China is buying one of London's biggest gold vaults
The Chinese state-owned ICBC Standard Bank, the world's biggest bank by assets, has agreed to buy Barclays precious metals storage business, including its state-of-the-art storage facility in London.
The deal will boost China's access to London's gold market, and expand the country's role in the gold business.
The vault is in a secret location in London, and can store 2,000 tonnes of gold and other precious metals. At current prices, up to $90 billion worth of gold could be stored inside.
Barclays has previously announced a move away from the precious metal business. The bank opened the facility in 2012.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/16/news/china-buys-london-gold-vault/index.html
This is part of a larger pattern of China's gold buying in recent years.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/10/investing/china-gold/
It could reflect a growin lack of confidence in the world's currency markets, as practically every major national currency is undergoing rampant inflation of their money supplies.
One question to cryptocurrency speculators is whether cryptocurrencies will be included in this pattern of commodity acquisition. If so, which cryptocurrencies besides bitcoin will be part of the acquisition process? Some that come to mind are ethereum, assuming its technical challenges are sufficiently addressed. Monero may also be another included in this process, except that proof of ownership is antithetical to the function of the coin. This may be a reason it is avoided by the Chinese government and affiliated institutional buyers.
we hope bitgold will be included and bitshares surpass bitcoin's market cap within hours...