These are fraught times for the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector, so it isn’t surprising that industry proponents might seize upon any promising news to help charge flagging markets. A Reuters report out of Uganda last week about a massive gold ore discovery supplied just this kind of fuel. What does the state of gold mining in Africa have to do with the price of global Bitcoin (BTC)? Quite a bit, potentially. Bitcoin has periodically laid claim to being digital gold largely on the strength of its strict 21 million supply limit, which makes it non-inflationary and a good store of value — in theory. Gold, of course, is the store of value par excellence, with a limited supply and a solid track record that goes back millennia. But, if Uganda is sitting on 31 million metric tons of gold ore, as the government declared, might not that substantially boost the world’s gold supply? That in turn could lower the price of gold — and make it a less secure “store of value” generally. Gold’s loss could be the cryptocurrency’s gain. Some drew encouragement from this notion. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, for instance, posted a video on Twitter about the Ugandan discovery of “huge gold deposits” which might net 320,158 metric tons of refined gold “valued at $12.8 trillion.” As Saylor noted on June 17: “#Gold is plentiful. #Bitcoin is scarce," further telling CNBC: “Every commodity in the world has looked good in a hyperinflationary environment, but the dirty secret is you can make more oil, you can make more silver, you can make more gold. […] Bitcoin’s the only thing that looks like a commodity that is scarce and capped.” But, perhaps there is less here than meets the eye. The 320,158 metric tons of refined gold that the Ugandan mining ministry spokesman said could be produced from the new deposits in the country’s north-eastern corner would far exceed the 200,000 metric tons in above-ground gold that exist in the entire world today. One gold mining trade publication went so far as to suggest the Ugandan government may have been confusing metric tons with ounces in its projections.
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Elon Musk was sued for $258bn on Thursday by a Dogecoin investor who accused him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency. In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, plaintiff Keith Johnson accused Musk, electric car company Tesla Inc and space tourism company SpaceX of racketeering for touting Dogecoin and driving up its price, only to then let the price tumble.
“Defendants were aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value yet promoted Dogecoin to profit from its trading,” the complaint said. “Musk used his pedestal as World’s Richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for profit, exposure and amusement.” The complaint also aggregates comments from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others questioning the value of cryptocurrency. Tesla, SpaceX, and a lawyer for Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on what specific evidence his client has or expects to have that proves Dogecoin is worthless and the defendants ran a pyramid scheme. Johnson is seeking damages worth triple the $86bn decline in Dogecoin’s market value since May 2021. He also wants to block Musk and his companies from promoting Dogecoin and a judge to declare that trading Dogecoin is gambling under federal and New York law. The complaint said Dogecoin’s selloff began around the time Musk hosted the NBC show “Saturday Night Live and, playing a fictitious financial expert on a Weekend Update segment, called Dogecoin “a hustle”. Tesla in February 2021 said it had bought $1.5bn of Bitcoin and for a short time accepted it as payment for vehicles. Dogecoin traded at about 5.8 cents on Thursday, down from its May 2021 peak of about 74 cents. Bitcoin fell sharply on Monday, as the sell-off across cryptocurrencies showed no sign of abating and US firm Celsius Network froze withdrawals. The cryptocurrency lending platform, which has around 1.7m customers, also froze swap and transfers between accounts, blaming “extreme conditions market conditions". In a blogpost, it said: “We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honour, over time, its withdrawal obligations. “We’re taking this necessary action for the benefit of our entire community in order to stabilise liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets. “There is a lot of work ahead as we consider various options, this process will take time, and there may be delays.”
Shortly afterwards, cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted the withdrawal of bitcoins. The company insisted customer funds were safe, and blamed the move on a backlog in the company’s systems. As at 1430 BST, bitcoin had lost 12% and was trading at its lowest levels since the end of 2020, tumbling below $24,000 to reach $23,375.9. Ethereum, the second largest token after bitcoin, was 16% lower, at $1,205.15. The value of the digital asset market has now fallen below $1trn to touch a low of $940bn. Like traditional assets, cryptocurrencies have become vulnerable to the weakening global economic outlook alongside concerns about the market's stability. The sell-off then ramped up on Friday, following weaker-than-expected inflation numbers in the US, and after ethereum’s developers announced that a long-awaited transition to version 2.0 had been postponed. Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at GlobalBlock, said: “Despite the fear, uncertainty and doubt the Celsius debacle has caused, the sell-off started at the beginning of the weekend after US inflation data was released. “I think this is a bigger contributor to the decline, as its results in a more hawkish Federal Reserve. It is now forced to remove more liquidity from the market, to bring down inflation. When liquidity is removed, risk-on asets are hit the hardest, which includes crypto.” Walid Koudmani, chief market analyst at xtb, said: “Almost all altcoins are wiping out gains made in 2020 as sentiment around cryptocurrencies was worsened on Friday by alarming data from the US economy. “It is not very surprising to see such a strong downturn as we have noticed an increased correlation over the last few years between traditional stocks, which have also tanked recently, and the cryptocurrency market.”
Like anything in the central bank gold world, there is no transparency into the claimed gold of any of these central banks nor any independent physical audits of the gold bars they claim to hold, so when talking about relative rankings, we will just have to go with the figures of the IMF / World Gold Council. Just Outside Lisbon The Banco de Portugal maintains that just over 45% of its total gold reserves, or 127.6 tonnes (5,549,238 ozs), is held in the form of gold bars in its vault in Carregado, and it was these gold bars which the Portuguese reporters and photographers were briefly shown in what the Reuters report about the visit called a ‘Rare Glimpse'. But apart from Reuters, a whole host of Portuguese media seemed to be present for the tour of the vault, judging by the extensive coverage this gold vault ‘tour’ received in the Portuguese media. So it is these reports of the Portuguese media which we turn to get more details about the Carregado vault and what the media saw. And since there were photographers present, quite a few photographs of the gold were taken, a selection of which are included below. The Banco de Portugal’s Carregado Complex is a 67,000 square metre compound in an industrial part of the town which is surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, and which is guarded by machine gun toting members of Portugal’s National Republican Guard, and their four-legged friends, German Shepherds. As well as the gold vault, this Carregado Complex, built in 1995, is where the Portuguese central bank prints Euro banknotes, so there are said to be more than 200 bank employees working in this operational centre.
Apart from the 172.6 tonnes (45%) of Portuguese gold in the Carregado vault near Lisbon, the Banco de Portugal maintains that another 186.4 tonnes (48.7%) of its gold is stored in the Bank of England in London, with an additional 20 tonnes (5.2%) stored with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and the remaining 3.7% tonnes (1%) now stored at the Banque de France in Paris after having been moved in 2021 from the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). So overall, the split is 45% of Portugal’s gold is supposedly stored in Portugal, with the remaining 55% stored abroad. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value, dropped below $33,000 during Monday trading, according to data from cryptocurrency news portal CoinDesk, losing half of its value since its peak six months ago. At 10:55 GMT, it was down nearly 5.5%, trading at $32,800, the lowest level since last July. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $68,990 in November. The dip comes as part of a wider crypto market collapse, which has wiped out almost $300 billion from the value of cryptocurrencies over the last four days. The second-largest coin, Ethereum, is down by 13% since last week, Solana – by more than 16%, and Terra (LUNA) – by more than 25%.
Panic over soaring consumer prices and fears over the impact the crisis in Ukraine will have on the world economy have been named as reasons behind the crypto market crash, which is accompanied by a wider drop in stock markets around the world. Last week, central banks in the US, UK, and other nations raised interest rates in an attempt to curb inflation, which has been rising at the fastest pace in decades, leading to warnings of recession. Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund with $150 billion in assets, is planning to invest in crypto assets for the first time, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday, citing its sources. Two insiders told the media that Ray Dalio’s company is considering backing an external vehicle that is linked to the price of Bitcoin, while another source said Bridgewater Associates has no current intention of directly investing in crypto assets. Bitcoin broke through the $42,000 mark on the news, with the price of the top digital currency surging over 4% to $42,864 as of 12:22 GMT on Tuesday.
A Bridgewater spokesperson told CoinDesk in February the firm “continues to actively research crypto but is not currently planning on investing in crypto.” The statement came despite four people saying the hedge fund giant was due to enter the space by mid-2022. The White House will unveil a comprehensive set of regulations targeting cryptocurrency on Wednesday, President Joe Biden has revealed. The president called it “the first ever whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying technology.” Among other measures, the order includes a 180-day deadline for several reports on “the future of money” – presumably referring to digital currencies like the one his administration has asked the Fed to step up its research and development of. For now, around 100 other countries are also working on so-called central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
There is “significant momentum” behind the idea of a CBDC, which is essentially a cryptocurrency without the privacy implied by the term “crypto,” controlled by (and accessible by) the Fed, according to a source who spoke to Reuters about the matter earlier this week before the White House’s statement was made public. The language used in the announcement – which carefully avoids discussing ‘cryptocurrencies’ as such, preferring the vaguer blanket term “digital assets” – is unlikely to have any immediate effect on how crypto is regulated in the US, the administration claims. Instead, the order directs agencies like the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to “assess risks and opportunities involved in cryptocurrency use” and issue regulations from there. The administration hopes to have all government agencies on the same page regarding how they handle crypto and other digital assets both legal and otherwise. The aim of the new policy, Biden’s office said, is to keep the US in the centre of both technology and the global financial system. The US’ dollar hegemony has wobbled in recent years as the national debt and inflation skyrocket and other countries worry about being tied to an ever-shrinking ‘reserve currency’ whose orbit they can’t leave. As the price of gas soars due to sanctions on Russian energy imports, the petrodollar alliance that has held since the US left the gold standard in the 1970s appears more fragile than ever. Virtual chain restaurant provider Rocket Kitchens has unveiled the first Dogecoin-inspired cryptocurrency burger joint in Dubai. The restaurant named Doge Burger will also allow payments through Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, CRO, XRP, USDT, and Shiba Inu, local outlet Time Out Dubai reports. On the menu, the restaurant will offer a beef burger, chicken burger, mushroom Swiss burger, a char cheese, and garden burger alongside hot dogs. Customers can place orders through the restaurant’s website, where the cost of the burgers will range from Dhs35 to Dhs50. According to the founders, the initial capital used to open the restaurant is from profits emanating from early Dogecoin investments. The restaurant seeks to capitalize on the growing shift towards cryptocurrency payments across the United Arab Emirates. Notably, businesses have been accepting crypto payments in UAE as early as 2014, and more operators have been setting up shop in the region, launching various crypto-related products.
DOGE records more adoption The launch of Doge Burger highlights the impact of DOGE’s meteoric rise in value over the past year. Although the token was criticized for lacking utility, DOGE as a payment mode is likely to drive more adoption. As reported by Finbold, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO and crypto proponent Elon Musk revealed the electric vehicle manufacturer will start accepting DOGE payments for its merchandise. Notably, Musk has stated that DOGE has better qualities than Bitcoin. Following the rise in value witnessed in 2021, most countries are warming up to DOGE, mainly inspired by the prospects of embarking on another bull run in the near future. In this line, the United States emerged as the most pro-Dogecoin nation globally as of 2021, with 31.6% of cryptocurrency owners in the U.S. holding the meme cryptocurrency. Australia emerged second at 29%, followed by Norway at 27.4%. DOGE’s price By press time, DOGE was trading at $0.13, dropping by almost 10% over the last seven days. The tokens have experienced widespread market volatility that has accelerated in 2022. Despite the correction, DOGE continues to attract interest within the crypto community, with investors looking for the token’s next all-time high. Following developments like increased utilization as a payment option, DOGE might hit the $0.5 mark by the end of 2022. According to a report published by German cryptocurrency media outlet BTC-ECHO, the European Parliament, one of the legislative branches of the European Union, has moved to ban Bitcoin and other proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies. The final draft of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, the much-anticipated package of cryptocurrency regulations, includes a provision forbidding the “environmentally unsustainable” consensus mechanism. This means that Bitcoin could become illegal within the European Union starting from Jan. 1, 2025. Businesses would be prohibited from offering any services associated with proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.
Stefan Berger, the center-right rapporteur behind the framework, told the outlet that the proposal was “very likely” to be greenlit. It was pushed by centre-left Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party. Some Christian Democrats and right-wing conservatives opposed the addition of the Bitcoin ban, but it was a deal-breaker for the parties that supported cracking down on proof-of-work. The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, will be engaging in a trialogue with the member states and the Parliament before reaching a final decision later this year. Patrick Hansen, head of growth and strategy at decentralized finance start-up Unstoppable Finance, described the proposal as “suicidal,” predicting that it would kill the entire crypto industry in the EU. The government and central bank in Russia have reached an agreement on how to regulate cryptocurrencies, according to a Tuesday announcement. Russia’s government and central bank are now working on a draft law that will define crypto as an “analogue of currencies” rather than digital financial assets set to be launched on Feb. 18. Cryptocurrencies would function in the legal industry only if they have complete identification through the banking system or licensed intermediaries.
Kommersant noted that Bitcoin (BTC) transactions and possession of cryptocurrency in the Russian Federation are not prohibited; however, they must be done through a “digital currency exchange organizer” (a bank) or a peer-to-peer exchange licensed in the country. The report also highlights that cryptocurrency transactions of more than 600,000 rubles (roughly $8,000) would have to be declared; otherwise, it could be considered a criminal act. Those who illegally accept cryptocurrencies as payment will incur fines. This news comes after months of speculation about how the Russian government will handle digital currencies. While it is still unclear what this decision will mean for businesses and citizens in Russia, it seems that the country is slowly warming up to the idea of cryptocurrencies. In January, the Bank of Russia called for a nationwide crypto ban in a report that warned about the speculative nature of the industry. The bank also stated that financial firms should not facilitate crypto transactions as part of that proposal to ban digital assets. However, the proposal generated opposition from the Russian Ministry of Finance. A few days after the central bank’s call for a ban, Ivan Chebeskov, a ministry official, said that the government should regulate crypto rather than prohibiting it entirely. He warned that a total ban might result in Russia falling behind in technology. Reports have also emerged that President Vladimir Putin supports efforts to regulate the country’s crypto mining sector. "Bitcoin’s recent over 25% plunge illustrates why it will never be a true currency"
Nowadays, of course, no one would think of shelling out Bitcoin for something as mundane as a pizza without thinking first about how much money they might be giving up in the future. In the years since Hanyecz’s splurge, Bitcoin has gone from being an interesting experiment in decentralized finance to being the best-performing asset of the decade, rising more than 10,000,000% since 2010 and jumping 220% last year alone. There’s a Bitcoin ticker on every finance website. Legendary investors like Paul Tudor-Jones, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Bill Miller speak approvingly of its prospects, and companies like Square and MicroStrategy have invested their corporate cash into Bitcoin. Despite being extraordinarily risky and volatile — as evidenced by the 25% drop it took between last Friday and Monday afternoon — Bitcoin has, in some sense, been admitted to the club and is now seen by many as a plausible competitor to assets like gold. But along the way, something odd happened: Bitcoin completely lost its original reason for being. Bitcoin was, after all, not designed to be a speculative asset. It was designed to be a currency, a new medium of exchange that people could, and would, use to transact daily business with each other. (That’s why we call it a cryptocurrency.) When Bitcoin was first introduced to the world in 2008 in a white paper, its mysterious creator, who dubbed himself Satoshi Nakamoto, described it as “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [which] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” He billed Bitcoin as “an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party,” like a bank or credit card company. And that’s exactly what Hanyecz was doing on that day in 2010: sending an electronic payment directly from himself to another person without any third party being involved. He may have unknowingly made a terrible investment decision, but he was using Bitcoin exactly as it had been designed to be used. It’s easy to forget now, but Bitcoin’s promise in those early days was that it would be a new currency, one that could challenge the hegemony of so-called fiat currencies like the dollar (which are issued by governments) by being untraceable money that would allow people to conduct business cheaply and anonymously. And because Bitcoin was designed to have a fixed number of coins — it will have 21 million coins by 2140, and then no more — people could use it without worrying about inflation debasing its value. It was a kind of cyberpunk fantasy that enchanted many. As recently as 2018, Twitter CEO and Square founder Jack Dorsey said, “The world will ultimately have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be Bitcoin.” Even today, you can still find pundits who trumpet Bitcoin’s revolutionary possibilities and point to things like PayPal’s plan to offer its merchants the ability to transact in cryptocurrencies in 2021 as evidence that radical change is afoot.
Most Bitcoin transactions have been trades: people simply buying and selling it. The blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, for instance, found that in the first four months of 2019, just 1.3% of total transactions involved merchants. And that trend has only accelerated as the value of Bitcoin has soared. Strikingly, despite the speculative fervour that has surrounded Bitcoin, the total number of transactions has risen only mildly over the past two years. And that number is so small relative to the total number of electronic bank and credit card transactions as to be barely worth mentioning. On average, there are now around 325,000 Bitcoin transactions — including trades — per day. There are roughly a billion credit card transactions per day.
Some of the failure of Bitcoin to live up to its promise as a currency has to do with practical problems with the way it works, most obviously the fact that Bitcoin’s design makes it very slow at processing transactions. For instance, Visa processes approximately 6,000 transactions a second and has the capacity to do many times that. Bitcoin can do seven. So Bitcoin transactions often take a long time to complete, which doesn’t work so well if you’re trying to use Bitcoin at the local convenience store or even buying something online. Bitcoin’s transaction fees have also, at different points, been shockingly high. During the last Bitcoin boom, in 2017, fees reached as high as $55 per transaction, and while they’ve come down sharply since then, as recently as last May it cost more than $6 to buy something with Bitcoin. That’s not a problem if you’re making an investment, but it’s a big obstacle if you want to buy a pizza. The more fundamental problem for Bitcoin as a currency, though, has to do with the very thing lots of people like about it—namely that the supply of Bitcoin is controlled and limited. Because the supply is limited, when demand for Bitcoin rises (because, say, people are convinced they can get rich quick by buying it), then the value of Bitcoin is going to rise as well. So, if you believe your Bitcoin is going to become more popular, then it’s foolish to spend it on a pizza: You should hoard it and then sell it once its price rises. And since you can get along perfectly well without spending Bitcoin, there’s never been anything pushing people to stop hoarding. The more people hoard Bitcoin, treating it as a speculative asset, the less appealing it seems as a currency. On top of this, the extraordinary volatility of Bitcoin’s price — which, as we’ve seen in the past week, can fall 10% to 20% overnight — discourages businesses and individuals from accepting Bitcoin in exchange for real goods and services, since few people want to get paid today with something that might be 10% less valuable tomorrow. (Of course, it might also be 10% more valuable. But that kind of gamble isn’t one most businesses are interested in making.) Bitcoin’s transformation from putative currency to speculative asset, in other words, was effectively built into the system from the start. It’s where Bitcoin was headed all along. (Cryptocurrencies have emerged in Bitcoin’s wake that are better designed to function as currencies, but paradoxically they’re nowhere near as popular as Bitcoin.) Even though it may have been designed as a payment system and a medium of exchange, Bitcoin’s real appeal was, inevitably, going to be as what economists call a “store of value,” a kind of digital analogue to gold. Like gold, Bitcoin is valuable to the extent that people think it’s valuable: You buy it because you think someone else will pay more for it in the future. And like gold, its value can’t be inflated away by a central bank. The fact that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value (the way a stock or bond does) doesn’t mean it’s headed to zero. It just means that Bitcoin has become totally untethered from its original purpose. What was supposed to be a way to revolutionize people’s everyday financial lives is now mostly a way for people to get rich quick (or lose their shirts) or, in an ideal scenario, for people to protect their wealth against inflation. Bitcoin began as a cryptocurrency. It has ended as a cryptoasset. The Bank of Russia proposed slapping a ban on mining, issuing, circulating, and exchanging cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, by any Russian players, crypto exchanges, crypto exchanges, and P2P platforms in Russia. The regulator agrees only to allow citizens to own cryptocurrency, but not to buy it from any Russian infrastructure. Experts told Vedomosti that a complete ban on operations with cryptocurrencies is not the best option to deal with any possible problems. The Bank of Russia wants to ban all financial institutions, banks or, for example, brokers from being intermediaries and providing their infrastructure for carrying out any operations with cryptocurrency. Financial institutions will not be able to invest in cryptocurrencies. The regulator believes that not only does direct ownership of cryptocurrencies but also investing in its derivative financial instruments hold risks. Tight regulation will only apply to cryptocurrencies, but not assets such as NFTs. The regulator proposed introducing fines for all these violations. So far, there are no specifics in the report of the Bank of Russia for public consultations.
The ban on cryptocurrencies in Russia means lost profits for the country's budget, CEO of ANO Digital Platforms Arseniy Shcheltsin told the newspaper. In addition, it would limit the development of Russian projects in this area and provide a signal to developers and professional users not to conduct business related to cryptocurrencies in Russia. The prohibition would not be appropriate either for investors or for the state, attorney at Criminal Defense Firm Daniil Gorky says. Imposing bans can lead to investors losing their crypto-currency assets, while Russia already today ranks third in the world in terms of cryptocurrency mining. KPMG Law Partner Olga Yasko believes that the risks named by the Bank of Russia are real, but it would be more effective to manage them through control mechanisms. The annual volume of operations involving cryptocurrency among Russians, according to the Central Bank, reaches around $5 bln, thereby demonstrating that Russians are one of the most active players on this market. Christmas is over! The countdown has begun! And with it the days of reflection, looking back and looking ahead. That is exactly what we do every day. Likewise today; what has the Bitcoin price done in recent days and what does that say about the (near) future? We use the charts in which each candle represents one hour, then 1 day and then one week. Prices are in dollars. Rising line The downward trend that had started a long time ago has broken up on 21 December. See blue circle. It did not cause general euphoria, but slowly the higher regions were sought out again. The rising grey trend line seemed to act as support, but that support turned out to be too weak on the 26th. As a ceiling, it has been looked up twice, but from last night at 7:00 PM the line was turned back.
Grey area If we look at a slightly longer term, on the daily chart, we see that the price is moving within a certain grey area, the upside of which has recently been tested. If there is no further decline from this point, and the middle line (USD 48,600 limit / EUR 42,900) is thus respected, this is a sign that the upward direction can be maintained and that trading at a slightly higher level.
Solid floor
On the weekly chart, we see the same grey area that the price is now in. The horizontal line is also visible, which (as described above) clearly shows that it has been honoured for a long time (from the beginning of this year). We also see a Moving Average, but now one that uses the past 50 candles as an average (blue line). This blue line also coincides with the horizontal line on the daily chart. Again a signal to take into account a solid floor. Flywheel A solid floor sounds nice, but it doesn't mean that the price will go up. In recent times, outbreaks upwards have been rather weak. A truly bullish sentiment should be triggered by breaking news. First, the $50,000 limit (EUR 44,100) can be claimed and then, to get out of the grey area, the $52,000 limit (EUR 45,900). That could act as a flywheel, triggering an increasingly bullish sentiment. If that doesn't happen, there's a good chance of sideways movement within this zone, with the danger that if the $48,600 floor is broken, it could quickly go downhill. With the first limit at the bottom of 45,500 (40,100 euros) and the second limit 42,000 dollars (37,000 euros). In today's editorial I'm going to show how the implementation of CBDCs, which stands for Central Bank Digital Currencies, and how they are going to change the World of money, banking and the way we live - forever.
With the most disturbing thing being the amount of control it will create over your life via the implementation of carbon & social credit scores which have already been successfully trialled. In effect, the Government will own you and tell you exactly how, when and what you will spend your money on. And no, I’m not scaremongering or exaggerating here, this is coming and it's already started. A CBDC would be implemented using a database run by the central bank & government, notice I didn't mention any banks here. Why? Because a CBDC will cause the end of the modern day banking sector. Because the Central Bank will make transactions with you directly making it possible for a central bank to keep track of every single transaction you make. Commercial banks still have control right now creating competition around lending. But with a CBDC they want to use something different than credit scores because they will ban diversity unfriendly credit scores in favour of credit scores. Need a mortgage? Let me just check your social credit score here… Socialism, at the click of a button: They can simply give money to some people, take money from others. Imagine you or your family worked and saved for decades and the Central Bank just pressed a button and sent your life savings to the poorest in society because they decided that they needed to redistribute the wealth. They don't see it as theft because it's the law and for the greater good Never again will you be able to withdraw cash from the bank because it won’t exist anymore, with cash you're in control but with a CBDC you have no control You have to just trust the government that your money is actually there Spend it or lose it! They want to create a world of spenders and get rid of savers. In China, the CBDC was programmed with an expiration date, which encouraged spending and discouraged money from sitting in a savings account. In the end, 90% of the vouchers were spent in the allotted time the Government wanted. Why do Governments want this? This is due to the velocity of money principle where the government earns taxes every time the money is spent. So what are the stages you need to look out for then? NOW - Stage 1: Stage one has already been achieved by issuing free stimulus and this worked well because very few people saved the money & instead they spent it, creating more velocity of money & inflation. The inflation was good for the Government because it inflated away the government debt at the expense of our household budgets becoming more expensive. 2-3 yrs - Stage 2: Is to issue welfare payments or UBI via a digital wallet. This hasn't officially started yet in the US, but some other countries have now adopted this method of payment delivery. 1-4 yrs - Stage 3: Incentive for the public to download the government digital wallet and get some free CBDC like they did in China, because who’s going to turn down free money? 1-7 yrs - Stage 4: Nationwide rollout of CBDC. With all employees now being paid not into their bank accounts but into their digital wallets. Employers will be mandated to do this and employees will be penalized for not using the digital wallets. At this point, dirty virus spreading cash will be phased out and no longer printed anymore. Any cash that makes its way back to the bank will be destroyed and converted into CBDC 20+ yrs -Stage 5: ONE CBDC to rule them all. If you’ve ever studied financial history, you'll know that there used to be tens of thousands of different currencies around the world, now there are just 180 left It has just come to light that Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), added 26.35 tonnes of gold to its official monetary gold reserves over a 2 month period between May and June this year, in the process boosting its strategic gold holdings by 20% to a claimed 153.76 tonnes. This addition to the monetary gold holdings of the Monetary Authority of Singapore was first pointed out by the World Gold Council’s Krishan Gopaul in a 25 November tweet, following an update to Singapore’s gold holdings appearing in the IMF’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) database, a source which World Gold Council uses to keep track of central bank and sovereign gold holdings. While it’s unclear why changes to Singapore’s monetary gold holdings from May and June only made it on to the IFS database in recent days, looking more closely, the Monetary Authority of Singapore did ‘reflect’ the May and June gold purchases at the end of July and August, respectively, via updates to the MAS’ monthly “International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity” report, but did not announce or mention the additions specifically.
Before looking at how this substantial gold purchase by Singapore went unnoticed, here are the raw numbers from the MAS site itself. Up until the end of April 2021, Singapore’s central bank (MAS) had been reporting total gold holdings of 4,096,439 fine troy ounces, or 127.42 tonnes, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (which is as far back as World Gold Council records go). During May 2021, MAS reports that it added 527,201 ozs (16.4 tonnes) of gold, taking it’s gold holdings as of end of May to 4,623,640 ozs (143.81 tonnes). During June 2021, MAS reports that it added a further 319,801 ozs (9.95 tonnes) of gold, which increased MAS’ gold holdings as of end of June to 4,943,441 ozs (153.76 tonnes). This means that over the two months May and June 2021 inclusive, MAS purchased 847,002 fine troy ounces of gold (26.35 tonnes), and in doing so increased it’s gold holdings by 20.67%, and at the same time rising from 30th to 28th place in the world gold holding rankings. Quietly and Discreetly Each month, the World Gold Council (WGC) updates it’s World Official Gold Holdings spreadsheet (xls) in which it ranks sovereign gold holders largest to smallest based on how many tonnes of monetary gold each country holds. Looking at the latest version of this report (November), it lists Singapore in 30th position with 127.4 tonnes ‘as of August 2021’, and this spreadsheet has not yet been updated (at time of writing) to reflect the 26 tonnes of gold purchased by Singapore in May and June. The WGC ranking methodology states that: “This table was updated in November 2021 and reports data available at that time. Data are taken from the International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics (IFS), November 2021 edition, and other sources where applicable. IFS data are two months in arrears, so holdings are as of September 2021 for most countries, August 2021 or earlier for late reporters”. IMF IFS data will only get updated if and when an individual country informs the IMF of a change to that country’s gold holdings. It appears then that the World Gold Council’s data for Singapore’s gold holdings is based exclusively on the IMF IFS data, and that this IFS data has for some reason only in recent days been updated to reflect Singapore’s gold purchases, which means that for some reason Singapore has only very recently informed the IMF of it’s May-June gold buying. For verification, I ran a data query in the IMF IFS database for search criteria Singapore, for each month of 2021, with the data indicator of “International Reserves and Liquidity, Reserves, Official Reserve Assets, Gold (Including Gold Deposits and, If Appropriate, Gold Swapped), Volume in Millions of Fine Troy Ounces, Fine Troy Ounces”. |
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