Gold prices suffered significant losses at their most recent trading session.

The yellow metal lost its shine at the expense of charging U.S dollar, whose surge of late astonished many investors amid the currency debasement expected from the U.S President-elect’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 support programme.

What you should know

• Gold futures at their most recent trading session settled at $1,829.90 an ounce, down by 1.2%.
• Although the yellow metal’s recent loss on a weekly basis moderated to just 0.3% on the week, that loss added to the previous week’s plunge of 3.2% — handing gold its worst two weeks in a row since November.
• The greenback was an outlier at the last trading session despite drops seen in U.S bond yields associated with the benchmark 10-year U.S. note, whose resurgence in the previous week had been the catalyst for the U.S dollar comeback.

Stephen Innes, Chief Global Market Strategist at Axi, in a note to Nairametrics, gave insights on the odds weighing on the yellow metal in the near term.

• “With short dollar trades tempering over the great US dollar debasement story of 2021, it’s not such an easy glide path for gold to start the year. So, I suspect gold remains tied to the hip of the US dollar fortunes this quarter. The market then morphs into “sell the rally mode” as the US economy recovers tangentially to the vaccine distributions.”

Bottom line

Investors are increasingly confronted with the reality that the pandemic is still far from being under control, thereby flocking back to the safe-haven currency despite the significant progress that was made in the past few months, and several COVID-19 vaccines already in the market.

Large crypto entities are definitely up to something with the prevailing bullish trend at the world’s flagship crypto. Before dropping to $36,100, an unknown Bitcoin whale moved about $128 million worth of cryptos.

Data retrieved from Whale alert, an advanced crypto tracker, revealed recently, that a large entity transferred 3,510 BTC valued at $128.3 million from an unknown wallet to an unknown wallet.

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 3,510 #BTC (128,266,672 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

Tx: https://t.co/oTdElbEHYw

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 16, 2021

At the time of writing this report, Bitcoin traded at $36,262.41 with a daily trading volume of $56.4 billion. Bitcoin is down 0.49% for the day.

• While it is difficult to predict market movements, large owners of Bitcoins have shown historically that they often determine the BTC trend.
• The timing of this movement suggests that such activity could be linked to an institutional investor amid the bias that of late, a lot of institutional players are flocking into the world’s flagship crypto market at unprecedented levels.

What you should know

• In the Bitcoin market, investors or traders who own large amounts of bitcoins are typically known as Bitcoin whales. This means that a BTC whale would be an individual or business entity (with a single Bitcoin address), that owns around 1000 coins or more.
• The flagship cryptocurrency is mainly decentralized, the first of its kind, and created by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched around January 2009.

While many countries are already planning to or already developing fiat-crypto, the International Monetary Fund’s most recent report has indicated that only a few nations are permitted legally to carry such actions.

“Countries are moving fast toward creating digital currencies. Or, so we hear from various surveys showing an increasing number of central banks making substantial progress towards having an official digital currency.

“But, in fact, close to 80% of the world’s central banks are either not allowed to issue a digital currency under their existing laws, or the legal framework is not clear,” the IMF stated.

In the recent post, seen by Nairametrics, the global financial body disclosed various reports suggested a large number of central banks are examining the possibility of having a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

It stated;

“Still, a majority of such countries have legal structures that do not support the establishment of cryptocurrencies, or in some cases do not permit the development of them

“Any money issuance is a form of debt for the central bank, so it must have a solid basis to avoid legal, financial, and reputational risks for the institutions.

“Ultimately, it is about ensuring that significant and potentially contentious innovation is in line with a central bank’s mandate. Otherwise, the door is opened to potential political and legal challenges.”

What you should know: A digital currency is a cash balance recorded electronically on a store value card or other physical devices, which could someday replace the physical notes.

• Digital currencies can be decentralized, that is where the control over the cash supply can come from diverse sources. Digital currencies can also be centralized, where there is a midway point of control over cash supply, just like the way central banks work.

Recall some months ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a video illustrating what cryptocurrency is.

Besides suggesting that cryptocurrency could “completely change the way we sell, buy, save, invest, and pay our bills,” IMF went on by saying that it “could be the next step in the evolution of money.”

The IMF tweeted the video giving vital details on what cryptocurrency is. Referring to cryptocurrency as “a special currency,” the two-minute video attempts to outline its benefits in payments, such as by removing middlemen, lowering costs, and increasing transaction speed.

What are cryptocurrencies? https://t.co/ggONlLkA2r pic.twitter.com/yYpj3Jf37E

— IMF (@IMFNews) August 23, 2020