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"The Zimbabwean Finance Minister, Mtuli Ncube, has said his government plans to halt the local currency's freefall by linking it to gold and establishing a currency board. Ncube said these measures could permanently end the local currency's volatility."

Tether is launched Alloy (aUSD₮), a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar overcollateralized by Tether Gold (XAU₮). Users can mint aUSD₮ by depositing XAU₮ as collateral through a process managed by Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. The aUSD₮ smart contract ensures transparency by keeping track of all collateral and minted tokens, using price oracles to constantly evaluate the Mint to Value (MTV) ratio.

The correlation between Bitcoin and gold over the past year is 0.496. In the past three months, that shot up to 0.827, according to our analysis as evidence grows that investors - rightly or wrongly - see Bitcoin as a refuge in times of turbulence.

Macro investor Paul Tudor Jones is buying Bitcoin as a hedge against the inflation he sees coming from central bank money-printing, telling clients it reminds him of the role gold played in the 1970s.

Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and signaled its intent to begin accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment, sending prices to a new record after the vote of confidence from the electric-car market leader. "In January 2021, we updated our investment policy to provide us with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on our cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity. As part of the policy, which was duly approved by the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors, we may invest a portion of such cash in certain alternative reserve assets including digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future. Thereafter, we invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term. Moreover, we expect to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which we may or may not liquidate upon receipt." https://sec.report/Document/0001564590-21-004599/

Stablecoins are a venerable and well-respected part of the history of US banking! Previously, the issuers were called "wildcat banks," and the tokens were pieces of paper. The wildcat banking era, more politely called the "free banking era," ran from 1837 to 1863. Banks at this time were free of federal regulation - they could launch just under state regulation. Under the gold standard in operation at the time, these state banks could issue notes, backed by specie - gold or silver - held in reserve. The quality of these reserves could be a matter of some dispute. The wildcat banks didn't work out so well. The National Bank Act was passed in 1863, establishing the United States National Banking System and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency - and taking away the power of state banks to issue paper notes.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has reportedly started testing the feasibility of a digital currency backed by gold that will be accepted as a legal tender for peer to peer and peer to business transactions. The hope is that it will stanch store-of-value motivated conversions out of Zimbabwe dollars into U.S. dollars, that is depressing the former's value in foreign exchange markets.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) will introduce a gold-backed digital currency on May 8. They will not be pegged to any of the country's units of account (Zimbabwe dollars, U.S. dollars and South African rand). The digital coins will be priced 20% above market and marketed as investments. However, digital wallets will be made available in a later phase to facilitate person-to-person payments with them.

Iran and Russia are reportedly looking to launch a new gold-backed stablecoin to be used for cross-border transactions in the place of the US dollar, the Iranian rial and the Russian ruble in the Persian Gulf region. The cryptocurrency would also specifically intended as a payment method in the Astrakhan area - an economic zone whose design helped Russia begin to receive cargo shipments from Iran.

The Central Bank of Iran has approved the issuance of gold-backed crypto-asset designed to maximize the use of Iranian frozen bank assets, according to the CEO of Iranian Information and Communication Technology. In fact, a number of Iranian banks have been working with blockchain startup Kuknos Company on this "Paymon" project since January.

This BNC report explores bitcoins' emerging resilience due to its exposure to contagious narratives and the macroeconomic drivers for store of value assets during this recession. From there we assess what the strength of both gold and bitcion is to adapt and recover to a new economic paradigm after COVID-19 and whether this is the shock that proves bitcoin is antifragile?

The Bank of Russia will review a proposal to create a gold-backed cryptocurrency, which could be used for mutual settlements with other countries, Governor of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina said on May 22. More: http://tass.com/economy/1059727"

AgAu says it will store physical gold and silver in Switzerland and sell customers its tokens - each one a digital contract that grants the bearer direct ownership rights to a gram of either precious metal. The tokens would be freely traded with transactions validated and recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

Quadriga cofounders Michael Patryn and the now-deceased Gerald Cotten worked together for a period at Midas Gold, a digital currency exchanger that ran from 2008 until May 2013, when it was pulled offline. Now it appears their connections stretch back even further.

Our empirical results show that traditional assets such as global equities and global bonds are weak hedges for Bitcoin. Furthermore, we observe that gold acts as a strong hedge against Bitcoin during an extreme bearish Bitcoin market, although the impact is marginal.

"Dalio believes that in this new era of currency devaluation, cash and bonds will not be reliable stores of value. Historically, scarce real assets such as real estate, gold, commodities and-we'd point out-bitcoin are safe havens for wealth and a source of returns in these environments."

Bitcoin is the first scarce digital object the world has ever seen, it is scarce like silver & gold, and can be sent over the internet, radio, satellite etc. Surely this digital scarcity has value. But how much? In this article I quantify scarcity using stock-to-flow, and use stock-to-flow to model bitcoin's value.

For now, it seems more likely that operators will try to build (and charge) adjacent businesses made possible by these stablecoins instead of passing on costs [of negative interest rates] to retail users, e.g. via inflating the token supply relative to deposits as a form of usage tax, or implementing an additional transaction fee (PAX already does this for its gold-backed token.)

"People think I got into bitcoin because I have a high risk tolerance. Actually I got in because I have a low risk tolerance for worst case scenarios... Should bitcoin be more correlated with gold than with Apple stock? Maybe. But as John Maynard Keynes put it, "markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.""

The problem with smart contracts is that by design they're hard or impossible to alter, which requires the most painstaking code review and analysis so that you don't lose money to an exploit, but you make more money by being quick to market. DeFi apps that use chains of smart contract programs to automate complex financial transactions enable attacks to be chained too. Unsurprisingly, it's a continuing dumpster fire, reliably delivering comedy gold. The problem with DeFi is not the technology, though that's bad too - it's that people are greedy and foolish.