Heading for safety

Amidst a historic run-up  in the price of spot gold, spot silver has hopped on board the precious metal party bus, surging to a record high above $52 an ounce. That exceeds last week’s pinnacle. It has been four decades since silver last touched $50.

Tariff-spooked investors have swarmed into safe havens (e.g. gold ETFs) while at the same time, with respect to silver, specifically, there has been a liquidity squeeze in London, the global trading hub for physical silver and where hundreds of millions of ounces of silver are stored in vaults to maintain liquidity. However, as the Wall Street Journal noted, inventories have fallen sharply this year in part owing to rising  demand for silver-backed ETFs, further constricting supply.

Meanwhile, platinum and palladium also have surged so far this week. This move could be a sign, Bloomberg said, that rising investor demand for gold — higher every week for eight weeks in a row — has created imbalances that are impacting other precious metals.

Silver was inching toward $53 when we checked early this morning. It has spiked 83% since the start of the year. 

While the overall crypto market remains unsteady in the face of a swirling macro squall, some AI-related coins, perceived as impervious to such top-down forces, are attracting interest. One of them, an AI infrastructure play called ChainOpera AI, is in the midst of a hellaciously volatile stretch.

The project is billed as a community-controlled network of AI agents working collaboratively to facilitate the creation, distribution and monetization of data-driven training models. With a market capitalization of $3 billion, ChainOpera AI’s native COAI ranks as the 51st-largest token on CoinGecko’s list of largest digital assets. Much of the supply is reportedly  controlled by outsized wallets.

Three days ago, COAI, not quite one month into its existence, hit an all-time high of $43.81. Roughly 24 hours after that, COAI crashed, sinking to below $6. But some whale-wrought whipsaws never cease to astonish: COAI in the past day has soared yet again, more than doubling to $14. It still remains 64% off of its ATH. 

Basically stuck in neutral this morning, Bitcoin over the past 24 hours has been as high as $113.5K. Is it risk on? Or could BTC be benefiting from the flight to safety? Or maybe there’s another dynamic at play, this one potentially coming courtesy of the mostly but not entirely shut-down U.S. government.

Federal authorities have charged a controversial Cambodian company, Prince Group, with running an assortment of global scam operations, including so-called “pig butchering” schemes targeting vulnerable retail investors and relying on forced labor.

According to CoinDesk, citing the U.S. Department of Justice, the founder of Prince Group, a UK and Cambodian national, Chen Chi, has been indicted for allegedly conspiring to launder money and commit wire fraud.

In connection with this case, the DOJ seized $14.4 billion worth of Bitcoin in what the agency is describing as its largest-ever crypto seizure.

"Today’s action represents one of the most significant strikes ever against the scourge of human trafficking and cyber-enabled financial fraud,” said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, in a statement yesterday as the indictments were handed down in New York.

For months, the U.S. Treasury Department has “steadily been circling Cambodian criminal enterprises,” CoinDesk said. Concurrently, the Treasury has been trying to implement President Trump’s executive order to establish a strategic BTC reserve.

Such a reserve is meant as the destination of any BTC seized by the government, suggesting, as CoinDesk explained, “a potential final stop for the billions in assets taken in this case.”