Gold and silver had a sharp run-up in the last two weeks of 2017. However, the abrupt move in gold has been accompanied by a rapid rise in the gold futures open interest on the Comex. Furthermore, based on the last COT report the banks have dramatically increased their net short position and the hedge funds have gotten, once again, extremely net long. I don’t like the looks of the COT report right now plus I anticipate a possible brief “relief” rally in the dollar index.

But what about cryptocurrencies? Over the past few weeks the largest and most actively traded cryptocurrencies have been massacred in price. This follows on the heels of the news that the founders of Bitcoin and Litecoin sold 100% of their holdings. Nothing like insider selling as a signal about the value of what was sold… You may not know everything surrounding this industry and that’s fine. As long as you know that you can visit sites such as cryptoexchangespy.com to keep up to date with everything relating to cryptocurrency, it’s better than not knowing anything about it at all.

Phil Kennedy invited me on to his podcast to discuss precious metals, cryptocurrencies and the U.S. dollar. We engage in a friendly (I want to emphasize “friendly”) debate on the merits of cryptocurrencies:

The bottom line for me is that gold has been declared a Tier 1 bank asset by the Bank of International Settlements. This means that gold is considered the highest form of bank asset. I believe there’s a good chance gold will move toward and over $1400 this year. As for a price prediction for the cryptos – it depends on the degree to which the fear of losing money overwhelms the fear of missing out on gains for the momentum-chasing speculators – most of whom are Asian-based. We may be approaching that point of no return: