Monthly Archives: May 2015

Privacy in a Cashless Society

Denmark is quickly approaching the point where cash might no longer be necessary. Legislators recently proposed a law Mobile paymentthat would allow some retailers to only accept digital payments via a credit card or mobile device. If it passes, it’s likely that many brick-and-mortar shops will gladly free themselves from the burden of paper and metal money. Some citizens, on the other hand, are worried about the trackability of non-cash transactions.

This trend is not especially new. Already a third of Danes use MobilePay, an app created by the nation’s largest bank, for making transactions. One report even said that in 2012, 84% of Danish transactions took place with credit cards. Several other European countries have also expressed a desire to do away with cash. For example, in Sweden’s larger cities, the bus systems already restrict payments to digital forms like credit cards and prepaid passes.

Some people are worried about how their privacy will hold up in a cashless society. Right now, paper money is often used as a way to avoid tracking. Records are not essential for cash transactions because they involve the transfer of physical objects. With relative certainty, we can always know who owns the money because we can see who holds the actual paper bills.

Digital money, however, has to be treated differently. Banks and payment processors almost always attach an identity to artificial transactions. In our legacy financial system, that’s the only way to ensure that money doesn’t get lost, duplicated, or misdirected. Many argue that the authorities would have a field day with this kind of information. Electronic databases are extremely easy to search, analyze, and preserve, so the government could theoretically watch where all of our money goes.

Privacy is definitely a legitimate concern, but it’s important to remember that digital transactions do have some serious benefits for businesses.

close up of man counting money and making notesPhysical money is notoriously difficult and expensive (and even unhealthy) to handle, which I can illustrate with a personal anecdote. Like many others, I spent a decent portion of my teenage years working in a fast food restaurant and I remember muttering all the time about how annoying cash was. Without exaggerating, I can say that it often took five to ten times longer to sort bills and count change than it did to swipe a card. That’s a huge factor when you’re trying to serve 120 cars in an hour and it’s only a fraction of the full cost. The owner of the restaurant also had to pay the managers to count money drawers (and the entire safe) several times a day. Then there’s the cost of having bills and heavy change delivered and picked up by armored trucks, and how about touching dirty paper while serving food!

Daniel Brown is the editor-in-chief of You, Me, and BTC.  He’s also the “Everything Elf” at


JPMorgan’s Physical Silver Stash Continues To Grow

S9sGEWmY_400x400Ted Butler, a highly regarded analyst in the precious metals sphere, recently suggested that JPMorgan Chase might own as much as 350 million ounces of physical silver. That’s a shocking number, and even though speculation is rife in Butler’s arguments, the official figure (around 55 million ounces) tells an interesting story. The bank’s bullish stance could bode well for the future of the silver price.

JPMorgan started collecting silver in April 2011, when the metal’s price was just beginning to fall from its high of nearly $50/oz. Before the spike, the bank had virtually zero ounces of physical silver bullion.

5y Silver

A year later, their stockpiles were up to around 15 million ounces and since then, they have more than tripled their stash to 55 million ounces. In a span of just 10 days during April 2015, they had more than 7 million ounces delivered; a huge amount for such a short period of time.

Some have argued that JPMorgan’s behavior in the paper/digital silver market has been malicious and unfair. In a lawsuit, rival investors claimed that the bank was manipulating the price downward to aid their physical purchases. But that lawsuit failed in 2013 and an appeal was struck down in 2014.

When it comes to the facts, however, JPMorgan’s intent is not especially important. The bottom line is that the bank has been amassing a great deal of silver bullion, and that could mean that they expect higher prices before long.

Two essential factors here are JPMorgan’s sheer size and influence. It’s the largest bank in the U.S., and it’s leaders clearly knows their way around Wall Street and the entire financial system. That certainly doesn’t make them immune to mistakes, but their outlook should still mean something to the average investor; if they expect a spike, maybe we should too.

And of course, this begs the question: Why? If JPMorgan is so large, so experienced, and has access to crucial and far-reaching market analysis, then what do they see that’s telling them to buy silver? It could be nothing more than the idea of profiting through manipulation, but there could be more legitimate reasons as well.

Some suspect that JPMorgan anticipates another financial crisis. The bank’s chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, even wrote to shareholders recently and noted that “there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial market.” He further explained that the crisis could be triggered by any number of events. The cause could be geopolitical issues, rapidly rising interest rates, a commodities collapse, a real estate crisis, a bubble, or something else.

In my own opinion, that anticipation makes a lot of sense. The history of the world’s financial crises alone should indicate that problems will come. Every few decades (or less) we see interest rates go crazy, prices collapse (or spike), currencies evaporate, or entire industries go under. Throughout all of this, silver has certainly fluctuated, but for wise investors, it has never failed. Its reputation as a sound store of value has held strong. It appears that JPMorgan sees silver as security at the very least and as profit if things go well. We might be well-advised to follow suit.

Where is the Inflation?










Crowdfunding Regulation Cools Down

Better late than never…

Crowdfunding has the potential to be “the people’s Wall Street;” but the SEC worked out the final rulemakings of the JOBS act, set to address the regulatory environment for equity crowdfunding platforms. Last month, the SEC took another small step in addressing this, issuing final rules on “Regulation A+.” This has been creating a buzz in the investment community as the new rules are set to go into effect starting June of this year.Vector crowdfunding concept in flat style

To review, “crowdfunding” is the concept of raising money for a business, project or product through small amounts from a large amount of people, rather than big chunks of money from only a few select backers. Crowdfunding is best known for getting music albums, movies and gadgets to the market through popular sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. However, these platforms only allow people to receive products in return for their financial backing, not shares of equity, because current securities regulations do not allow it.

The JOBS act, signed into law April 2012, was set to address this issue. Another piece of this legislation has now been outlined through the SEC’s final rulemaking on “Regulation A+.” Regulation A was a little used exemption in the securities regulation that allowed companies to raise up to $5 million; but since they still had to comply with all federal and individual state disclosure agreements, the prohibitive compliance cost was too high relative to the amount that could be raised. The new Regulation A+ will allow companies to raise up to $50 million by selling securities to the general public. The other big change is that it is likely individuals will not have to be “accredited investors” (which means they are wealthy) to participate. It also pre-exempts all of the individual state “blue-sky” laws making it much easier and cheaper to comply.

This is certainly a step in the right direction as it removes legal barriers and reduces compliance costs for small businesses and startups whose capital is especially precious.

laws_piggy_bankWhile certainly a welcome development, it has taken the SEC years to get to this point of merely amending an already existing federal exemption rule. Rules for Title III of the JOBS act, which are particularly targeted at equity crowdfunding, are not yet complete. Unfortunately for small businesses, they must continue to wait which leads to opportunities lost and jobs not created. While the SEC and others may want to protect small investors from losses and scams, it is ironic that people can currently choose to risk their savings in a host of other ways, such as gambling (including state sponsored lotteries no less!), yet when it comes to making investments they cannot be trusted. Rather than taking a precautionary approach where citizens, entrepreneurs and investors need permission for any new financial innovation, the SEC and others should let people experiment on their own, letting them succeed or fail in the process. When unleashed, entrepreneurs have given us incredible innovations in a host of areas in our lives, financial markets and capital raising should be no different.
