Episode Details

I’ve been writing so much about gold and silver lately, I need to cover something else.

But my quick take: as seemed likely, gold and silver have gone into one of their corrective phases. This is likely to last several months, in the humble opinion of this writer. There’ll be false dawns, which catch everyone out, and false deaths too, with the overall trend being sideways.

In the event of a broader stock market correction - which is long overdue given the scale of this rally since the Tariff Tantrum™ in the spring - gold and, especially, silver will sell off along with everything else. That doesn’t mean gold isn’t a safe haven. It just means there is a lot of hot money in gold, which quickly gets liquidated in a sell-off.

But, yes, this incredible rally we have seen in the S&P500 since the Tariff Tantrum™ is looking exhausted and seems to be rolling over.

Bitcoin is taking a hit too - although not as big a hit as the broader crypto space - and bitcoin is what I want to look at today.Here is one crypto trader’s desk, as pictured on Twitter during Tuesday’s sell-off.

That’s what happens when you use too much leverage.

What do they say about taking the emotion out of trading?

Bitcoin - what gives?

So many things have happened this year which have blown winds in bitcoin’s favour

* A newly elected US administration which very pro crypto

* A deliberately weaker dollar and the debasement trade

* The launch of the bitcoin ETFs in the US increasing access to much larger flows of capital

* Strength in tech stocks generally

* A risk-on appetite

* The halving cycle

And more

Yet bitcoin feels like it hasn’t quite delivered. A new high of ‘only’ $125,000.

The latest narrative doing the rounds is this idea that the launch of the bitcoin ETFs is like bitcoin’s IPO. Just as when a big tech stock IPOs, a lot of early seed money takes the opportunity to exit, so are many early bitcoin investors - so-called OGs - now moving on. That would explain the many coins that have been moved from previously dormant wallets to exchanges over the last six months.

Maybe.

What can I say?

You can either decide that bitcoin’s time is done. It’s game over. Move on.

Or you can treat this like another of the numerous shake-outs that have taken bitcoin in the 16 years since its inception. The story was getting a bit tired. It needs a shake-out to ruffle a few feathers and purge.

The moral of every previous correction can be summed up in 4 letters: HODL.

It looks like we may have got a bit of a crypto winter to get through. If the winter reflects the previous summer, then this one shouldn’t be too bad. But consolidation phases can be frustrating, so the secret is to be quite zen about the whole thing and keep your eye on t