Business

After two warnings to investors (but no bans) from the SEC on ICOs, alt-coins like Ethereum and Litecoin have exploded higher in the last 24-48 hours, pushing the former over $60 billion market cap - bigger than GM and Aetna.

Interest in cryptocurrencies has been surging since futures launched (but volume in Bitcoin futures tumbled today relative to yesterday)...

Spot Bitcoin prices are holding near record highs...

But it seems investors in the crypto space are diversifying across the entire alt-coin space...

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.