Russia’s central bank, the Bank of Russia, will consider issuing a gold-backed cryptocurrency

First of all, let me say that gold price suppression (“fixing,” “rigging,” “manipulating” or however else you want to think about it) is not just a conspiracy theory. It’s a well-documented phenomenon, with real actors and real ramifications. In 2014, Barclays was fined nearly $44 million for failing to prevent traders from manipulating the London gold “fix.” Late last year, a former JPMorgan trader pleaded guilty to manipulating the U.S. metals markets. Remember the gold futures “flash crash” of 2014?

Flows this week

COTs this week

Every so often, US media coverage provides glimpses into the US Treasury’s gold reserves stored with the . While this coverage never documents any of the claimed “deep storage” gold of the US Treasury, it contains just enough suggestion for the populace to connect the words ‘gold storage’ and ‘US Government’, and then return to their daily routines, assuming that the US has the largest strategic gold reserves in the world.

COTs this week

News last week from the LBMA that French bank Societe Generale (SocGen) has resigned as a market maker for gold and silver continues an exodus from the London bullion markets that has included such former heavyweight bullion banks as Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Mitsui and Credit Suisse.

COTs this week

India imports for February