I think???
Actually the parent poster's understanding of Maths and Logic is sorelly lacking.
Most minds have trouble conceiving the vast number of events that occur in nature every moment which pile up over quadrillions of moments as the millenia go by and can turn a random genetic mutation in one individual that provides the tiniest of competitive advantages for survival into something shared by all individuals of the species.
+ 2
I got a semi-chub looking at those pictures, and not just the chicks in t-shirts.
Me thinks the Author was wearing sticky gum shoes.
For those of you interested in the former, please check below.
http://bestbitcoinsites.wordpress.com
Real men work, digging digging shoveling dirt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVIIUaWxvb8
Me like.
<bump>
I prefer this kind of manual labor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5bYDhZBFLA
That beat is as used up as those models are now.
Bitcoin and Fiat both have hard drives for mothers.
No shots of the mine or mill? Wtf? So I suppose that mining goes from the watch, to the dump truck, to the sleeping guy, to the foundry, and then to the cleaning room. Ffs, I know Au equities are getting hammered, but is this just a Centerra ad? I get the point of the article, but the montage does a great disservice to what is involved in mining. This is guided-tour bullshit. "Look at me! I'm at a Kyrgiz gold mine and I don't know what the fuck I'm looking at!"
I watch my favourite metal prices continuing to fall and yet I feel calm knowing that what lies ahead will not be kind to those who have kept the show going at all costs.
Truly, the have done well to have avoided a collapse in the last 5-6 years but luck and lies can only go so far and only shield you from only so much.
In the meantime, we are watching the greatest tarpeze act of all times making fools of all predictions of a collapse.
What is undeniable is the extreme rot that has permeated every corner and every level of the market, politics and life.
I've been buying since '92 and patently waiting. Tick tock, tick tock
1987...
Tick tock, tick tock
2012...DOH!
You're already in the 1% who own gold. My only advice:
Buy bigger!
I shall, DoChen.
Ditto 2012 - and payed off all debt in 1997, what's not to like?
Tyler and ZH commenters, Thanks much for getting me starting with this blimp accidents thingie, golden showers rulez bitchez!, never felt better, never sleeped better, bring it on or keep printing, I dont give a shit, I can take care of myself and mine now
I fell into a good chunk of money around then. I wished I used it on gold. I would be retired right now.
Increment Bitchez
So analogously the author is saying that the wagon wheel is preferable to the bullet train?!?
We should use wood and square head nails to build sky scrapers?!?
Rock bands should go back to accoustic?!?
Football should be played with real pig skins and leather hats?!?
For protection we should ditch the ARs are relegate ourselves to using Mosin Nagants?!?
I love AU as much as any ZHer but wtf is up with the technophobia?!?
Tech is neutral. Tech can deliver us from toil and free us up to become our best possible selves. What has happened is that we have let something called "Technics" a way of thinking and being, pervade not just our work worlds but all our lives. If it is not "efficient" we do not value it. We arrange our lives with planners, we vacation on a schedule, getting there the fastest way possible, seeing as many sights as possible on a time table, pulling over to prefabricated "scenic overlooks" for pre arranged "breaks" along the way. We pick our careers for the money we will make and mock anyone who does what they love and is willing to make less to have a meaningful life.
Your wagon wheel might be a fun way to travel. So is the bullet train.
Sky scrapers are too high and need copious amounts of energy to run them after the first few floors. They are unsustainable.
I love accoustic and electric guitars.
I have not problem with pig skins or whatever footballs are made of now.
How bout we ditch drones and bombs and other impersonal ways of killing and force all of us to look into our so called enemies eyes, before we kill them. We should only kill when we mean it, not by remote control. I like the AR and the AK, but you know what? That is really too easy too.
Tech as a logic has Bernanke printing to efficiently prop up the market, it makes derrivatives possible, it makes it so that you can sell a loan to a sap and then package the goddamn thing with other sap loans and sell those into the market because it is an efficient and effective way of making money. It isn't personal because you don't have to hold that loan any more.
The tech is fine. It is tech thinking gone unchecked that is the problem.
Bitch on technophobes, bitch on. You feel something is wrong because the whole damn thing got too big and started moving too fast. We can't catch it anymore and spank it. Our best hope is collapsing the thing.
(Some of my material has been borrowed from a guy named Herbert Marcuse and One Dimensional Man. He goes places I don't, but about this issue, he makes excellent points).
I'll look into Marcuse and ODM as I've never heard the term technics although I can appreciate the sentiment you described, ie. Tech is neutral, we can use it for good or evil.
But if BTC helps strike the root and collapse the evil fiat "technic logic" (your term there, I hope I used it correctly), then why the resistance to its use here on ZH, and as I originally asked, Why is this Tyler comparing it in a negative light as to AU?
In my mind, both BTC and AU have roles to play in ending the fiat. One has been around forever, and isn't effective at ending the fiat scheme, it just patiently sits on the sidelines. The other is a new tech, is a tool in the kit to combat the fiat scheme, and is being actively used.
So I guess I dont understand, except for technophobia/ tech incompetence/ or just too damn lazy to learn a new trick... why anyone who appreciates honest money wouldn't appreciate BTC as much as they appreciate AU?!?
Why does this Tyler compare them ad competitors when theyre on the same team?
Said another way...
Why does this Tyler treat AU like it's 'merica (real hard currency) and BTC likes its haita/NK (not real hard currency) when the proper way to present the two is....
AU is marines, BTC is air force. Same team even though they razz each other, but when it comes down to it, they get on the same page and kick the shit out of the evil commie socialist fascist fiat fuckers!!!
And in this fight...
I think it helps to suppliment the marines (AU) with a couple A-10s, B-2s, F-16s, and a shit hot JTAC on the ground giving cleared hots, raining death from above (BTC).
Good points. But Mumford better than Marcuse on all this. Allan Watts not bad, either.
Who is John GaltCoins?
I remember just a few years ago it only cost $5 to dig it out of the ground. (Reference from the former poster known as Mathman)
That was silver, IIRC.
Methman didn't ever pontificate on the costs of digging gold out of the ground.
I am too retared to be able to post a link the to ZH thread I just read, but yes Math Man was proclaiming it only cost $5 to dig it out of the ground.
known to himself as Mathman - known to the rest of us as Methman
And MasterBates (alias Johnny Bravo) said if gold got to $800 (or some such high number at the time) he'd leave ZH.
Don't hear from him any more.
Damn, that guy was hard-headed. But he did admit to being a college student at the time. Figgers.
gold up north...
big nuggets...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdGJApR9jpA
US debt and unfunded liabilities increase by about $8.2 trillion a year.
Total US debt and unfunded liabilities today are $140 trillion ($240 trillion according to Kotlikoff)
All the gold produced in human history is about 170,000 tonnes which costs about $8.5 trillion
Yet, miracle of miracles, gold keeps falling even as the world has printed about $13 trillion since the 2008 crisis
Only about $5.4 billion of silver produced per year (net after industrial consumption).
Wake me up when the world makes sense.
just..
you will have a foot of dust on you
before the world makes sense enough
to wake you up
Dust to dust ...Or you prefer - "Dust in the Wind"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPDJdC-mVgE
The supply of paper Gold is near infinite.
The only amazing thing here is how many people are willing to trade physical gold for fiat at the same price as paper-gold is traded for fiat.
simple: market behaviour - same things happened when all banks were piling in to buy peripheral debt at the same rates as Germany's - remember?
all this hogwash we had to hear and read about the "infallibility" of markets just clouds the inefficiency of markets
representational democracies and markets aren't perfect - they are only better than the alternatives, and this also only in the long run
I believe this is a final test to shake out weak hands (+ Yen debasement/dollar rise), but if gold can't rise in this environment of 0% + 85bil per month, I have to entertain the idea that we're all wrong and gold is done. There is no reason it should be dropping this much give the fundamentals. The arguments about paper gold vs physical don't ring true as physical is dropping just as hard. This has happened several times before, but this time it does feel different. Uber bearish sentiment; not sure how that's going to break other than an unfunded war, because printing money doesn't seem to affect gold. With the bitcoin buzz of late gold does look quite barbaric in comparison. First time I've been concerned it could be over.
Do you not realize that that is PRECISELY how this whole charade is designed to make you feel?