Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
If the ownership of bitcoin is as concentrated as some estimate, then the liquidity issue distills down to the actions of the top tier of owners.
One day after we reported that Saudi Arabia has started to freeze the accounts of the dozens of arrested royals, ministers and businessmen, in the process allowing Mohammed bin Salman to further cement control over the Kingdom, the Kingdom has taken its "money laundering" crackdown to the next level and on Tuesday, Saudi banks have frozen more than 1,200 accounts belonging to individuals and companies in the kingdom as part of the government’s anti-corruption purge, bankers and lawyers told Reuters, adding that "the number is continuing to rise."
Crude Oil has been strong of late. Did you realize that Crude Oil has gained more in the past month than the S&P 500 has this year, see chart below.
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
The strong rally of late has Crude testing what appears to be a very important level in the chart below-
The divergence between the 'hope' melt-up in stock markets and the 'nope' collapse of the US Treasury yield curve has never been so wide... and has never engendered so many excuses by commission-takers and asset-gatherers for why the latter is wrong and the former correct.
Last week, the financial world was shaken when billionaire Robert Mercer, co-CEO of RenTec which is arguably the world's most profitable and secretive hedge fund, announced he was quitting on Jan 1, 2018.