So Tuesday October 19th, 2021 was supposed to be the day that changed everything for bitcoin.
And it may, just not in ways anyone bullish on crypto should be comfortable with.
Finally the SEC approved a Bitcoin ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Futures ETF (BITO) began trading this week to great fanfare in the cryptocurrency community. There was much rejoicing as Bitcoin hit a new all-time high which it has since given back.
On the heels of that announcement Valkyrie changed the proposed ticker symbol for its Bitcoin Strategies ETF, another futures-based product, to BTFD. Gotta love the cheek, there.
And while that’s all well and good, I have to tell you that I have sincere reservations about popping the virtual champagne here.
Because I’ve seen this story before… in gold and silver.
I remember those heady days when all the gold bugs thought an ETF would be just the thing to solve the ‘liquidity’ problem gold had. At the time they didn’t want to hear that this lack of liquidity was one of those good problems gold and silver had.
Once people dug into the prospectus of the proposed SPDR Gold ETF, which has since then changed its name to SPDR Gold Shares ETF, they found that GLD didn’t have to hold physical gold of any particular quality. They could hold the dreaded ‘paper gold.’
That was the key to these funds being just another layer of the Matrix.
They opened up those markets to another sink to drain demand into a black hole of infinite ‘liquidity’ which in the end did nothing to help the price of gold. In fact, just the opposite occurred. It took pressure off the physical spot market and the forex trading of gold and dumped billions of unsuspecting retail investors into the Midgewater Marshes of Wall St.’s hyper-financialization engine.
Or does no one remember the definition of ‘Getting Corzined?”
So, will that happen with bitcoin since these ETFs are even less tied to the underlying commodity than GLD and SLV? Before I answer that, let’s back up and set up some boundary conditions.
This ETF will trade and settle only in front-month Bitcoin futures contracts traded on the CME. These are cash-settled contracts that bear no relation to actual commodities futures contracts where the buyer is pledging to take delivery of a defined-amount of say, soybeans, and the the seller is pledging to deliver that amount of soybeans by a certain date.
In these contracts there is no delivery of bitcoin, the underlying commodity, here. The only thing delivered is cash.
This is just like there is very little gold actually delivered based on the outstanding volume of gold futures open interest on the COMEX during the delivery period during the first week of every other month. Most gold futures are settled in cash, because that’s what many want, a way to hedge dollar or euro exposure with gold without the hassle of actually owning the stuff.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But it shouldn’t be the entire market and nor should the ETFs be marketed as having exposure to actual gold.
Even when people stand to take delivery in gold there have been multiple instances where cash-settlement was forced on the buyer, presumably because the gold wasn’t there.
FYI, it’s in the contract. The COMEX reserves the right to NOT DELIVER gold. Force majeure is a thing, even in the United States.
Futures of this type create nothing more than synthetic supply for speculators to make side-bets on the price of an asset without ever having to trade the asset itself. This sucks away demand for that asset and bearing the risk associated with holding it.
It creates absolutely zero actual physical demand for the commodity. So, these ETFs will generate absolutely zero demand on the Bitcoin blockchain, only send a secondary signal to actual bitcoin traders that there is something happening they should be aware of.
The question everyone should be asking which market is the more important? The actual bitcoin market or the bitcoin futures market?
What it does create is a very different set of parameters and games theory optimization strategies for those that play it.
They aren’t playing bitcoin, they are playing with “speculating on bitcoin.”
And this type of speculation has been going on since December 2017, when the CME’s original bitcoin futures contract began trading. No shock, then, to anyone with any sense of market history that bitcoin peaked in January 2018 and entered a two-plus year bear market.
Moreover, they aren’t risking their holdings of bitcoin as the seller of the contract or taking on the volatility risk of the future delivery of bitcoin as the buyer of the contract.
These aren’t futures contracts, they are more appropriately called ‘contracts for difference,’ or CFDs, that shady Greece-based Forex companies offer. In effect, I bet the price goes up, you bet it’ll drop and after a certain amount of time we settle our bet.
Futures are supposed to help producers of commodities and consumers thereof coordinate production and consumption through time. They are a vital part of how a free market optimizes capital flow and risk assessment.
They help send signals to all players in the supply chain up and downstream of those base commodities what the supply and demand structure of those markets looks like. These are vital and essential pricing signals that when screwed with upset the flow of capital around the world.
So, this should clue you in as to why all these ‘supply chain’ issues and rising ‘inflation’ concerns are suddenly popping up all over the world. There’s been a whole lotta shenanigans going on in various commodities futures markets now since the beginning of the COVID-9/11 psy-op pandemic.
From last year’s catastrophic contango in crude oil and the insane pump and dump of lumber futures to this fall’s rise in energy and industrial metals prices, commodities futures markets have become the plaything of speculators who are all downstream of the central banks money printing machines.
And since I subscribe heavily to the theory that there are no coincidences in geopolitics, I have to ask the basic question I always ask in times like these… cui bono?
Who benefits from this volatility?
For years the rent-seekers close to the central banks have turned futures from an essential market function into a tool of market manipulation by giving some actors access to free money to speculate on the asset and utilize the leverage they gain to push and pull the price for trading desk profits.
But, honestly, that analysis is as generous as I can be about this situation.
By corrupting the gold market nearly to its terminal state over the past fifteen years they have extended the life of the central banks’ power for close to two decades now. The game, in my opinion, is far more sinister than just profit motive, if only it were that banal.
No, this manipulation of global commodity prices has massive political and societal effects, corrupting everything these markets touch. Remember, a corrupt money begets a corrupt society.
So with corrupted futures markets we have corrupted the very essence of the structure of production and consumption, the very essence of voluntary exchange as the basis for civilization.
I wonder who benefits from that…. could it be Communists who hate Capitalism? Askin’ for a friend.
Back to gold and silver. GLD and SLV provide massive amounts of liquidity to retail investors which bleeds off physical demand. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent trying to convince people to STOP BUYING GLD AS A PROXY FOR GOLD over the past fifteen years.
If you want gold buy gold. Hold it in your hand, stop pussyfooting around and remember that not every decision you make with your money should be immediately reversible. That’s not investing, that speculating.
The only people who worship at the altar of the Gods of Liquidity are the market-makers skimming both sides of the trade.
GLD and SLV both act as a psychological crutch to never commit to taking the other side against the central banks and the powers that continually siphon off your best energy into rabbit holes of irrelevant distractions, like what some dumb chick said on Twitter the other day.
You think you’re buying portfolio protection or are hedging against the dollar but all your’re doing is creating the very synthetic short against your portfolio that dulls its returns over time.
By buying either of these funds you are just feeding the beast who is working against your well being.
Because while they may track the gold price they don’t give you any actual say in the price of it, because all you’re doing is signaling SPDR to print more shares to buy more contracts on the COMEX which were printed out of thin air by some investment bank borrowing money from the Fed at 0%!
The same will go for any bitcoin ETFs that don’t hold physical BTC.
This is why SEC Chair and Davos troll par excellence Gary Gensler fast-tracked this ETF now after 5 years of the SEC farting around saying no to real Bitcoin ETFs. Everyone serious about crypto wants a physical bitcoin-settled ETF, which the SEC doesn’t want to grant because that would be something that would 1) increase the actual demand for Bitcoin and 2) would expose those involved in the trade to actual time-risk.
The biggest clue that these ETFs are not for our benefit but theirs is the following. Settling bitcoin accounts for the ETF daily would be the easiest ETF of this type to implement ever. At the end of trading on any given day the fund simply sends one measly transaction to the blockchain to buy or sell the net of all the trades of the bitcoin ETF’s shares for the day.
Hell, they could settle it up every hour if need be during times of volatility. With Lightning Network live, that settlement could even happen there and bleed the blockchain traffic off over time if there’s congestion and the fees too high. It would lead to less bitcoin volatility in the long run, rather than more.
And before you begin criticizing me, it’s irrelevant whether I have the settlement mechanisms right here or not, the finer details could be worked out easily if anyone at the SEC cared to want to do that job.
What’s important is that the blockchain creates a far more stable environment for issuing a commodity ETF than any other physical commodity actually does. It’s not like we need warehouses to store digital commodities, after all.
Moreover, I can even see some upside for the government here. With a daily on-chain settled ETF government stooges like Gensler would then bleed investor demand away from non-KYC/AML compliant crypto exchanges (of which there are dozens) and put them under the purview of Wall St. brokerages, SEC compliance rules etc. where more crypto investors would pay their capital gains taxes, which I thought is what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants to crack down on so badly?
So, again, why didn’t they do this and why are we instead going to get a critical mass of these corrupt futures-based ones?
I think you know my answer to that.
They need to get as many hooks into bitcoin that they can now to control the price and siphon off retail investor demand while also collecting massive trading fees and trading against their clients’ books.
The same way they do in gold.
Because they have all but admitted at multiple layers of the technocracy that bitcoin has already beaten them.
I’m with Raoul Pal in saying if Gensler was pro-Bitcoin he wouldn’t approve a futures ETF, he’d approve a real one. As I said already, if there is one commodity on the planet that can handle a day-to-day settled ETF with physical accounting of the float it would be Bitcoin.
And yet they won’t do it. It is expressly against their goals to encourage investors into Bitcoin in ways that would improve it as a market. Instead they want to add bitcoin to their schemes of suppressing the price and sucking up the supply over time, the same way they have destroyed the oil markets, the gold market and every other damn market these vultures have ever touched.
So, my advice is stay in actual on-chain bitcoin. You want bitcoin. Buy some frickin’ bitcoin.
Buy the Grayscale closed-end fund, GBTC, if you need to.
Or, do what millions have already done, just learn to take full control over your investments and your portfolio hedges and tell the Genslers of the world to go stuff his shit back up his ass where it belongs.
They are going to tempt you with lower trading fees on their exchanges as opposed to the much higher ones on Coinbase. It’s being designed this way on purpose. Here, you can trade bitcoin for free on RobinHood, why pay Coinbase their fee?
Or do yourself a real favor and stop trying to trade bitcoin and listen to the laser-eyes set on Twitter. Just buy the stuff, pull it off the exchanges onto a hardware wallet and ignore all their fancy, financial schemes to separate you from real value.
These things are ultimately just marketing. Bitcoin didn’t need an ETF to scare the living daylights out of Wall St., Davos, the CCP and every other would be Bond Villain out there.
Thanks to Zerohedge for the above chart. This is what you are staring at over time if you buy this over buying bitcoin directly. No different than what happened to a lot of gold holders who tried to outperform the market through the price manipulation on the COMEX over the 2005-11 bull market.
Davos wants private cryptocurrencies banned but failing that they want it as much of it under their control as possible. It’s why the World Economic Forum has ‘approved of’ and is ‘working with’ a list of preferred cryptocurrencies while Gensler and Yellen muck up the market and insert dangerous language into unpassable legislation, e.g. the Build Back Better plan.
The problem for them is that Wall St. wants private crypto because it is one of the ways for them to survive the collapse of the current monetary system, since the traditional banking model is as dead as MySpace. The CFTC settlement with Tether last weekend tells you all you need to know about who’s actually in charge on Capitol Hill… and it ain’t Davos.
That was a JPMorgan-style slap on the wrist similar to the SDNY’s settlement with Tether in December. Tether may be a scam or a Ponzi scheme but it’s now another Wall St. approved scam and Ponzi scheme.
But it’s still not approved by Davos.
Gensler is fighting an uphill battle against an avalanche of capital that wants yield in a yield-free world. It’s a global market and everyday with Lightning online, the third world is getting access to first world payment technology. That’s the real battle they are losing.
Jay Powell came out today and reiterated his commitment to ending QE (hint: not a policy mistake) and allowing all that money printed and he’s sterilized over the past six months within the RRP facility to allow the economy to run without any further support.
He has finer control over dollar in/outflow than a Fed chairman ever has and right now, all the right people hate him. Meanwhile everyone on Capitol Hill has COVID-9/11 and January 6th fatigue except the ones holding desperately to the reins of power.
The arguments for sending the country on another spending spree seems dumb when there are help wanted signs everywhere and even that too dumb to be considered a dimbuld, Jen Psaki, is trying to play off their manufactured supply chain crisis with the excuse that people are buying so much stuff.
And we need $4.5 trillion in spending for what again exactly?
How’s that awesome power of the Speaker’s Gavel feel when jammed down your throat, Nance? Mmm… rosewood.
This will put upward pressure on UST yields for a time but worse it will begin a stampede out of European debt as the situation there as I’ve discussed ad nauseum ad infinitum is far worse than anything happening on Capitol Hill. All that has to happen now is for O’Biden to admit defeat and GFTO (which is another good candidate for a Bitcoin ETF ticker symbol, in my opinion) of the way.
We know they won’t, so brace yourselves for the mother of all battles for our monetary future.
And even if Gensler succeeds in taming bitcoin and major private cryptos all he’ll do is drive the economy underground. As Martin Armstrong has been warning us for decades, this is the main way empires collapse, by driving capital underground, deflating asset prices through collapsing money velocity and forcing monetary inflation to offset it.
Sound familiar?
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Yes exactly.
Of course you know my theory – that Bitcoin is a Davosian invention and Satoshi was their cutout to popularize it, and when private crypto is outlawed they will stampede us all into their preferred version, Diem.
Which is about to launch.
So yes, the ETF is there to enable them to create lots of volatility in private crypto. Maybe even so much that HODLers complain about manipulation and beg for regulation.
Interesting timing – they delayed the ETF for years and years, and then approved it just as Diem was ready to launch.
Agree, Ivor. The current private bitcoiners are doing all the hard work for the Deep State. Then they’ll step, close it all down and hey, presto, their own CBDC turns up!
The only people who will ‘stampede’ into Diem, will be the clueless Wall Street victims who trust FB and WS, and their scams.
Diem and any CBDC will be avoided by most ‘crypto’ investors, just as this new ETF should be, and will be avoided.
As you mentioned the ‘interesting timing’ of this ETF and Diem’s launch are suspect, and prove that both should be avoided. As Tom recommends.
Tom is spot on in this article, and I agree with every thing in it.
Well, my theory is that once Diem launches they will move to regulate to death (or even outlaw) private crypto, stalling further adoption.
So although it might not be possible to prise Bitcoin from the cold dead hands of the HODLers, the growth of the private crypto complex can be stopped in its tracks – if you don’t own Bitcoin by now, its criminalization is unlikely to entice you to start?.
Of course if the Davosians and their pet central bankers hate and fear private crypto enough (which we presumably agree they do?) they might attempt to stampede its owners into Diem with an actual ban on private crypto ownership and an amnesty to allow a migration from BTC to Diem?
Tom thinks this is unlikely to succeed, but I’m not sure why.
I have stated why I think this theory is dumb a million times, you just refuse to listen because you are Ivor and there is no known cure.
1) Diem is NOT their preferred method of control. They will move to regulate stablecoins out of existence (how I don’t know but they are going to try… c.f. Gensler being in charge of regulation now).
2. Once you ‘outlaw’ something you drive it underground, further crashing the ‘real’ economy because money velocity drops in the ‘real’ currency like a rock. No one who is sitting on these cryptos will all of a sudden be like, “oh shit, we’re criminals now!” Shudder. Maybe shitbags euros think this way, but that’s maybe a genetic disorder
3. There’s 4 billion people now exposed to crypto and its ability to provide them with 1st world payment solutions that are not under Davos’ control… unless they kill them all off, that’s a non-starter.
4. The more they push to tell people they can’t do X, while people say they want to do X, the more they are creating X. This is history.
Once you are done jerking off over the power of these people think they have you realize they are really just scared little children running around hiding behind rules no one will follow.
When you have to ‘re-educate’ the cops to enforce vaccine mandates and not have the cops re-educate the people through blunt force trauma you’ve already lost.
Seriously, folks, Ivor means well but he’s trapped in the old paradigm, while the new one is literally being built in front of our eyes.
Like a gold bug who thinks bitcoin isn’t real, but then types that in a message box on a ZH chat room making his thoughts real, Ivor is still denying the essence of human behavior and the fight that’s in process and, in effect, has already been won.
If they could wave their hand and just band crypto, they would have done so already. Diem isn’t what they want, Ivor. CB’s cutting out all other financial institutions is what they want… go read their whitepapers.
Sorry, I should have been more precise – I accept you have said “This won’t work” many times, so I should have said “Tom thinks they will be foiled, but hasn’t said HOW”
I don’t deny that those already invested in private crypto would be forced underground if it was outlawed. I just don’t believe criminalizing Bitcoin would lead to further adoption of it.
And I’m not claiming that they are looking to “wave their hand and ban all crypto” – I’m claiming they wish to CONTROL it, and intend to do so by outlawing all versions they don’t control (i.e. private crypto) and launching their own (which they have openly discussed doing for YEARS), which they will then insist is the only one the masses are allowed to LEGALLY use.
So more accurately, they will outlaw all crypto except one – theirs.
And I think it will be Diem. Not sure why you are so sure it won’t be?
Now you can either tell me again how scared and pathetic I am, or just tell me how this plan would be stopped?
If THIS is what they intend to do, and THIS is how they intend to do it, what SPECIFICALLY will stop them? Because I see nothing in their way at all.
The Chinese revaluing gold? The media deciding to honestly report the scheme? The SEC stepping in to declare their actions illegal? Klaus Schwab perpwalked? Paul Volcker resurrected?
I’ve read some of the whitepapers, and asked you what you made of How To Make A Mint.
This is cool too – https://dis-blog.thalesgroup.com/identity-biometric-solutions/2021/07/27/how-digital-id-can-help-citizens-access-government-services-from-anywhere/
Thales seem to want to turn the vax passport into a real Mark of the Beast, with digital ID and currency at the heart.
Because the world is bigger than them Ivor. And there are trillions of dollars that don’t want this. These people can’t get important legislation passed necessary to pull this off. I’ve explained this multiple times and you refuse to see what I’m talking about.
Bitcoin is global. They are not. What is being built is an infrastructure for them to tax it not outlaw it. That will come later and they will see real pushback at that point
Diem is a joke. They have already slapped down Facebook on this issue. It won’t be run by facebook as the proxy it will be the CBs directly and even that is at best 5 years away
By then crypto is orders of magnitude too big to control
Thanks – that’s helped me understand a bit better.
And I agree that if private crypto was allowed to stick around for five years, it would be completely out of control.
I also agree that Diem could not be run by FB – it would need to be taken into public ownership (or “gifted to the people of the world” by Zuckerberg)
But the bit I don’t agree with is the need to pass legislation – just as COVID has allowed their patsies to use emergency powers to suspend our civil liberties, I’m expecting a confected monetary crisis point to allow something similar.
I notice Iran just suffered a serious cyberattack and are threatening consequences?
So if the Davosians wanted to put into practice all they learned at Cyber Polygon, they could now take down some crucial global monetary systems and blame it on an Iranian counterstrike?
Or do you doubt they have that degree of influence?
P.S – I previously said they might “regulate to death” private crypto – could you envision a 90% windfall tax?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/worlds-largest-crypto-exchange-binance-suspends-crypto-withdrawal-11635773443
Just a temporary glitch. Definitely NOT a redemption gate of any sort.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Saule Omarova.
She’ll be rejected?
Totally agree. BTC futures (and the ETF) will be used to “tamp down” prices, as we have seen in the PM sector. (Too bad Jeff Christian doesn’t cover BTC as far as I know). What would be interesting is a full court press gamma squeeze in BTC options. This theoretically can blow out the basis (BTC futures/BTC cash) which would lure the arbs. This scenario could pump vols to wet dream levels.
Totally agree. BTC futures (and the ETF) will be used to “tamp down” prices, as we have seen in the PM sector. (Too bad Jeff Christian doesn’t cover BTC as far as I know). What would be interesting is a full court press gamma squeeze in BTC options. This theoretically can blow out the basis (BTC futures/BTC cash) which would lure the arbs. This scenario could pump vols to wet dream levels.
2030:
USA.gov: Use our digital currency, OK guys?
BTC: All your bases are belong to us.
USA.gov: Oh crap
Re: BTC ETF…will they allow me to self custody and maintain my private keys? /sarc
One has to read a month’s worth of dreck before coming across an article like this!!!
The Pharaoh’s gold is perfectly safe 6000 years later, and has more than held its value while a dozen empire’s currencies have devalued to nothing.
The Pharaoh didn’t fair so well. He’s dead.
A number of people who spent a fortune setting up asset trusts in the Cayman Islands have learned that their money is perfectly safe, but a federal judge has locked them up in contempt of court until the money is brought back into US jurisdiction. The money is safe, the owner is not.
Any scenario in which bitcoin would protect you in theory won’t work in practice. Greedy corrupt bureaucrats have no hesitation to kidnap, incarcerate or just kill you. They have no issue with fabricating evidence, tampering with evidence, or destroying exculpatory evidence — not even if you are the sitting President of the USA.
The US government is the largest debtor the world has ever known, and they are fantasizing about p!ssing away another $1.4 trillion on union corruption plus $3.5 trillion on marxist / socialist makeovers. They have lost all sense of reality.
Anyone who believes the crooks in and around Washington wont abscond with most of that money should get their head examined. There is no diplomatic way of saying you are stupid if you believe that.
Bitcoin, in whatever format, isn’t going to protect anyone from the criminal element that controls Washington DC. It doesn’t matter which crime syndicate, dem or rep, and at this point those crime families have mostly merged. Now its the old school crime families vs the new marxist criminals.
Instead of wasting time fantasizing about imaginary currencies, figure out ways to right size the government. In the next decade or so, Uncle Sam will either end up like GE and IBM in the 90s — with 25% of the headcount (75% of the bureaucrats fired) and a new less corrupt corporate culture … or its going to end up like Kodak and GM and Bethlehem Steel.
Either way, it doesn’t matter if your gold/bitcoin is safe — you are not
Now that’s a comment!
Bitcoiners are infantile dreamers
Bitcoin is an idea, so they will wage war on the idea, probably by trying to subvert the idea, and focusing attention away from the real idea and onto a false narrative. E.G. BTC = get rich quick. Then they will as Tom says go into full Las Vegas mode, and yank investors all over the place I guess. Maybe real money obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. Money is like a photon, it can appear in two places at once. This is BTC and Gold I think. They are fighting against forces beyond their ken, beyond their control, imo.
If gold and bitcoin can be easily manipulated by some cheap financial trickery on Wall Street, then what good are they? They’ll only show their value when we reach the hyper inflation phase, and they start changing prices at the supermarket while you’re waiting in the checkout line. I still think it will be quite awhile longer before we get there.
One scenario is that the crown will be passed from bitcoin to something not being directly manipulated by bogus futures markets, like some other coin. The only trouble is that Bitcoin is the only coin in which nobody is in charge, and there’s nobody to lean on or arrest.
That seems to be correct. Bitcoin is a virtual electronic currency and Bitcoin ETFs are a virtual, virtual electronic currency.
My guess is that if Bitcoin “stabilizes” the world will lose interest in it as an investment vehicle as they have in Gold. Nothing worse than parking money for a limited return.
——
Gold will definitely show its value in a hyper-inflationary phase:
In Venezuela, people break off flakes of gold to pay for meals and haircuts
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/in-venezuela-people-break-off-flakes-of-gold-to-pay-for-meals-and-haircuts
———-
However, will Bitcoin do the same? Notice how Venezuelans who might want to use Bitcoin are stymied by the lack of electricity and internet. Whereas Gold is no problem.
Chinese are at this point….their own digital coin…this will dominate by decree…
HONG KONG, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Some 140 million people had opened “wallets” for China’s new digital yuan as of October and used it for transactions totalling around 62 billion yuan ($9.7 billion), a senior Chinese central bank official said on Wednesday.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/95-billion-spent-using-chinese-central-banks-digital-currency-official-2021-11-03/
Why would Wal-Mart offer Bitcoin for sale? Does it plan to accept Bitcoin for purchases eventually? Recent announcement made no sense with respect to the typical WM shopper. What am I missing?
Large corporations are helping to normalize cryptocurrency.
But Bitcoin and other private cryptos will not benefit.
They will soon be outlawed, and the global CBDC will emerge.
But no-one would trust a cryptocurrency created by a central bank.
So they got one of their private sector technology tentacles to create one for them.
It’s Diem.
You’re an idiot. These people can’t pass a budget and you think they will roll out global corporate communism through facetubes?
Wow
Goodness me you’re stuck.
The people who can’t pass a budget are the patsies – the imbeciles they installed knowing they would demonstrate the failings of national leadership.
Those launching the global cryptocurrency are those showing how global leadership is needed – the Davosians.
You’re getting the monkey confused with the organ grinder again.
Moron
The same goes o you… You don’t see the difference between executing on a plan and that plan failing in he process. I’m sorry Ivor but you really have nothing to add to this conversation.
150+ days and counting. Remember that? Oh right, there’s still electricity.
I hope you’re right – I really do.
But seriously, you see this global plandemic as a failing process?
You accept that the indoctrinated masses can be made fearful again with a new variant and locked back in their homes, and you understand that the next lockdown and resultant economic collapse will be blamed on the unvaxxed.
And yet you think these represent the failure of the Davosian plan.
You’re a strange guy.
Ivordeacon,
You could be right, but if you choose to argue that everything that appears to be going wrong with the plan is a part of the plan, you create an unassailable position in terms of argument.
You run into the same with the climate change alarmists, where every extreme hot and extreme cold event is an indicator of climate change.
Eventually you have to give Tom a “falsifiable hypothesis”. I think some of your contrarian perspective is valuable, but the assertions need to be “testable” and “falsifiable”, otherwise Tom will continue to respond with merited frustration. IMHO
Per diem…. once a day we will get a ration of coin?
@Sheryl
Pretty much.
It’s a daily allowance designed to help you live, but hand to mouth.
“You’ll own nothing, and be happy”
I suspect the Diem universal basic income will be a monthly payment with a negative interest rate of around 3% a day. Use it or lose it.
AMEX says no to BTC charge card. So as I have said, if you cannot use it, what good is it? Perhaps BTC is a great way for drug dealers to launder cash.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-express-ceo-dont-expect-a-crypto-linked-credit-card-anytime-soon-183157512.html?.tsrc=fin-notif
@Sheryl
I guess we should ask whether existing payment processors would support Diem transactions if the World Bank/IMF/BIS suddenly decided to back it, and the governments of the world all then agreed it could be used to pay your taxes?
Without establishment support Diem will wither of course but if I’m right and its their chosen vehicle to establish a deathgrip on the world’s monetary system, they will presumably back it to the hilt? How will Mastercard and Visa react to it at that point?
Because when I look at their attempt to roll out a global currency, that seems to align very well with their “Great Reset” fantasy?
@Anon
OK, but I’ve asked Tom what would falsify his theory and he’s not really responded.
For me, there would be at least three ways to falsify my theory.
1) The governments of the world give up on their drive for vaccine passports and our societies go back to normal.
2) Perpwalks of actual Davosians
3) Private crypto regulation that nevertheless allows Bitcoin to continue to be traded freely, and CBDCs merely launched in competition.
What do we imagine would falsify Tom’s?
You can’t falsify a theory with incomplete information Ivor. Hence my refusal to answer your obtuse and ultimately straw man argument
In a way, is not the bottom line here the same as it always is with the control freaks, if they can’t control it, they will destroy it. In the case the ‘it’ is the internet. No internet, no blockchains. No blockchains, no crypto currencies. No internet, no bitcoin. The relationship between gold and the significance of gold is that real gold exists independentently of the significance we give to it. Can we say the same about blockchain technology? It seems to come down then to the question can the internet survuve Davos’s destructiveness? Watch this space.
All they have to do is disrupt the internet a little to cause widespread panic.
Bill Burr said it best:
“What happened to rollerblading? One day someone pointed a rollerblader and yelled “FAG!” and that was the end of it!”
Let’s be realistic – use of private crypto cannot be prevented, but ownership of it will soon be outlawed, and anyone refusing to hand theirs over will rot in a cell.
Exchanges will be forced to hand over personal details of their customers.
And gold and silver are scarcely better – too few people understand their value to accept them in black market transactions, and windfall taxes are easily imposed.
Bullion dealers will be forced to hand over personal details of their customers.
Humanity is being herded into a technogulag – a global cryptocurrency will soon emerge (Diem?) and eventually be offered as a universal basic income, probably only to those with valid vaccine passports.
Your role model at this point is Edgar Friendly.
You really believe this is going to happen with 330 million americans owning 900 million guns? Therapy
Who will they they fire upon? Their desperate and unemployed countrymen?
And how will they buy the ammo to do so?
That there is a rifle behind every blade of grass is precisely why Americans have been set against each other so profoundly.
When you have a world of voyeurs with cameras there is no chance of rebellion…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/10/19/rape-train-philadelphia-occurred-while-bystanders-held-up-phones/8523134002/
Speaking of guns…fascinating video…
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-latino-gun-owners-armed-cbsn-originals/
Ray Dalio says BitCoin will be outlawed…
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/26/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-good-probability-government-outlaws-bitcoin.html#:~:text=Ray%20Dalio%3A%20The%20government%20'outlawing%20bitcoin%20is%20a%20good%20probability‘,-Published%20Fri%2C%20Mar&text=Bitcoin%2C%20the%20largest%20cryptocurrency%20in,It’s%20like%20a%20digital%20cash.
Mastercard is preparing to announce that any of the thousands of banks and millions of merchants on its payments network can soon integrate crypto into their products, CNBC has learned ….
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/25/mastercard-says-any-bank-or-merchant-on-its-vast-network-can-soon-offer-crypto-services.html
Bitcoin was just the first successful proof of concept implementation and approach to decentralisation. Already in the wings are other new innovative NON-BLOCKCHAIN based forms of decentralisation to tackle all manner use cases, based around guaranteeing privacy, sharing resources and being paid in untraceable digital cash. Systems such as https://safenetwork.tech/. I can’t see how any centralised regulations threats or brute force attacks can stop what’s coming. Being decentralised there is no attack surface for them to sink their teeth into. If they shutdown the entire internet they shutdown their own surveillance network and again their f$cked. The days of centralised tyranny ending. The way to survive their chaotic end is to support new parallel decentralised systems until they eventually become the defacto standard. The network that offers the greatest win-win opportunities will sustainable scale to become the new standard.
I am certainly no expert in this area, but most alternative analysts agree that PM’s are price suppressed through the CME and LBME, and that the ETF GLD plays a far more minor role in it. Furthermore, the price of the PM’s are controlled by the 5 WS megabanks with JPM playing by far the major role, with the total blessing of the Fed and Treasury. If this be correct, the earlier start of BTC futures on the CME is a far more significant factor than the start of the ETF this past week.
From the CME: “Is there an option to take physical delivery of bitcoin?” I find this question amusing as BTC’s are not physical to begin with and perpetuates the myth along with the universal iconic representation of a physical BTC. Reminds me of the brightly colored cv-1984 virus which is also a computer generated structure with no physical reality,
The answer is that it is possible but only through a specific contractual arrangement between two parties which means that 99.99% will be settled in USD. The CME is a whore which started out honestly at the turn of the last century with settlement always in the commodity.
I understand what you’re saying about ETFs which have no relation to a physical asset, but what about ETFs like SGOL and SIVR what are linked to actual physical metal?
I love those, they are fine, just like GBTC, which holds onchain BTC.
Yes the fact that the first approved ETF is for futures is no surprise. And, BTC is in fact the closest digital replacement for gold. But what will forever be ignored by the mainstream is that beyond gold and silver, there is no physical form of DEFI that is behind BTC and ETH. Instead, the mainstream props up meme coins that do not solve any problems or have any use case beyond pump and dump with no need for manipulation. They will pump, dump, and cost people money all on their own. And then they’ll say, “See, people lost their life savings. We need to regulate crypto.” Fine. The technology will always be in front of the regulation. And doubters continue to talk about the internet being killed. We all have much bigger problems in that case and crypto is merely one tool any responsible man should have in his possession. True diversification is gold, silver, ammo, food, water, cash, tools, skills, fuel, AND crypto. Ignore this opportunity at your own loss. Web 3.0 is there for anyone who wants to jump into the water and swim with the sharks.
…Wall St. wants private crypto because it is one of the ways for them to survive the collapse of the current monetary system, since the traditional banking model is as dead as MySpace….
Tom, could you please be more precise as to this collapse? In rereading your excellent article I just caught this phrase. Thanks.
People who get off torturing animals frequently turn out to be psychopaths. Its one of the tell tale signs. Many convicted serial killers had at least an incident of animal torture as children.
Is it a surprise that Anthony Fauci is sponsoring research in which beagles are put in cages with sand flies to be eaten alive? And their vocal cords are surgically removed so the psychopaths masquerading as scientists don’t have to hear the beagles screaming?
Why does the US government have a psychopath in charge of NAID? How is this psycho the highest paid bureaucrat in the US government? What does it say about America that people not only tolerate this psycho, but defend him and put him on TV like a hero?
A guy who gets off torturing animals is a national hero? WTF?
The Bitcoin Futures ETF is the latest in a series of pop and drop derivatives of bitcoin, starting with the altcoins, ICOs, et al.
As an ETF of cash settled futures it’s the easy, SEC validated, consumer protecting (ha ha) it is purely speculative, but given how poorly it is like to track, hardly even that.
The chart is totally familiar, or eerily reminiscent, of every shitcoin that ever hit the market, but this time, “it’s regulated.” Fat difference that will make.
As for a “trap,” it’s a billion, that spent on bitcoin might have, if BoA and others are to be believed, shifted the underlying 10%. But easy come, easy go, this isn’t GBTC.
How much gold is there? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How much bitcoin is there? bitcoin-cli gettxoutsetinfo (if you have your own node, or https://forkmonitor.info/nodes/btc otherwise) Answer:18,849,506.2
Futures, for commodities address a number of variables, how much, what price. With bitcoin, there is only one uncertainty. The price. All the whining about volatility, hedge with futures and that would be solved, no?
GLD holds futures? wtf.. this is from their prospectus.. did this change? :
“The Trust will not hold or trade in commodity futures contracts regulated by the Commodity Exchange Act (the “CEA”) as administered by the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission (the “CFTC”).
They do not hold physical gold, never have. They are allowed to hold paper.
you sure? we’re talking the SPDR GLD , correct? on their site they claim to be holding 978 tonnes of phys.. there’s even an audited report from April 2021:
Name of Account: Bank of New York Mellon – SPDR® Gold Trust
Bullion Account No: 18984
Material: London Good Delivery Gold Bars
Location: London Vaults of HSBC Bank plc
Gold Inventory: As per the records of the Custodian at close of business 16th
April, 2021 this account held title to 81,765 London Good
Delivery, large Gold Bars of a purity between 99.50% and
99.99% and a weight of 32,886,097.372 fine troy ounces of Gold.
They do not hold Gold but at best own gold leased from Central Banks. They,in turn, likely do not hold that gold as it’s been leased out to secure other gold derivatives
It’s a ponzi scheme. There is no audit of GLD. Try to find the bars they own. They don’t.
The question is this. “Allocated” account or “unallocated” account. Unallocated is the crux
On their site:
Effective June 1, 2011, the Trust has entered into an agreement with HSBC Bank plc, the Trust’s Custodian, which will ensure that all of the Trust’s gold is held in allocated form at the end of each working day.
From the Auditors report also on their site…
We performed a statistically random count of 17,219 bars of
gold, based upon the gold inventory as at 16th April, 2021. The
audit was completed on the 4th May, 2021 at the Custodian’s
premises and performed certain procedures including but not
limited to the following:
• The gold inventory records of Bank of New York Mellon (the
“Trustee”) were reconciled to the records of the Custodian.
• Each individual gold bar in the gold count was agreed to the
records of the Custodian as being held in the name of the
above mentioned account. The bar number, refiner code
and purity of each bar were checked against the records of
the Custodian.
• A minimum of 2.5 % of the statistically random chosen gold
bars held within the account, were Gross Check Weighed
against the Bank of New York Mellon records (the
“Trustee”) and the records of the custodian.
• The 2.5 % of bars Gross check weighed were also tested for
any potential foreign material inclusions using a Fischer
Sigmascope B.
• The records of the Trustee at 16th April, 2021 were
reconciled to the records of the Custodian at 4th May, 2021
being the last day of the gold count
Here’s the PDF to the Bar List… https://spdrgoldshares.com/assets/dynamic/GLD/file/barlist/Barlist.pdf
Here’s a sample from the list:
Client Account Name:
Gold Allocated A/C Holdings As Of C.O.B:
Total Allocated Bar Count:
Total Allocated Gross Weight:
Total Allocated Fine Weight:
BANK OF NEW YORK-SPDR-NEW YORK
22 October 2021
78345
31,564,276.025
31,511,449.993
BAR NUMBER REFINER LONG NAME BAR GROSS WEIGHT BAR FINE WEIGHT BAR ASSAY YEAR VAULT NAME
00055 MITSUBISHI MATERIALS CORPW 399.875 399.835 0.9999 2017 HSBC VAULT
00056 MITSUBISHI MATERIALS CORPW 404.350 404.309 0.9999 2017 HSBC VAULT
00057 MITSUBISHI MATERIALS CORPW 407.900 407.859 0.9999 2017 HSBC VAULT
00058 MITSUBISHI MATERIALS CORPW 411.375 411.333 0.9999 2017 HSBC VA
the question is always on a day to day basis (which is not ever confirmed) that the gold they say is there actually is, is not leased out or encumbered in some other way.
We’re dealing with people, including HSBC, who have been fined for manipulating the gold market multiple times.
The audits are done by people in the chain of command for manipulating the gold market. The evidence is in front of you as to what’s going on and has been going on.
They can print audit reports all they want and yet there is 200X or more leverage within the LBMA and COMEX system so where is all of this gold?
If you choose to believe that State Street has this gold try redeeming your shares for physical gold. You can’t. You may think you’re forcing allocation of physical gold and when the audits are performed i don’t doubt that the gold is ‘there’ but markets are made in the moment not at the end of the quarter.
So believe these people if you want, there is plenty of wiggle room in the language of the prospectus to allow for shenanigans and/or hypothecation of that gold (because it’s held in London where infinite rehypothecation of gold is legal) to occur.
Don’t believe me? Go look at the Copper statistics coming out of the LME now. They don’t have any.
I see – ok well we both had our say .. see you in the machine – peace, mike
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
The Colonial Pipeline hackers demanded ransom in BTC but the Feds tracked them down per Reuters…so much for secrecy … Monies were returned.
“An affidavit filed on Monday said the FBI was in possession of a private key to unlock a bitcoin wallet that had received most of the funds. It was unclear how the FBI gained access to the key.”
I continue to be baffled by cryptopaths who think that because their currency is secure, they are inviolate.
One day soon HODLers will be told they can hand over their key or rot in a cell for a decade.
Presumably at that point they will stop proclaiming how their crypto is out of reach of the government.
So yeah there are 68 million people on coinbase alone. 20% of the US population alone and you think they have jail cells for those people?
This is the fantasy of the totalitarian, that they think their power is unlimited because they passed a law or made a demand
Again this is a reflection of your cowardice and fear
Therapy
There are millions of cocaine users in America.
There aren’t jail cells for all of them either.
But criminalizing cocaine use certainly prevents most of us from buying coke every weekend, right?
Now imagine they WANTED us all on coke, and legalized it, as long as you bought it from one of their “corporate partners”.
The good stuff too – not cut with drain cleaner.
Under such terms, even avid coke users might dump their dealers and head to Walmart, right?
And that’s before a nationwide corporate media campaign with wall-to-wall scare stories about how every penny given to a drug dealer is funding terrorism and child sex trafficking.
And the rest of us might be tempted to give coke a whirl.
Especially once told that everyone was going to be entitled to free coke.
It’s not fear and cowardice Tom – it’s just wargaming.
Fear is whistling past the graveyard.
I’ve warned you Ivor. I’m not interested anymore. You write more on my blog than I do and feel you no longer have anything to contribute beyond your own ego.
Bye. I will no longer be approving your posts because this is no longer a constructive use of my time or anyone else’s.
It’s that simple. You’ve had your say and you don’t know when to shut up. So I will shut you up here. Go start your own blog and outcompete me.
To be finally clear. This is about the amount of time I have to spend dealing with your bullshit which I have neither the time nor the inclination to subsidize anymore.
You are using my platform to give your ideas broader scope without doing the hard work yourself and I will subsidize that no longer.
You clearly have a lot to say, so go say it somewhere else. I have no problem with contradiction. I have to make a judgment call on my time. This isn’t a free speech zone. It’s my home and you have worn out your welcome by hogging the microphone.
It just takes one of these events to quiet the population…
On May 20, the State Council declared martial law. They mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing.[13] The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city’s major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of June 4, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.[17] Wikipedia Tiananmen Square 1989
Tom is threatened by Ivor? You are pathetic Tom. Go rub your vagina.
Not threatened dude, exasperated and tired of arguing with an arrogant brick wall. That simple.
I have better things to do with my time… root canal comes to mind.
All assets are under attack at this point in time…now it is unrealized gains….
So to punish investors, held appreciated assets will be taxed…..but no word about the reverse case, depreciated assets….
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-democrat-unveils-billionaires-tax-biden-agenda-2021-10-27/
…Wyden and other lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, say the legislation is intended to curtail tax avoidance by corporations and the wealthy and could generate hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation, which is expected to cost between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion……
Purely a numbers game. At this point, supposedly only a small number of individuals are affected, but wait until they drop the bar and include home appreciation. Too many people do not understand math and accounting or care. Or maybe not enough homeowners to tip the scale…. This is not a money raising scheme, but a divide and conquer strategy.
Would holding BTC or any private crypto be a method to skirt this tax on unrealized gain?
In Loving Memory of Ivor
Tom, this is an excellent piece. I agree with virtually everything you say here, especially regarding gold ETFs, whose prospectuses I have spent far too much time parsing for quite a few years. (For the portion of my gold holdings that are not (or can’t be) in physical, I finally settled on OUNZ, which actually has a delivery mechanism the retail investor can use.)
After reading through ALL these comments, I still can’t see any way that governments can totally ban or outlaw cryptos. It seems to me that at best, they can lock up the on-ramps and off-ramps between crypto and so-called “legal tender.”
Government can force the use of a preferred currency by designating it “legal tender”, but ultimately, “money” is whatever consenting buyers and sellers agree on. If people lack viable alternatives (as in “the dollar blows up” etc.) they will migrate in private transactions to alternatives like crypto. (I admit that the smooth functioning of transactions we have all become accustomed to will suffer greatly in any such “brave new world”.)
And since crypto is anonymous, how can anyone stop it? (If you delve into that FBI story mentioned above a little further, you will find that it is advertised as much more significant than it really is.)
The government can shut off “investment” in crypto by closing crypto exchanges. But once it becomes like “cash”, it would no longer be an investment in the usual sense anyway.
Au contraire, Willem….the vaccine passports will evolve into a worldwide digital id, the presentation of which will be required for matriculation in society. And, btw, the vaccine passport app industry is a multi-billion business and growing…follow the money…
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/whats-really-stake-vaccine-passports/
Yes indeed, that is the intention. But commerce will always find a way, and willing buyers and sellers will continue to trade using whatever medium they see fit.
The human link in security is always the weakest….new crypto hack….
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hacker-stole-more-55-million-101015336.html
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