QUESTION: Sir; I have noticed that the Roman and Greek hoards of coins you have offered are silver. You do not offer hoards of bronze coins. I have two questions. First, are broze hoards less common? Second, why have you been a buyer of large hoards to begin with?

Thank you

LW

ANSWER: There are hoards of bronze coins from the 3rd century that are found. However, bronze corrodes easily. Therefore, the hoards that do exist are far too often not really salable because the condition is typically quit poor. I do have one small hoard from the early 3rd century that begins with Maximinus I (235-238AD) who really begins the major decline of the Roman Monetary System when he targeted the rich and simply declare that everything they owned belonged to the Empire, a very early version of Marxism. I will make this available, but there are only about 100 bronze sestertius that was the main unit of account. The condition is excellent for bronze since there are not corroded.

I also have a later 3rd century hoard of antoninianius which were once silver and had been debased to bronze silver plated. This was a hoard I purchased back in the late 1980s with over 10,000 coins. However, the salable coins were probably less than 3,000.

I have the other part of the Alexander the Great silver hoard. This was mostly drachms, but there are some tetradrachms as well perhaps about 100. Now, as to why I have purchased hoards over the decades is simply that they provide a snapshot of the economy at that point in time. This demonstrates what was in circulation and a hoard can be dated by the last coin included and this has correlated with periods of economic stress.

Now, in the case of this Alexander hoard, intermixed you find contemporary imitations that are struck on the outskirts of the empire. Here are contemporary imitations that were inside the hoard. They are generally of the proper weight, but you will notice that there is some small parts that are corroded. This reflects that the silver was not properly refined.

 Here is a jug I purchased also back in the early 1990s. It contained the small reduced bronze coins toward the collapse of the Roman Empire. Despite the fact that they were inside a jug, you will notice that they we covered in corrotion to varying degrees. Therefore, the find was more valuable as a snapshot of the economy rather than as a hoard of salable coins.

In 2007, there was a huge hoard disovered in England with over 50,000 coins. Again, they were bronze and it was a mixed find where some of the coins in the center were salable and others were interesting snapshots, but corroded.

These type of hoards from the 3rd century exist because of the stressful period both politically as well as economically. This is also when the barbarian invasions were beginning and as I have stated before, it was Aurelian who constructed the wall around Rome to protect it from the barbarians in 270AD, which was not needed previously.

Large hoards are typically found burried in pottery. In a southern Spanish park, construction workers dicovered a 1,300-pound hoard of Roman coins. A Viking hoard, the second such large hoard discovered in Sweden, has been unearthed revealing that the majority of the coins are from the Arab world. Hoard of this nature demonstrate how the trade routes fundctioned. Hoards are discovered in Asia and the Middle East. A hoard was disovered in Israel with Greek tetradrachms from the 2nd century BC. Roman coins have even been discovered in Japan. This has opened a lot of questions as to how did 4th century Roman coins end up in Japan.

Not all hoard have been because of economic stress. One of the most famous hoards was stashed away because of a volanic eruption. The Boscoreale Treasure/Hoard is the name for a large collection of Roman gold coins along with exquisite silver and gold Roman objects discovered in the ruins of an ancient villa at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, southern Italy. Consisting of about the 1,350 gold aurei, which included 637 gold coins of Nero alone. This one hoard was worth 135,000 sesterces, which was more than half the tolal value of coins discovered in Pompeii itself. There were also over 100 pieces of silverware, as well as gold jewellery. The disovery of objects is now mostly kept at the Louvre Museum in Paris, although parts of the treasure can also be found at the British Museum. The coins were sold over time to collectors.

The precious metal objects from the Boscoreale Treasure were illegally exported from Italy and were purchased on the black market by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), who donated it to the Louvre Museum in 1896. It appears that the objects were deliberally hidden in the storehouse prior to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The name written on many of the containers was Maxima. A woman was found dead in the ruins, but we do not know if she was Maxima or a servant who stayed behind. The villa appears to have been owned by Maxima’s father L. Caecilius Jucundus, who was a banker from Pompeii. This one hoard was a substantial cash reserve of the banker. That makes sense given the vast wealth in coins discovered. He also seems to have inherited the wealth of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Campania. Jucundus had a villa in Pompeii as well and his banking records have survived.

Boscoreale is well known to Roman numismatists as the find spot of a hoard of about 1,350 gold aurei, the latest of which dates to 78AD whereas the volcanic eruption from Mount Vesuvius on August 24, AD 79 burried the villa in ash. The villa remained undisturbed until 1876. The coin hoard lay undiscovered for almost another 30 years. Unfortunately, there was no formal study of the Boscoreale coins made before they were dispersed into the market. There was a list pubished 1909 which included material from other finds as well.

Nonetheless, thre three coins illustrated above all have a very distinctive feature that identifies them from Boscoreale. This is their deep-red toning. The Boscoreale Hoard was discovered in the water cistern of a villa, where the owner had hidden it fearing an impending catastrophe. Perhaps, the hoard was stashed when the eruption began. However, what killed the people was the deadly pyroclastic cloud which engulfed the region. It was the resulting intense heat of which imbued all the gold coins with the beautiful red toning that we now see almost 2000 years later.

The coins were sold and there was often written tages noting their origin such as an aureus of Nero from the A. J. Fecht bequest to the American Numismatic Society from 1948 which had an original tag that noted: “ex Boscoreale find, Pompeii, 1898”. We should not underestimate the total currency stock or supply held by non-aristocrats living in the Pompei. The fugitives who died in room 10 of the Villa in Oplontis carried with them over 18,000 sesterces worth in cash. Life in Pompeii did not stop instantaneously when Vesuvius erupted. Fugitives took valuables and money with them. The coins found with skeletons are a mix of savings, daily earnings, and pocket money. The coins found in the shops and houses reflect what fugitives left behind. Looting and salvaging after the eruption further complicate the picture.

The average size of the hoards is six times the yearly subsistence for an adult at that point in time yet the number of persons depending on this money or the time span over which the hoards were formed is unknown. Therefore, the discovery of the hoards from pompei are more complicated than the hoards discovered elsewhere in times of economic and political uncertainty. These type of hoards reflect generally one person which is different from the hoards of Pompeii itself as distinguished from the banker’s hoard or cash reserves reflected in the Boscoreale discovery.

I will prepare some of the coins from hoards for clients to select. It just takes time to ensure which coins are of sufficient grade to offer in the first place.

COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, it seems that whatever you say our government follows. You said China should buy directly from the Treasury and not the New York bank and they did that right away. Now they are considering stopping dollar borrowing here in China as well. You should be holding a WEC here in Shanghai next.

QLJ

ANSWER: Yes, Bloomberg has reported that here in the West as well. People do not understand that the more the dollar rises, the greater the risk of defaults around the world. US rates fell so low that it was cheap to borrow dollars. The borrowers are now starting to realize that they also had a foreign exchange risk. This is what I have been warning about. You even have the dollar bears here in the States who keep saying I am wrong and the dollar has to crash. Repeatedly, I have warned that a decline in the dollar will be celebrated by everyone including Trump because it would ease trade friction. A rise in the dollar means trade friction, protectionism, and emerging market crisis of debt defaults. As the defaults mount, the dollar will be sent even higher. Add a crisis in the Middle East and in the stability of the Eurozone, and you end up with dollar vertigo!!!!

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You have obviously been correct on the Euro. You even called the bounce but it stopped at 1.2550 and did not reach your ideal target of 1.28. You are saying that interest rates in Europe are more likely to rise faster than the ECB predicts. The French central banker Francois Villeroy de Galhau has also come out and said that a hike in interest rates from mid-2019 onwards will be possible. That contradicts Draghi. Running a small business here in Europe is difficult as you know. So we should look to try to lock in rates now before it is too late. Correct?

FK

ANSWER: Absolutely. True, the technical resistance and the Monthly Bullish were in the 128 zone. However, the euro just did not have enough energy to reach that point which is in itself an indication of inherent weakness. If we look at the long-term 30-year rates on the euro, support lies at 0.93% and resistance at 1.7%. A monthly closing above 1.7% will signal a move up to 2.33% to 2.43%. After that, expect a rapid move to 5%. A closing at year-end above 1.42% will confirm a sharp rally is underway

QUESTION: It certainly seems that the cryptocurrency world has its flaws and may even be worse than traditional bank accounts and credit cards. They keep getting hacked. So they are trying to defeat central banks but may be running into the arms of scammers and thieves. I read one guy even claimed Bitcoin would be the new reserve currency. I really do not understand these fools. How can Bitcoin become the reserve currency? Where does this really end?

EP

ANSWER: I really do not know. The dollar is the reserve currency BECAUSE it has a $20 trillion debt that is used globally to park money. Europe never created a single debt market and that is why the euro never managed to compete with the dollar. There is just no way Bitcoin can become the reserve currency. That is really la-la-land. Where does this end? The technology may be absorbed by governments and perhaps you end up with a single electronic currency for each country. As far as circumventing central banks and governments, they can shut it down whenever they want by simply declaring cryptocurrency is for criminals as Australia is trying to do with cash.

With respect to the hacking, well easy come easy go. For the second time in just a few days, hackers launched a raid on a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The hackers had captured in one night about €27 million euros, the trading platform Bithumb had to admit. This is number six worldwide in terms of trading volume for cryptocurrencies. Bithumb announced that it would compensate its users.

The prices of most cryptocurrencies fell after the second South Korean incident within a few weeks. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell 2% that day. These attacks are starting to wear down the cryptocurrency market, and we may yet see a decline further into July.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Just to clarify, a continued rate hike in dollars will send Emerging Market debt into chaos and possibly default. Is this both public and private?

Thank you.

You are a voice in the wilderness

PK

ANSWER: Oh yes. Both public and private emerging market debt raised money in dollars. A 2% increase in interest rates could spark a sharp rise in the proportion of emerging market corporate debt issues at risk of default. This is true especially in Brazil, Turkey, and Indi

Angela Merkel promised the German people that she would not just hand Greeks money as she does with the refugee, no, she would make them pay dearly for allowing Goldman Sachs to structure deals to get them in the Eurozone. Indeed, she has kept her word. In response to a parliamentary question from the Green Party, the German government had to release figures which revealed that Merkel has acted more like a loan shark making €2.9 billion in interest payments on Greek bonds since 2010 despite the ECB moving rates negative. Merkel bought Greek government bonds as part of an EU deal to prop up the struggling Greek economy since 2010. The bonds were bought by the Bundesbank and then transferred to the federal treasury.

This certainly gives new meaning to the pictures of Greek citizens paying dearly for the shenanigans of politicians. The Protestant Reformation is where we draw the line with the birth of Capitalism. The reason we draw the line there is because previously, the Catholic Church had forbidden what Merkel has just done – exploit someone when they are down and out. It was called the Sin of Usury. You were supposed to “help” a fellow in his time of need. The Catholics would have been excommunicated if they engaged in banking. The Protestant Reformation was funded by wealthy Catholic merchants who wanted to compete with the Jews and enter the banking field. The Protestant Reformation thus did not adopt the Sin of Usury so Christians became bankers and could borrow as well as lend. That is where the economy began to be leveraged and this Capitalism was born.

COMMENT: I found it very interesting when my bank would not allow using a credit card to buy cryptocurrencies. A friend of mine in Singapore said the government there has also instructed banks not to honor cryptocurrencies. It appears that government is starting to retaliate against the cryptocurrency world and I must question its viability long-term.

DP

REPLY: Yes. This is happening around the world. The US banks of Bank Of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Capital One, and the Discover card, have all banned their customers from purchasing cryptocurrencies. In the UK, Lloyds banking group was the first to ban cryptocurrencies and then MBNA, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland quickly followed. According to the blockchain research firm Chainalysis,  the long-term Bitcoin holders sold at least $ 30 billion worth of Bitcoin to new speculators between December 2017 and April 2018, half of which was in December 2017 alone making this very taxable in 2018. Many cryptocurrency investors have been lulled by the claim this is outside the central banks and off the grid. There are hundreds of data sources available to governments to track payments after conversion to a hard cash they call “Fiat” currency. Anyone who had purchased cryptocurrencies using their credit cards before the banks started to ban those transactions has a clear paper record for government to track.

Downunder, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) warned crypto traders/investors that their profits from trading in the years 2017 to 2018 “will not go unnoticed” and they have come straight out and warned on their website: “Anyone involved in acquiring or selling cryptocurrency must keep records of their cryptocurrency transactions.” Virtually every government classifies cryptocurrencies as assets. Therefore, any gain relative to the hard cash or “Fiat” currency is then taxable.

I have stated before, the governments want to move to an electronic currency so everything is taxable. They have been watching the cryptocurrency world and are coming down on banks demanding information. This is what the banks are simply banning the use of their credit cards to buy cryptocurrencies. The legal costs of gathering data to prosecute people the governments will demand are causing them to simply refuse to allow customers to use their facilities. The same result took place when the US government imposed FACTA requiring foreign banks to report whatever an American does outside the country. The way to avoid any problems was simply to ban Americans from having an account overseas.

At this point in time, we do have a Directional Change in July. So we may yet see a temporary low form at that time.