It was a record-breaking day for silver last Friday, with prices increasing a staggering 5.6% to reach $56.37 by the weekly close, surpassing the previous all-time high established back in October. The white metal climbed even higher this morning, coming within touching distance of $58 per ounce early in the Asian session. It is hard to believe without looking at the charts, but silver has almost doubled since the start of the year. Precious metals in general had a whale of a time on Friday, with gold, platinum, palladium, and even copper putting in strong performances. While speculation has certainly done its part to raise the tide for precious metals, silver prices have enjoyed the additional quirk of being subject to supply concerns. The previous record high coincided with a supply shock in the London vaults, while the current push is happening alongside a drought in Chinese warehouses. Beyond the obvious supply problems, silver is also facing the possibility of being affected by tariffs, after the US Geological Survey listed the metal as a critical mineral last month. As if that were not enough, a perfect storm emerged last Friday when a data centre supporting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) suffered a disastrous ten-hour outage due to overheating. The exchange handles everything from stock indices to currencies, bonds, oil futures, interest rates, and of course, precious metals. The disruption affected markets worldwide and left brokers without up-to-date quotes. Prices across many assets remained frozen for several hours, leading to temporarily illiquid market conditions, which were already on the thinner side due to reduced Thanksgiving trading hours. While the exact cause of the data centre failure remains unclear, the CME is now once again fully operational and trading has resumed as normal. The euphoria in silver is in sharp contrast to the despair in cryptocurrencies. Only a few hours into the week and Bitcoin is already 5% in the red, with prices plummeting to $85,000 as of this morning. The rest of the crypto market is faring as one would expect. A poor October led to an atrocious November, which has now opened the door to a dreadful start to December. The move was caused by a large wave of liquidations, with long positions worth over half a billion dollars being wiped out over the past 24 hours. Rough times. Jerome Powell is set to speak late tonight, in what will be the Federal Reserve Chairman’s final comments before the December 10th meeting. Interest rate traders are now looking at an 87% chance of a rate cut next week, at least according to FedWatch. Although Powell’s tenure will not end until May, President Trump has apparently already decided on his replacement, although the decision has not yet been made public. A number of data points will help steer the Fed this week; the first on Wednesday, in the form of the latest ADP employment change; the second on Friday, in the form of the latest PCE price index. Unfortunately, the PCE figures only track the changes recorded in September, so the usefulness of such information is debatable. The government shutdown may be over, but the backlog will take a while longer to clear. Speaking of which, markets will not get an NFP drop on Friday, despite it being the first of the month. Traders will instead have to wait for Tuesday the 16th of December, according to a post from the BLS. All-in-all, not much to grab attentions this week, although the fallout from the CME outage last Friday may prompt a measure of volatility later today. #Silver #Bitcoin #Metals
Silver quietly pushed into record high territory this morning. The white metal has seen serious buying pressure since Monday and is already up 8% this week. Silver broke through $54 per ounce early in the Asian session this morning, coming close to its mid-October highs. The move comes as silver stockpiles in Shanghai hit their lowest levels in a decade, with large volumes being shipped to the London vaults, which have also experienced tightening supplies in recent months. Chinese inventories were low enough to provoke backwardation conditions, whereby the current spot price of silver rose above those quoted in futures markets – a highly unusual situation. Silver is in high demand worldwide, from speculators and industry alike, and suppliers are struggling to keep up. The rise in silver has been matched by platinum this week, which breezed past $1,600 an ounce yesterday and is up 8% since Monday. While gold has also performed well over the past few days, the precious metal has lagged behind other metals, unable to break through $4,200 as of yet. Oil prices are heading for their fourth straight monthly loss, with Brent Crude hovering around $63 and WTI now down to $59 a barrel. Since April, OPEC+ has continued to increase its combined output capacity, which has been the main culprit in subduing crude prices. Although the organisation is expected to pause such increases until next year, another factor may soon come into play. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine may finally be showing signs of winding down, as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently signalled a willingness to discuss a proposal put forward by the United States. Should the conflict reach some kind of resolution, it is likely that sanctions against the Russian economy may be lifted, in which case Russian oil and gas will once again flow into global markets. The added supply could potentially crush crude prices even further, although it is unclear just how effective the sanctions were to begin with. On the other hand, winter is just around the corner, further complicating supply and demand dynamics. #Silver #Oil
Nvidia (NVDA) is facing mounting competition from fellow tech heavyweights. A report issued yesterday suggests that Meta Platforms (META) is in talks with Alphabet (GOOGL) to use Google’s AI chips within its own data centres. The development is interesting because until now, Google has only ever rented access to its chips, so the new arrangement would indicate a more aggressive stance for Google within the AI sector. If confirmed, the deal would be worth billions, but more importantly would muscle in on Nvidia’s territory, potentially snatching a sizeable chunk of the chipmaker’s annual revenue. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) both took the news badly yesterday, resulting in 2.6% and 4.2% losses respectively. Meta, on the other hand, continued to reverse its recent downtrend, closing the day 3.8% higher, while Alphabet pushed to new record highs at $323 per share. Nvidia has been vocally defensive against claims of an AI bubble in recent weeks, even sending a note to financial analysts on Wall Street over the weekend, which attempted to dispel some of the accusations levelled against them. Such criticisms include parallels with Enron, which was famously involved in an accounting fraud scandal. The changing tides evened out in the end, with the Nasdaq Composite managing to eke out a 0.7% gain on the day. The S&P 500 fared better with a 0.9% close in the green, while the Dow Jones shone the brightest with a 1.4% daily rise. Zooming out even further, the small-cap Russell 2000 index shot up 2.1% yesterday, maintaining the momentum it has enjoyed since last Friday. The pivot away from big tech towards the more understated elements of the stock market reflects a change in sentiment, in part caused by renewed expectations of a December rate cut. FedWatch is now pricing the odds of a 25-bps cut at 85% following comments from Governor Christopher Waller on Monday, who said that he would be advocating for a cut, based on his concerns about the US labour market. Cheaper financing is disproportionally beneficial to smaller companies, and the additional liquidity should help with consumption in general. #Nvidia #Google #Meta
Every four years or so, the cryptocurrency market experiences an eye-watering increase in prices, with each new peak dwarfing the preceding cycle. Bitcoin first breached $1,000 back in 2013. Four years later, in 2017, prices hit $20,000. In 2021, Bitcoin would go on to reach $69,000. This year, prices have ventured far beyond the six-figure mark, boasting $126,000 on some exchanges. Price action aside, each cycle brought new ideas and technology to the table, resulting in novel tools and memorable talking points. Pioneering developments have gradually pushed the industry forward, which has inarguably come a long way since 2009, but after all these years, it is time for some answers. Crypto cannot limit itself to a marketplace of tokens and coins. What comes next? What does crypto have to offer the world? What is the end game? Stage one: public awareness (2013) In the very early days of crypto, Bitcoin was a very niche hobby. The project was embraced by nerds, schizophrenics, libertarians, and later on by narcotics enthusiasts on the silk road marketplace. An unlikely alliance, but one strong enough to nurture Bitcoin through infancy, and to do so in relative secrecy. Bitcoin did not attract mainstream attention until its price tag forced it into the spotlight, by which time the headlines wrote themselves. Easy to sneer at a few dollars; harder to dismiss hundreds; impossible to ignore $1,000 per coin. Beyond the price itself, there was not much to talk about. The technology itself had been set in stone from the genesis block, and while development continued, the general selling point did not change. After hitting four figures, Bitcoin would enter its first real bear market. The following cycle would be very different. Stage two: Ethereum and the ICO craze (2017) Up until 2017, Bitcoin represented 95% of the total crypto market cap. There was very little going on at the time. Other cryptocurrencies had surfaced over the years, but few had any lasting impact, and fewer still had any genuine utility. Ethereum, first launched in 2015, changed the landscape forever in that regard. The wave of development sparked by the first major smart contract platform caused a massive dent in Bitcoin’s market dominance, one from which it would never recover. For the first time, developers could launch projects without having to code their own blockchain. It was trivial to do so. The Ethereum blockchain become host to a vast number of smart contracts, all competing for network usage, and contributing to the rapid appreciation of the ETH token. The ERC-20 standard ensured smart contracts, wallets and exchanges all spoke the same language, fostering an ecosystem that promoted rapid technological expansion. Inevitably, such growth attracted an equal measure of greed. The sector was booming, reminiscent of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium. It was so easy to make money by spinning up a half-baked idea and selling it to the masses. Many parties did exactly that. Initial coin offerings, or ICOs, became the go-to funding method. From the developer perspective, launching an ICO was a rock-solid way of securing funding. In exchange, investors were rewarded with the project’s token. From mid-2017 onwards, ICOs were all that mattered. Thousands were launched. New tokens flooded the market on a daily basis. The underlying technology barely mattered. Participate in the ICO, get the tokens, ride the wave, sell for 1000% profit, on to the next launch. It was a different time. Some of these projects persist to this day, but the vast majority were forgotten as quickly as they surfaced, long since abandoned to the cryptographic dustbin. Rightfully so. Some of the ICOs floating around during this period were such brazen scams it’s a miracle the SEC didn’t shut down the entire industry. Supply chain solutions for fruits and vegetables, literal Ponzi schemes, vanity projects to build floating casinos, imaginary dev teams comprised of stock photos, blatant lies about partnerships, fake giveaways... It was an absolute joke. Sure enough, by early 2018, the entire market deservingly went up in flames after Bitcoin topped out the month prior. It was time for a period of reflection. Stage three: DeFi, meme coins and NFTs (2021) Over the next couple of years, a number of development teams put their collective heads down and got busy. Once again, the bear market separated the wheat from the chaff and something actually useful emerged from the wreckage. Suddenly, decentralised finance, or DeFi, was the only thing people were talking about. Decentralised exchanges, synthetic assets, liquidity providing, yield farming, lending and borrowing, decentralised insurance… The list goes on. Useful, pragmatic tools were being created. Crypto could be used for something useful again. In 2020, “DeFi summer” successfully reanimated crypto’s lifeless corpse and brought genuine innovation and excitement back into the industry. Alas, this is crypto. The path described above is far too idealistic. Sensible heads prevailed only too briefly, and soon enough reckless degeneracy flourished anew. Time for idiotic memes, dog coins and poorly drawn cartoon characters. The ICO phase may have been a little flimsy on the technical side, but most projects at least pretended to bring something new to the table. The 2021 hype cycle dropped such pretences altogether. After years of dormancy, Doge exploded back on to the scene out of nowhere. From less than a cent in early 2021, the famous Japanese dog climbed all the way to $0.70 by May. A number of other animal-themed coins quickly got in on the action. Shiba Inu was the next in line, followed by slew of other dog coins, followed by meme after meme trying to extract as much money out of the crypto markets as possible. Who could forget DogeBonk? The token featuring a dog wielding a baseball bat? What about PregnantButt? Who could possibly have seen that rug pull coming? Attention spans are not what they used to be. People quickly got bored of dog coins, moving on to the next distraction: Non-Fungible Tokens. It is easy to forget, several years later, just how big NFTs were back in the summer of 2021. Cryptopunks and the bored ape yacht club started things off, with whales clamouring to spend literally millions of dollars on mediocre pixel art, but soon enough every celebrity desperate enough for attention was hopping on board the NFT train. The trend proved to be equally short-lived. The next few years would absolutely destroy NFT valuations. Among some collections, prices fell 90% within a year; 99% within two. Celebrities and traders alike would get absolutely destroyed by the catastrophic collapse in prices. Nothing of value was lost. Stage four: confusion (2025) The past two cycles had very memorable narratives associated with them. What about this year? What have been the main drivers so far this cycle? If nothing immediately springs to mind, then you are not alone. One might offer crypto ETFs, but the first of these dates back to 2021 – old news in the grand scheme of things. Institutional strategic reserves is a more recent turn of phrase, but not exactly headline magic. RWAs, or the tokenisation of real-world assets, sometimes features in various conversations, but sparingly at best. Even $TRUMP, the US president’s official meme coin, quickly faded out of public consciousness following launch, as reflected in its price. The point is that, barring a few exceptions, the past cycle has felt very dull compared to 2017 and 2021. Ask any crypto veteran and they will freely admit that the 2025 market has felt completely lifeless relative to previous periods. Bitcoin has seen multiple record highs this year, but then again, what market has not? Every major stock index in the world would have been a reasonable investment, to say nothing of the eye-watering rallies in gold and silver. And while the price action in Bitcoin has been a little on the soft side, the altcoin market has performed atrociously so far this year. Crypto cycles have historically mapped pretty well onto the wider US business cycle, illustrated by manufacturing PMI data. The problem is that the most recent business cycle has extended far beyond its typical length. If the business cycle can lengthen, so too can the crypto cycle. As mentioned above, cryptocurrency markets are not currently exhibiting their typical late-cycle exuberance. Who knows? A lot can happen in a month. The future of crypto At this point it is worth reflecting on the overarching evolution of cryptocurrencies as a whole. What is the goal here? Bitcoin absolutely started with pure intentions in mind, and was later followed in the same vein by various infrastructure-oriented projects, but the fact is that for much of its history, the crypto sphere has been tainted by scams, conmen, immaturity and outright idiocy. It has had over 15 years to prove itself. Where are the results? These days, Bitcoin is barely more than an investment vehicle for exchange-traded funds. A household name to capture institutional investment and retirement fund flows. It is so heavily tied to the greater macro environment that a poor NFP release can affect crypto prices. The whims of BlackRock and Vanguard are far more impactful than anything relating to the underlying tech. Influencers cheer on every successful ETF launch. Price is all that matters. This is obviously not what Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind. The cypherpunks had their chance. The idealistic atmosphere of the early days has all but vanished. The crypto revolution has utterly failed. The altcoin market has likewise become nothing more than a wealth extraction mechanism. Fundamentals do not matter. They never have. A glance at the top 25 coins on Coinmarketcap is proof enough. This creates a problem. Advertising a collection of ghost chains and meme coins as the pinnacle of what an industry has to offer inevitably scares away new investment. Each project becomes a walled garden, lacking any significant liquidity or outside interest. Moreover, the amount of capital lost to collapsing platforms and incompetent hedge funds has driven many investors away for good. Painting with broad strokes, the crypto industry is a joke. It is not all doom and gloom. In many ways, the current situation in crypto feels eerily similar to the 2019-2020 bear market. Under the surface, away from the hype and the headlines, there is a lot of work being done. Development grinds on. Ever more complex financial infrastructure comes to light. Far removed from the diligent dev teams, an equally important piece of the puzzle is also seeing significant progress: regulation. So much has been achieved on the regulation front in the past year. This is an element that has long held back the crypto industry, but the barriers are finally being broken down, one by one. The Federal Reserve hosts regular meetings with people deeply embedded within the crypto sphere. Conversely, people from traditional finance can now been seen on speakers lists at a number of crypto conferences. Banks, and the organisations that maintain the messaging infrastructure they rely on, are building the next layer of global connectivity. In more concrete terms, the GENIUS Act was a major step towards the widespread use of stablecoins. The CLARITY Act, whenever it may pass, will characterise non-stablecoin digital assets as commodities, granting cryptocurrencies some much-needed legal leniency. There are many more steps to come. The progress is not contained to the US either, as the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore all appear willing to embrace novel financial technologies. Crypto needs to make a choice: continue down the same shady path, or elevate itself to a position of leadership and strive for something greater. The internet is not merely a collection of domain names, swapping hands for ridiculous sums of money. In the same way, crypto needs to be more than a token market. The traditional financial world is screaming out for more efficient capital markets. The streamlined infrastructure offered by certain elements of the crypto industry could be just the ticket. Forget the price for a minute, crypto needs to sort itself out and ruthlessly purge the worthless, opportunistic elements that have sullied the industry in recent years. Time for the big boys to take over.
The brutal selloff in cryptocurrencies pushed Bitcoin all the way down to $80,000 last Friday – prices not seen since the April tariff scare. From $125,000 back in early October, the descent represents a 35% drawdown, something not uncommon for Bitcoin in or out of a bull market. The question is whether the move is over or if there is more pain to come. Bitcoin finally showed a measure of strength over the weekend, rebounding from the lows to touch $88,000 on Sunday. Given the chaotic sentiment currently pervading financial markets, calling for a bottom is even more challenging than usual, but the reversal appears to be holding steady as of this morning. Another reversal occurred on Friday, this time in the Fed rate prediction market. Traders were starting to abandon all hope of a December rate cut, with FedWatch tipping heavily in favour of a rate hold during the next meeting. However, for reasons that are not immediately apparent, the odds have now flipped to 70/30 in favour of a 25-bps cut. New York Fed President John Williams commented on Friday that he sees room for an interest rate cut in the “near term”, but other members are not so keen on the idea. Historically, FOMC members were relatively united in their voting intentions, with maybe a couple electing to dissent at most. This time however, the committee appears split right down the middle. The uncertainty is spilling over to markets at large, none more so than cryptocurrencies. Just over two weeks to go. US economic data is slowly starting to trickle through. The government shutdown left a hefty backlog that will take a while to clear, and some reports may never be published at all, but this week will provide markets with a couple of important data points at the very least. Firstly, September PPI figures, although coming out weeks behind schedule, may provide some information regarding underlying inflation pressures in the world’s largest economy. Secondly is the publication of retail sales, also for the September period. Both reports are set to be released on Tuesday. The PCE price index, previously scheduled for publication on Wednesday, has been put on hold by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, with no new date announced as of yet. Events taper off even more during the latter half of the week, as US markets will be closed all day on Thursday for Thanksgiving, and will close early on Black Friday. #Bitcoin #RateCut #PPI
Nvidia (NVDA) published its highly anticipated third-quarter report late on Wednesday night, and to everyone’s delight, the company beat earnings and issued a strong outlook for fourth-quarter revenue. The New York Stock Exchange was exuberant the following morning, with Nvidia and the wider stock market opening high. Celebrations were quickly cut short however, with markets undergoing a dramatic shift mere hours later as heavy profit-taking took hold. By the end of the day, Nvidia was over 3% down, dragging everything down with it. The Nasdaq Composite closed Thursday’s session 2.2% in the red, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones lost 1.6% and 0.8% respectively. The selloff exposes the lingering fears of a tech bubble, as investors were happy to take the exit door despite the stronger-than-expected earnings report. Markets also faced the added complication of yesterday’s delayed September NFP publication. The report revealed that the US labour market added 119,000 new jobs in September, completely surpassing the expected figure of around 50,000. Good news on the face of it, but the latest numbers complicate the Fed’s path forward. The odds of a December rate cut were around 50/50 before the latest data release, but are now leaning 65/35 in favour of a rate hold. An environment of strong employment numbers, coupled with stubbornly high inflation, is not typically countered by lowering interest rates. Strength has certainly returned to the Dollar this week, pushing the DXY back over 100 yesterday. Other currencies are feeling the wrath of the Greenback, none more so than the Yen, which fell to 157 against the Dollar over the past couple of days and is now approaching yearly lows. Should expectations continue to shift away from a December rate cut, the Dollar may encroach even further on the majors before the year is over. The relentless selling in Bitcoin continued yesterday, this time driving prices down to $86,000. Bitcoin has lost $40,000 since the 6th of October, but the price action in the last ten days has been particularly brutal, with no relief to be found. If there is a silver lining, it is that the wider crypto markets are once again showing more backbone, leading to further declines in Bitcoin dominance. No one in their right mind is calling for alt season as of yet, but the limited contagion is at least somewhat encouraging. #Nvidia #Crypto #NFP
