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Jeff Currie, the global head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs

From Odd Lots: Goldman’s Jeff Currie on the Silver Squeeze and the Coming Boom in Commodities on Apple Podcasts:

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Everything I learned about commoditie I learned from Trading Places, which is by far the most educational movie about Wall Street ever made, so I’m not qualified talk about the recent shenanigans in the silver markets. Jeff Currie is, however, because he’s the head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs. In a fascinating podcast that touched on a few things that I do know a little about (eg, William Jennings Bryan and the “cross of gold”) and spoke with real insight about the historic role of silver. With respect to the activity in the silver market, he expressed great scepticism about the ability of the robinhoodies to move the silver market (which is 300 times bigger than GamesStop) and explained how it would require very clever co-ordination of firepower — which I suppose is not impossible in a world of bots and message boards — to make anything happen.

He also made the point that the silver market is actually pretty small compared to other commodities markets, which operate rather differently to other financial markets because of the relationship between physical delivery and the symmetry of long and short positions. From my inexpert position, it sounded that whether speculators would be able to hold market-manipulating positions (shades of the Bunker Hunt brothers) is a matter of some speculation. A rise in volatility did occur, but it’s not clear what it means in the longer term.

(Not all commodities markets are the same of course! Currie made the point that the gold ETF market is around $150 billion. If you ended up taking physical deliver of all of the that gold, you could put it in your shed. By comparison, the Oil ETF market is currently about 180 million barrels. If you end up with those on your hands you have a problem, which is why the value of oil temporarily dipped below zero last year.)

But back to silver.

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Bhavin Patel, head of fintech at OMFIF, speaks with Douglas Arner, Kerry Holdings Professor in Law and director of the Asian Institute of International Law at the University of Hong Kong, and Charles Chang, deputy dean of academics, professor of finance and director of the fintech research centre at Fanhai International School of Finance, Fudan University.

From Part 2: Fintech, payments, and CBDC in China – OMFIF:

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The company additionally works with Checkout.com, another Diem member that offers digital payments, analytics and access to a roster of clients such as TransferWise and Samsung. Another First integration is PayU, a Diem member that has added e-commerce technology in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and India in the past year.

From Facebook’s Diem project lays groundwork for merchant acceptance | PaymentsSource:

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There are also several examples of off-chain collateralized stablecoins. The most popular ones are USDT and USDC, both USD-backed stablecoins. They are both available as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. DGX is an ERC-20 based stablecoin backed by gold, and WBTC is a tokenized version of Bitcoin, making Bitcoin available on the Ethereum blockchain.

From Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets | St. Louis Fed:

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In an interview with Der Spiegel, ECB board Fabio Panetta states that “We might only allow digital euro holdings up to a certain threshold, or make them unattractive above this amount by charging interest. For example, the threshold could be around €3,000, which would be far more than the cash requirements of most people today. But this is still under discussion.

From ECB ponders €3000 threshold for consumer digital euro holdings.

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The Travelling Influencer Problem I believe is this. “Given a list of countries, government restrictions and distances, what is the shortest path to getting home without restrictions being placed on me?”. When you take time to think about it, it is an interesting problem.

From Forget the Travelling Salesperson Problem, this is the Travelling Influencer Problem | by Jason Bell | Feb, 2021 | Medium.

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Equifax has acquired long-term Open Banking partner AccountScore, in a deal that will see the combination of traditional credit bureau information held by Equifax with bank transaction data.

The acquisition positions Equifax at the forefront in the transition of Open Banking to Open Finance

From Equifax acquires Open Banking partner AccountScore:

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DeFi may increase the efficiency, transparency, and accessibility of the financial infrastructure. Moreover, the system’s composability allows anyone to combine multiple applications and protocols, thereby creating new and exciting services.

Decentralized Finance: On Blockchain- and Smart Contract-Based Financial Markets | St. Louis Fed:

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Bluford Putnam, chief economist and managing director of CME Group, believes bitcoin is an “emerging competitor” to gold.

In a CME-presented explainer video posted by Bloomberg on Wednesday, Putnam said the yellow metal’s ongoing production, likely to increase in 2021, contrasts with bitcoin (BTC, +0.55%)‘s fixed supply.

The World Gold Council estimates roughly 197,576 metric tonnes (217,790 tons) of the shiny metal have been mined throughout history with an additional 2,500-3,000 tonnes (2,756-3,306 tons) added to stock levels each year.

From Bitcoin an ‘Emerging Competitor’ to Gold, Says CME’s Chief Economist – CoinDesk.

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Cryptocurrencies could replace gold as an electronic store of value once key hurdles such as trust, volatility, regulatory acceptance and reputational risks are overcome, according to a research note from the Bank of Singapore.

From Cryptocurrencies could replace gold as a store of value, Bank of Singapore says | The National.

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