Business

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, thought to be the world's first confirmed bitcoin billionaires, said, during a Bloomberg TV interview this morning that the advent of futures is just the beginning of a phase of greater acceptance for the cryptocurrency that is often derided as a bubble.

"We think it’s the starting gun to a whole new phase of liquidity and price discovery and sophisticated entrance to the market."

The need for consolidation in the face of the ongoing Amazon - and broader online menace - is becoming irresistible, even for the biggest and best mall operators. Today the French-based Unibail-Rodamco, the biggest commercial landlord in Europe, agreed to purchase Westfield, the Australian-based mall operator. Unibail is offering 0.018844 shares and $2.67 cash for each Westfield share – a 65/35 stock/cash ratio – which values Westfield at an enterprise value of $24.7 billion. Westfield owns 35 shopping malls in the UK and US and is building a new mall in the Italian city of Milan.

US Producer Prices beat across the board this morning with the biggest headline being a 3.1% YoY surge in Final Demand - the biggest jump since Dec 2011.

The index for final demand goods jumped 1.0 percent in November, the largest advance since a 1.0-percent increase in January. Over three-fourths of the broad-based November rise can be traced to prices for final demand energy, which climbed 4.6 percent.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Those betting on a fourth bubble of even greater extremes will find their time at bat has come to an end.

The conventional investment wisdom holds that central banks will never let markets decline. This is an interesting belief, given that two previous asset bubbles based on central bank "easy money" both imploded, impoverishing believers in central bank omnipotence.

A few days ago we first showed a chart of a dramatic divergence between the price of gold and bitcoin...

... which together with a recent unscientific poll showing that more Ron Paul followers prefer bitcoin to gold...

A wealthy person wants to gift you $10,000. You get to choose in which form you'll take the gift. But there's a catch: You must keep the gift in the form that you choose, and you can't touch it for 10 years.

In which form would you take the gift?