Trump Euphoria, Bitcoin and Gold

“My hope for bitcoin is that it can improve the efficiency of the information system that we call ‘money.’”

– Elon Musk, appointed to the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

November 13, 2024—On the Friday before the election, we recommend that you hedge the results of the impending vote with Bitcoin and Gold.

Since Wednesday’s opening, bitcoin has soared 22%… shooting to $92,600 this morning.

Turn Your Images On

The bellwether crypto is up over 150% over the past year. And it’s getting a serious huff of Trump Trade fumes.

Trump’s campaign promise, among many disruptive ones, includes replacing Gary Gensler, the existing SEC chair who was slowly noodling over regulatory changes for crypto.

We speculated all year that backroom deal-making was being organized to support the Fed coin and a new era of highly regulated (manipulated) CBDC coins.

The election results put an end to that fear with some earnest abandon.

Another puff of fumes fueling the Trump pipe dream came yesterday in the form of another campaign promise coming into focus: The “Department of Government Efficiency’ – or DOGE after the crypto coin Elon Musk owns and often discusses.

Musk and entrepreneur-turned-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will head up the new de-government task, which has a mission—a mandate, rather—to make forceful suggestions on how to remove $2 trillion of wasteful spending from the Deep State bureaucracy.

During this euphoric phase of the so-called Trump Trade, the market doesn’t need a lot of fumes to get high.

Gold hasn’t fared as well. In fact, it’s down nearly $200 (priced in dollars) since its historic high of $2,800 on October 30.

Yep.

But you’re wrong if you think we’re going to apologize for gold. Our friend Dominic Frisby takes a quick review of both alternatives to the U.S. Dollar below. Enjoy – Addison

Bitcoin’s Looking Great. Gold Not So Much.

Dominic Frisby, The Flying Frisby

Today, we are going to look at gold, bitcoin, and our way of playing it.

Let’s start with gold.

Gold – and most other metals – has been hit since the U.S. election last week. It’s down $200, or about 7%, with U.S. dollar strength being a big factor (the dollar has been storming higher since October).

While I think this bull market might be punctured, as I put it last week, and that gold probably has a bit further to fall, I am not unduly worried. 2024 has hitherto been a great year for gold, and it remains an essential long-term core holding.

It is an even more essential holding for UK investors. I think sterling has big problems ahead of it, and gold serves as your hedge against crap governments.

Labour or Tory – I’m no fan of either.

They’re both as bad as each other, in my view. The less government there is, the better things run. But that’s irrelevant idealism. Of greater concern here is reality: there has never been a Labour Government that did not devalue sterlin

Blair and Brown crashed sterling in 2007-8 (though until then their record was okay);
Under Wilson, Callaghan, and Healey, we ended up going to the IMF in 1976. Callaghan and Wilson also devalued in 1967.
Cripps and Attlee devalued in 1949.
Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, which followed Labour from 1929-31, took us off the gold standard in 1931.

Why should this Labour Government be any different? If anything, it is even less competent. Sterling devaluation is coming.

How exactly might not yet be clear. I rather suspect it’ll be an attempt to make us competitive against an ultra-streamlined U.S., but that’s just a guess. You must own some gold (and some bitcoin) in such an environment: non-government money. ~~ Dominic Frisby, The Flying Frisby

Regards,

Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan

P.S. Just as there has never been a Labour government that hasn’t devalued the British Pound… so there has never been a Republican or Democratic administration in modern times that didn’t devalue the dollar, whether through foreign exchange or a massive run-up in debt and inflation.

Bitcoin enthusiasts point out that cryptocurrency has no “top” price because fiat currencies have no bottom. Gold, to a lesser extent, also fits into that scarcity mold.

That’s why we view both assets performing well throughout Trump’s second term.

Or, as Grey Swan reader Marcus suggested last week:

“Things will go well in 2025 if (and this is a big IF) Elon Musk is successful at cutting the $2 trillion from our government expenditures as he anticipated.

“If that happens, it will reduce the pressure on our government to borrow money to pay our debts. This will set into motion a domino effect of positive results.”

Send your thoughts to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com.

“My hope for bitcoin is that it can improve the efficiency of the information system that we call ‘money.’”

– Elon Musk, appointed to the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

November 13, 2024—On the Friday before the election, we recommend that you hedge the results of the impending vote with Bitcoin and Gold.

Since Wednesday’s opening, bitcoin has soared 22%… shooting to $92,600 this morning.

Turn Your Images On

The bellwether crypto is up over 150% over the past year. And it’s getting a serious huff of Trump Trade fumes.

Trump’s campaign promise, among many disruptive ones, includes replacing Gary Gensler, the existing SEC chair who was slowly noodling over regulatory changes for crypto.

We speculated all year that backroom deal-making was being organized to support the Fed coin and a new era of highly regulated (manipulated) CBDC coins.

The election results put an end to that fear with some earnest abandon.

During this euphoric phase of the so-called Trump Trade, the market doesn’t need a lot of fumes to get high.

Gold hasn’t fared as well. In fact, it’s down nearly $200 (priced in dollars) since its historic high of $2,800 on October 30.

Yep.

But you’re wrong if you think we’re going to apologize for gold. Our friend Dominic Frisby takes a quick review of both alternatives to the U.S. Dollar below. Enjoy – Addison

Bitcoin’s Looking Great. Gold Not So Much.

Dominic Frisby, The Flying Frisby

Today, we are going to look at gold, bitcoin, and our way of playing it.

Let’s start with gold.

It is an even more essential holding for UK investors. I think sterling has big problems ahead of it, and gold serves as your hedge against crap governments.

Labour or Tory – I’m no fan of either.

Blair and Brown crashed sterling in 2007-8 (though until then their record was okay);
Under Wilson, Callaghan, and Healey, we ended up going to the IMF in 1976. Callaghan and Wilson also devalued in 1967.
Cripps and Attlee devalued in 1949.
Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, which followed Labour from 1929-31, took us off the gold standard in 1931.

Why should this Labour Government be any different? If anything, it is even less competent. Sterling devaluation is coming.

Regards,

Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan

Bitcoin enthusiasts point out that cryptocurrency has no “top” price because fiat currencies have no bottom. Gold, to a lesser extent, also fits into that scarcity mold.

That’s why we view both assets performing well throughout Trump’s second term.

Or, as Grey Swan reader Marcus suggested last week:

“Things will go well in 2025 if (and this is a big IF) Elon Musk is successful at cutting the $2 trillion from our government expenditures as he anticipated.

“If that happens, it will reduce the pressure on our government to borrow money to pay our debts. This will set into motion a domino effect of positive results.”

Send your thoughts to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com.

As copper flowed into the United States, LME inventories thinned and backwardation steepened. Higher U.S. pricing, tariff protection, and lower political risk made American warehouses the most attractive destination for metal. Each new shipment strengthened the spread.

The arbitrage, once triggered, became self-reinforcing. Traders were not participating in theory; they were responding to the physical incentives in front of them.

The United States had quietly become the marginal buyer of the world’s most important industrial metal. China, long the gravitational center of global copper demand, found itself on the outside.

Under the frost-crusted shrubs, the bears are sniffing around for scraps of bloody meat.

They smell the subtle rot of credit stress, central-bank desperation, and debt that’s beginning to steam in the cold. They’re not charging — not yet. But they’re present. Watching. Testing the doors.

Retail investors, last in line, await the Fed’s final announcement of the year on Wednesday. Then the central planners of the world get their turn: the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank.

Treasuries just suffered their worst week since June. And in Japan — the quiet godfather of global liquidity — something fundamental is breaking.

Silver continues its blistering ascent. Gold and bitcoin have settled in at $4,200 and $92,000, respectively.

It’s absurd, really, for any politician to be talking about “affordability.”

The data is clear. If higher prices are your goal, let the government “fix” them.

Mandates, paperwork, and busybodies telling you what you can and can’t do – it’s not a surprise why costs add up.

In contrast, if you want lower prices, do nothing– zilch. Let the market work.

For 30 years, Japan was the land where interest rates went to die.

The Bank of Japan used yield-curve control to keep long-term rates sedated. Traders joked that shorting Japanese bonds was the “widow-maker trade.”

Not anymore.

On November 20, 2025, everything changed. Quietly, but decisively.

The Bank of Japan finally pulled the plug on decades of easy money. Negative rates were removed. Yield-curve control was abandoned. The policy rate was lifted to a 17-year high.

Suddenly, global markets had to reprice something they had ignored for years.

What happens when the world’s largest creditor nation stops exporting cheap capital and starts pulling it back home?

The answer came fast. Bond yields in Europe and the United States began climbing. The Japanese yen strengthened sharply. Wall Street faltered.