Baltic Dry Index. 1221 -43 Brent Crude 69.14
Eventually,
of course, there comes after one or two false starts, a top. Unease abounds,
yesterday's good news is reinterpreted. Quite often a scandal breaks. Caution
returns. A preference for liquidity reappears. Assets (stocks, currencies,
derivatives, GM) are sold to raise cash. At first a light "distress"
touches many. As distress turns to pain or fear, the great race for cash
begins.
"Liquidation sometimes is orderly, but more frequently degenerates into panic as the realization spreads that there is only so much money, not enough to enable everyone to sell out at the top."28
"Liquidation sometimes is orderly, but more frequently degenerates into panic as the realization spreads that there is only so much money, not enough to enable everyone to sell out at the top."28
Unsound
At Any Price.
The crypto mania may
not be fully over, but the true believers have taken a hammering since bitcoin
traded at 20,000. Now comes the collateral damage. The hopium stock promoters
all say that the crypto currency mania, was too small in the global economy, to
have any meaningful collateral damage effect, but still it might be that famous
pair of butterfly wings flapping Mexico that sets off the storm of the century,
according to chaos theory.
Besides, the UK has
its own rapidly growing very real collateral damage problem, caused by the
collapse of government mega contractor Carrillion. The global economy has just
taken two strikes, hopefully manageable, but is there a third strike lurking just
around the corner? Steve Bannon’s Grand Jury, anti-Trump testimony?
Below yesterday’s
rout in the cryptocurrencies.
'What a
tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive."
Sir
Walter Scott.
January 17, 2018 / 1:16 AM
Asian shares dip as commodities ease, bitcoin licks wounds
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian stocks stepped back from a record high on Wednesday as the
region’s resource shares were hit by falling oil and commodity prices while
digital currencies tumbled on worries about tighter regulations.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dropped 0.15 percent from its record high as resource shares declined after oil and other commodities succumbed to profit-taking after recent gains.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 fell 0.4 percent from its 26-year peak hit the previous day.
Wall Street paused its rally, hit by a 1.2 percent fall in energy stocks .SPNY as well as weakness in General Electric (GE.N). The U.S. conglomerate raised the prospect of breaking itself up and announced more than $11 billion in charges from its long-term care insurance portfolio and new U.S. tax laws.
Cboe volatility index .VIX, which measures investors’ expectation on price swings in U.S. shares, rose to a one-month closing high of 11.66 from near record low levels seen earlier this month.
World shares have rallied since the start of this year on prospects of strong global growth and improving earnings in the U.S. and elsewhere.
----In the currency market, the dollar was broadly weak, sticking near a three year low against a basket of currencies.
“As more countries in the world are starting to unwind their stimulus,
the dollar’s yield advantage will shrink and prompt a correction in the
dollar’s strength since 2014,” said Minori Uchida, chief FX analyst at Bank of
Tokyo Mitsubishi-UFJ.
The Bank of Canada is widely expected to raise its benchmark interest
rate by 25 basis points to 1.25 percent later in the day, with analysts
expecting three hikes this year.
Investors also expect the European Central Bank’s eventual exit from
stimulus as a major market theme for this year.
Three sources close to the ECB’s policy told Reuters that the ECB is
unlikely to ditch a pledge to keep buying bonds at next week’s meeting just yet
as rate setters need more time to assess the outlook for the economy and the
euro.
More
Dow ends lower in sharp one-day reversal
Published: Jan 16, 2018 4:33 p.m. ET
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed marginally lower on Tuesday
after the blue-chip index relinquished all its early gains in the sharpest
daily reversal in nearly two years, according to FactSet.
In early trade, Dow industrials were up more than 1% and set an intraday
all-time high above 26,000. But the rally petered out as investors weighed
political developments against quarterly earnings reports and economic data —
both presently underpinning Wall Street’s optimism.
----“We will see more market exuberance from positive earnings, but there is plenty of political uncertainty that will temper investor expectations,” said Alexandra Coupe, associate director and portfolio manager at PAAMCO.
“After a year of good performance and low volatility it is very natural
for investors to have ‘fear of missing out’ and we are likely to continue to
see this momentum to persist. We should also remember that when momentum
crashes, it does so rather violently,” Coupe said.
“Optimism on Wall Street is pretty high as a lot of previously skeptical
and bearish investors have turned into stock market fans lately,” said Brett
Schutte, chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co.
More
January 16, 2018 / 7:06 PM
RBS pulled plug on Carillion days before collapse
LONDON (Reuters) - Carillion
collapsed only days after Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)(RBS.L), one of the British group’s main
lenders, tightened the terms of its funding, court documents show.
The RBS decision three days before the collapse served to weaken
attempts to protect Carillion’s cash position, the construction and services
company’s interim CEO Keith Cochrane said in a statement submitted to the High
Court in London.
The taxpayer-funded bank took “unilateral action, which in the company’s
view undermined the group’s efforts to conserve cash”, Cochrane said.
RBS said in a statement it judged Carillion’s restructuring plan was not
viable and so it made the difficult decision not to make further funding
available to the 200-year-old business.
Carillion collapsed on Monday, throwing hundreds of large projects into
doubt and forcing the government to step in to guarantee vital public services
in one of Britain’s biggest corporate failures.
The company held about 450 government contracts helping to build roads, railways and schools and maintain hospitals before it collapsed under the weight of its debts after a series of construction projects ran into trouble.
Cochrane said the company’s cash position was eroded after RBS on Friday proposed that the company make payments to suppliers two days earlier than previously planned. This hit the company’s liquidity by between 2 million pounds and 20 million pounds, Cochrane added.
RBS has in the past been heavily criticised for its treatment of distressed business customers, with the actions of its Global Restructuring Group the subject of parliamentary scrutiny and legal action.
Santander (SAN.MC), another of Carillion’s largest lenders, was also singled out for criticism, with Cochrane alleging Santander had put the brakes on Carillion payments, although it later reversed its decision after talks.
----Carillion owes almost 1.3 billion
pounds to its lenders and had only 29 million pounds in cash reserves by
Monday, the documents show.
January 17, 2018 / 4:08 AM
Bitcoin jolted by regulation worries, falls 7 percent on extended selloff
TOKYO/SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - Bitcoin extended its sharp tumble of the past 24 hours, skidding
more than seven percent on Wednesday in a rapid downturn in fortunes as
investors were spooked by fears regulators might clamp down on an asset whose
value has skyrocketed in the past year.
The price of the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency fell to
as low as $10,567 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, not far from its
six-week nadir of $10,162 touched the previous day. The session’s high was
$11,794.07.
It led the fall in cryptocurrencies, although others such as Ethereum
and Ripple, have also slid sharply this week after reports South Korea and
China could ban trading, sparking worries of a wider regulatory crackdown.
“Cryptocurrencies could be capped in the current quarter ahead of G20
meeting in March, where policymakers could discuss tighter regulations,” said
Shuhei Fujise, chief analyst at Alt Design.
At its lows on Tuesday, Bitcoin had fallen 25 percent in the session,
its biggest daily decline in four months. It was a far cry from its peak close
to $20,000 in December, when the virtual currency had risen nearly 2000 percent
over the year.
Tuesday’s decline followed reports that South Korea’s finance minister
had said banning trading in cryptocurrencies was still an option and that the
government plans a set of measures to clamp down on the “irrational”
cryptocurrency investment craze.
Separately, a senior Chinese central banker said authorities should ban
centralised trading of virtual currencies as well as individuals and businesses
that provide related services.
“Bitcoin is deciding whether this is the moment to crash and burn,” said
Steven Englander, head of strategy at New York-based Rafiki Capital.
“My conjecture is that cryptocurrency holders are trying to decide
whether to abandon Bitcoin because its limitations mean it will be superseded
by better products or bet that it can thrive despite them.”
More
Bitcoin Steadies After 26% Slump as Traders Brave Volatility
By Eric Lam
Updated on 17 January 2018, 04:47 GMT
Bitcoin continues to wobble, trading near $11,000 a day after losing a
quarter of its value as traders sought a floor for pricing amid growing concern
regulators around the world will move ahead with new rules to restrict the
burgeoning cryptocurrency industry.
The largest digital currency rose 1 percent to $10,831 at 12:20 p.m. in
Hong Kong after slumping as much as 26 percent Tuesday, according to Bloomberg
composite pricing. Rival cryptocurrencies Ripple and Ethereum swung
between gains and losses.
----Speculators across the globe are struggling to determine when or how market watchdogs may rein in an industry that’s decentralized and derives much of its value from anonymous ownership. Many assertions that digital coins represent a bubble have triggered double-digit selloffs over the past year, only to be followed by rebounds.
In South Korea, shutting down cryptocurrency exchanges is still an option amid ongoing discussions, Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said in an interview with TBS radio Jan. 16. Kim said there’s irrational speculation and that rational regulation was needed.
“It’s going to be very tough in a liberal democracy like South Korea if you have a huge constituent in the population that’s involved” in cryptocurrencies, said Arthur Hayes, chief executive officer of cryptocurrency trading platform BitMEX. “How’s the government going to curtail it and still get votes in the next election? It’ll be very interesting to see how that all plays out.”
----In the U.S., state regulators are becoming more active with BitConnect shuttering its cryptocurrency exchange and lending operation after receiving two cease-and-desist letters from the Texas State Securities Board and North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division for the unauthorized sale of securities and suffering from denial-of-service attacks.
More
January 16, 2018 / 12:13 PM
Maersk, IBM to launch blockchain-based platform for global trade
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The world’s largest container shipping
firm A.P. Moller-Maersk is teaming up with IBM to create an industry-wide
trading platform it says can speed up trade and save billions of dollars.
The global shipping industry has seen little innovation since the
container was invented in the 1950s, and cross-border trade still leaves an
enormous trail of paperwork and bureaucracy.
Success of the platform, which will be made available to the ocean
shipping industry around mid-2018, depends on whether Maersk and IBM can
convince shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities
to sign up.
Blockchain technology powers the digital currency bitcoin and enables
data sharing across a network of individual computers.
It will help manage and track tens of millions of shipping containers
globally by digitising the supply chain process from end to end, the companies
said.
“The big thing that is missing from this industry to digitise and
unleash the potential of the technology is really to create a form of utility
that brings standards across the entire ecosystem,” Maersk’s Chief Commercial
Officer Vincent Clerc said in an interview.
A shipment of refrigerated goods from East Africa to Europe can go
through nearly 30 people and organizations and involve more than 200 different
communications, according to Maersk. Documentation and bureaucracy can be as
much as a fifth of the total cost of moving a container.
“There is a strong push from the end-customer to see this change. We may
meet initial resistance form one part of the ecosystem,” Clerc said.
“The success of the platform depends on acceptance of all participants.”
Customs and port authorities in the United States, Singapore, the
Netherlands and China’s Guangdong province have shown interest in using the
platform and some other shipping companies are also interested, he said.
More
"There
is nothing in the business situation to justify any nervousness."
Eugene
M. Stevens, President Continental Illinois Bank, October 1929.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, cryptocurrency mania again. Today a known vulnerability of
blockchains. And just wait until the arrival of quantum computers at the spy
agencies. Are blockchains too slow and too costly for the reality of our 21st
century world?
"I
wasn't worth two cents two years ago, and now I owe $2 million dollars."
Mark
Twain.
DEFINITION of '51% Attack'
51% attack refers to an attack on a blockchain – usually bitcoin's, for which such an attack is still hypothetical – by a group of miners controlling more than 50% of the network's mining hashrate, or computing power. The attackers would be able to prevent new transactions from gaining confirmations, allowing them to halt payments between some or all users. They would also be able to reverse transactions that were completed while they were in control of the network, meaning they could double-spend coins.They would almost certainly not be able to create a create new coins or alter old blocks, so a 51% attack would probably not destroy bitcoin or another blockchain-based currency outright, even if it proved highly damaging.
BREAKING DOWN '51% Attack'
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on blockchains, otherwise referred to as distributed ledgers. These digital files record every transaction made on a cryptocurrency's network and are available to all users for review, meaning that no one can spend a coin twice – the digital equivalent of a perfect counterfeit, this ability would quickly destroy faith in the coin's value.As its name implies, a blockchain is a chain of blocks, bundles of data that record all completed transactions during a given period of time (for bitcoin, a new block is generated approximately every ten minutes). Once a block is finalized – or "mined," in the jargon – it cannot be altered, since a fraudulent version of the public ledger would quickly be spotted and rejected by the network's users.
However, by controlling the majority of the computing power on the network, an attacker or group of attackers can interfere with the process of recording new blocks. They can prevent other miners from completing blocks, theoretically allowing them to monopolize the mining of new blocks and earn all of the rewards (for bitcoin, the reward is currently 12.5 newly-created bitcoins, though it will eventually drop to zero). They can block other users' transactions. They can send a transaction, then reverse it, making it appear as though they still had the coin they just spent. This vulnerability, known as double-spending, is the basic cryptographic hurdle the blockchain was built to overcome, so a network that allowed for double-spending would quickly suffer a loss of confidence.
Changing historical blocks, transactions locked in prior to the start of the attack, would be extremely difficult even in the event of a 51% attack. The further back the transactions are, the more difficult it would be to change them. It would be impossible to change transactions prior to a checkpoint, past which transactions are hard-coded into bitcoin's software.
On the other hand, a form of a 51% attack is possible with less than 50% of the network's mining power, but with a lower probability of success.
Read more: 51% Attack | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp#ixzz54KZtl5Yu
Sybil attack
The Sybil attack in computer security is an attack
wherein a reputation
system
is subverted by forging identities in peer-to-peer networks. It is named
after the subject of the book Sybil, a case study of
a woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.[1] The name was
suggested in or before 2002 by Brian Zill at Microsoft
Research.[2] The term pseudospoofing
had previously been coined by L. Detweiler on the Cypherpunks
mailing list
and used in the literature on peer-to-peer systems for the same class of
attacks prior to 2002, but this term did not gain as much influence as
"Sybil attack".[3]
In a Sybil attack, the attacker subverts the reputation system of a peer-to-peer network by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities, using them to gain a disproportionately large influence. A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically. As of 2012, evidence showed that large-scale Sybil attacks could be carried out in a very cheap and efficient way in extant realistic systems such as BitTorrent Mainline DHT.[4][5]
An entity on a peer-to-peer network is a piece of software which has access to local resources. An entity advertises itself on the peer-to-peer network by presenting an identity. More than one identity can correspond to a single entity. In other words, the mapping of identities to entities is many to one. Entities in peer-to-peer networks use multiple identities for purposes of redundancy, resource sharing, reliability and integrity. In peer-to-peer networks, the identity is used as an abstraction so that a remote entity can be aware of identities without necessarily knowing the correspondence of identities to local entities. By default, each distinct identity is usually assumed to correspond to a distinct local entity. In reality, many identities may correspond to the same local entity.
An adversary may present multiple identities to a peer-to-peer network in order to appear and function as multiple distinct nodes. The adversary may thus be able to acquire a disproportionate level of control over the network, such as by affecting voting outcomes.
In the context of (human) online communities, such multiple identities are sometimes known as sockpuppets.
More
Investors Are Buying Power Stations In Russia To Mine Cryptocurrency
Tue, 01/16/2018 -
02:45
Two electric power stations in Russia were recently sold to a
cryptocurrency miner looking to expand his operations – the latest
sign that the country’s government-supported push to become a cryptocurrency
mining hub has been successful.The two stations are situated in the Perm Region on the western slopes of the Middle Ural Mountains, and in the neighboring Republic of Udmurtia. The facilities will be used as data centers as well as housing for cryptocurrency mining equipment and a center for cryptocurrency mining. The price paid for the two stations? Roughly 160 million rubles (about $3 million), according to RT.
After initially approaching cryptocurrencies with skepticism, the Russian government last summer signaled that it would instead try to regulate and embrace the markets.
---- The bill will open the door to more open cryptocurrency trading and investment within Russia, as some countries like China have sought to stamp out both mining and trading.
In August, a company known as Russian Miner Coin, or RMC, announced that it would try to raise $100 million in an initial coin offering, promising to allocate 18% of the company’s mining revenue to holders of their tokens. The company was founded by a close aide to Putin.
The law currently being written by the Duma will be the country’s first targeting cryptocurrencies. Back in December, Moiseev suggested that mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could be made illegal, though he quickly back-tracked from those comments.
The new owner of the power stations, businessman Aleksey Kolesnik, has indirectly confirmed the acquisition – though he added that he will wait to begin mining cryptocurrencies from the facilities until after Russia adopts the relevant legislation.
Furthermore, the Russian government and its state-owned energy companies have reportedly considered launching a digital currency that could be used in partnership with Venezuela, Iran and Russia to circumvent US sanctions in accepting payment for their oil exports, similar to Venezuela’s Petro, an oil-backed digital currency that is being developed by Latin America's favorite Socialist Paradise.
A bitcoin conference has stopped taking bitcoin payments because they don't work well enough
- The North American Bitcoin Conference, held in Miami next week, said it has stopped accepting last-minute ticket payments in bitcoin
- Bitcoin's slow transaction speed and high fees have led many merchants to rethink their decisions to accept payments in the cryptocurrency
Published 9:39 PM ET Wed, 10 Jan
2018 Updated 9:50 PM ET Wed, 10 Jan 2018
----According to industry site BitInfoCharts, in the last three months, the average bitcoin transaction fee was as high as $55. On Jan. 9, data showed the fee was about $31.
Bitcoin's relatively high transaction fees are, however, profitable for
so-called bitcoin "miners," who work out complex cryptographic
puzzles to add transactions to the blockchain — a decentralized record of all
bitcoin transactions. In return, they are rewarded bitcoin.
Meanwhile, data from Blockchain.info showed that, at the time of
publishing, it takes an average of 51 minutes to confirm a bitcoin transaction.
Over a 30-day period, that average time was as high as 3,564 minutes (more than
59 hours) on Jan. 1.
more
"There is no
expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking."
Thomas Alva Edison.
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as
they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy
mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
A major university just went all in on solar power
Published
16, January 2018
A
major Australian university is set to achieve carbon neutrality on its energy
use and will have all of its energy needs met by solar photovoltaics (solar
PV).
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced Monday that it had entered into a "tripartite arrangement" with Maoneng Australia and Origin Energy for an offsite solar PV corporate power purchase agreement. Photovoltaic refers to a way of directly converting light from the sun into electricity.
The agreement was signed in December. Under its terms, UNSW will purchase as much as 124,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy per year from Maoneng's Sunraysia Solar Farm in south-western New South Wales.
Construction on the facility is set to commence later this year, with solar energy production expected in the second quarter of 2019. While the farm is built, Origin Energy will provide UNSW with electricity.
"This landmark initiative is an exciting step towards realizing UNSW's goal of carbon neutrality on energy use by 2020 and reflects our commitment to making a positive global impact," Ian Jacobs, UNSW's president and vice chancellor, said in a statement.
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced Monday that it had entered into a "tripartite arrangement" with Maoneng Australia and Origin Energy for an offsite solar PV corporate power purchase agreement. Photovoltaic refers to a way of directly converting light from the sun into electricity.
The agreement was signed in December. Under its terms, UNSW will purchase as much as 124,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy per year from Maoneng's Sunraysia Solar Farm in south-western New South Wales.
Construction on the facility is set to commence later this year, with solar energy production expected in the second quarter of 2019. While the farm is built, Origin Energy will provide UNSW with electricity.
"This landmark initiative is an exciting step towards realizing UNSW's goal of carbon neutrality on energy use by 2020 and reflects our commitment to making a positive global impact," Ian Jacobs, UNSW's president and vice chancellor, said in a statement.
Jacobs
added that the agreement would enable UNSW to "secure carbon emission-free
electricity supplies at a cost which is economically and environmentally
attractive when compared to fossil fuel-sourced supplies."
Towards the end of last year, a renewables market analysis and forecast from the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that new solar PV capacity increased by 50 percent in 2016. Additions of solar PV grew faster than any other fuel and surpassed the net growth in coal, the IEA added.
Towards the end of last year, a renewables market analysis and forecast from the International Energy Agency (IEA) said that new solar PV capacity increased by 50 percent in 2016. Additions of solar PV grew faster than any other fuel and surpassed the net growth in coal, the IEA added.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 24,719 +265 Up. NASDAQ: 6,903 +297 Up. SP500: 2,674 +199 Up.
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