"This is a demonstration of the alpha version of my Bitcoin Hardware Wallet, code-named the Bitcoin Titan. All of the necessary features are implemented and working correctly. The software is undergoing final polish and testing. The first board spin is underway. Obviously, excuse the crude graphics and wonky font; those will be cleaned up during the polishing." Continue reading →
"When it was launched four years ago, few people took it seriously, but now the use of Bitcoin, the virtual payment system, is gaining ground. A growing number of businesses are accepting the digital currency as an alternative to cash. Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer reports from Berlin." Continue reading →
"'Normal' is what you get when you don't experiment. So, how can you get to 'normal' from a 'Great Experiment?' We will leave that for the philosophers of tomorrow. Today, we'll merely suggest that maybe this economy isn't so normal. What's normal about an economy where the major financial institutions can borrow money at zero real cost? What's normal about an economy in which people who have run their businesses so recklessly that they had to be bailed out by the government are still running their businesses...and can now borrow at lower rates than good businesses?" Continue reading →
"Growth jumped to a 3.5pc rate in the first quarter, vindicating the government’s efforts to break Japan’s deflation psychology and lift the country out of its 20-year ice age. 'Abe’s kickstart appears to have succeeded,' said Flemming Nielsen from Danske Bank. Retail sales are soaring as a 'wealth shock' electrifies the economy. The Nikkei index has risen has 70pc since November, with foreign hedge funds among the first to jump on the bandwagon. The weaker yen is already delivering a powerful punch, accounting for almost half the growth. The currency has dropped 30pc against the dollar and China’s yuan since August, and 37pc against the euro." Continue reading →
"The Dow Jones Industrial average closed Tuesday at a new all-time high with a triple-digit surge of 123 points. And it’s fitting that the Dow hit a new high of 15,215 on a Tuesday because it’s the 18th straight Tuesday that the industrials have finished the day higher than where they began. This 18 for 18 streak started all the way back on January 15. The Dow since then is up more than 1700 points. And according to the statistical gurus at Bespoke Investment Group over 1400 of the 1700 plus points gained since then on the Dow have come on, you guessed it, Tuesday. That’s 83 percent of all the gains in stocks since then coming on this one day of the week." Continue reading →
"St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard recently laid out four criteria that a bank needs to be split up — namely, if its assets are too voluminous, if it's too leveraged, if it has too much short-term funding of longer term assets and if it creates too much systemic risk. Alex Pollock said of the Fed: It's too big, with over $3.3 trillion in assets, it's too leveraged at 60 to 1, it's extremely short-funded and it's 'a frequent contributor through its interest rate and money-printing action of gigantic systemic risk.' 'Therefore, it follows pretty clearly from the same logic that we should break up the Fed,' said Pollock, a former bank CEO." Continue reading →
"My explanation that the sudden appearance of an unprecedented 400 ton short sale of gold on the COMEX in April was a manipulation designed to protect the dollar from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy has found acceptance among gold investors and hedge fund managers. The sale was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery. No one but the Federal Reserve could have placed such an order, and the order came from one of the Fed’s bullion banks, one of the entities 'too big to fail.'" Continue reading →
"The US is moving to broaden its 'blockade' efforts of Iran to the movement of pure gold into the Islamic Republic. The US-led embargo of Iranian crude succeeded in slowing the flow of petrodollars into the nation but as Foreign Affairs committee chairman Edward Cohen remarked, there is 'no question that there is gold going from Turkey to Iran.' While the official line from US elite such as Bernanke remains that 'gold is not money' it appears that increasingly other nations would disagree, as Cohen admitted, 'in large measure what we're seeing is private Iranian citizens buying gold as a protection against the falling value of Iran's currency.'" Continue reading →
"China's demand for gold jumped 20% to 294 tonnes in the first quarter of 2013, while global gold demand overall slid 13% thanks to the dramatic rotation of demand from paper to physical. Central banks added 109.2 tonnes of gold to their reserves in Q1 2013, the ninth consecutive quarter of net purchases. But it was the Q1 ETF outflows of 176.9 tonnes, equating to a 7% decline in total gold ETF holdings that obscured the strong rise in investment for gold bars and coins at the retail level. In the face of the huge 'paper' gold ETF outflows, 'physical' gold demand surged to its highest in 18 months." Continue reading →
"Today’s gold market is being defined by two trends: aggressive selling by investors in North America through exchange-traded funds, and aggressive buying by consumers in Asia. But for now, the ETF investors are overwhelming everyone else. Gold prices settled below US$1,390 an ounce on Thursday, and after five rough trading days in a row, they are approaching the lows that were reached during last month’s dramatic collapse. Chinese gold imports have been going through the roof. Data released last week showed that China imported 223.5 tonnes (or 7.9 million ounces) from Hong Kong in March, crushing the previous monthly record." Continue reading →