The gold-futures speculators dont command much capital compared to investors vast pools, but they punch way above their weights on gold-price impact. Thats mostly due to the extreme leverage inherent in gold-futures trading. Specs now only need $7,500 cash in their trading accounts for each contract that controls 100 troy ounces of gold. Thats worth $180,000 at $1,800 gold, making for maximum leverage of 24.0x!

24x is huge absolutely, despite not being notably high relative to gold futures history. Specs capital firepower is greatly amplified when running near margin limits. Every speculation dollar used to buy or sell gold futures at 24x leverage affects gold prices 24x more than an investment dollar used to buy or sell gold outright! Specs outsized gold influence is even greater since golds futures price is the world reference one.

So leveraged gold-futures trading bullying gold prices around really affects investors psychology. These consummate momentum players are far more likely to migrate capital into gold when its being driven higher by gold-futures buying. The opposite is also true, gold-futures selling leaves investors apathetic at best and more likely to pull capital back out of gold. The futures-trading tail wags the far-larger investment dog!

Thats the whole story behind golds grinding consolidation since last summer. Periodic bouts of big-to-extreme gold-futures selling flared, briefly hammering gold lower. Those were all driven by specs fears of Fed tightening. The crazy leverage they run necessitates an ultra-myopic focus compressing trading time horizons into only hours or days. At 24x, a mere 4.2% adverse move in gold wipes out 100% of capital risked!

To understand why golds contrary reaction to this weeks uber-hawkish FOMC is super-bullish, you have to remember golds causal chain getting here. This chart superimposes golds price action over the last few years on speculators positioning in gold-futures long and short contracts. That low-resolution data is disclosed weekly in the Commodity Futures Trading Commissions famous Commitments of Traders reports.

Speculators and investors alike have a debilitating immediacy bias, weighting recent price action so heavily they soon forget essential longer-term context. This what-have-you-done-for-me-lately shortsighted focus on the present is why gold has been so out of favor recently. It sure shouldnt be after a pair of mighty bull uplegs peaked in early March 2020 and early August 2020 at huge 42.7% and 40.0% absolute gains!

The latter left gold extremely overbought and ripe for a healthy correction to rebalance sentiment. That unfolded into early March 2021, bottoming at an 18.5% loss. That cleared the decks for gold to resume powering higher again in its next bull upleg. That soon got underway and proved solid, with gold rallying 13.5% by early June. All systems were go for that to grow much larger, but it was derailed by a hawkish Fed.

The FOMC meets eight times per year to adjust monetary policy, about every six weeks. Gold-futures speculators hang on Fed officials every word, looking for clues about whats likely coming. The fortunes of the US dollar are heavily dependent on traders outlooks for Fed easing and tightening. Since gold is a competing world currency, it tends to move in lockstep opposition motivating futures speculators to trade in-line.

Golds recent woes were spawned by mid-Junes FOMC meeting. Neither that FOMC statement nor the Fed chair in his subsequent press conference hinted at slowing the Feds colossal QE money printing or hiking rates, there was no official hawkishness. But quarterly at every other meeting the FOMC releases a supplementary Summary of Economic Projections document, which includes the infamous dot plots.

Those are unofficial individual projections from top Fed officials for federal-funds-rate levels in coming years. The Fed chair himself warned about the dots in his press conference that very day. Theyre not a Committee forecast, theyre not a plan. the dots are not a great forecaster of future rate moves dots to be taken with a big grain of salt. Jerome Powell warned traders to ignore the almost-always-wrong dot plot.

That day merely a third of top Fed officials forecast maybe two quarter-point rate hikes way out into year-end 2023! In market terms that may as well have been an eternity away. But the US Dollar Index surged dramatically on that initial intimation of distant-future rate hikes, unleashing extreme gold-futures selling. Over three trading days starting with the FOMC, gold plunged a brutal 5.2% on a huge 1.9% USDX rally.

CoT reporting weeks for specs gold-futures positioning end on Tuesdays. The CoT week straddling that fateful mid-June FOMC meeting saw these traders liquidate an enormous 24.0k long contracts while short selling another 4.9k! Anything over 20k on either the long or short side in any single CoT week is huge. Together that serious puking added up to the equivalent of 89.7 metric tons of gold selling, too much to digest.

The gold-futures specs were solely to blame for that mid-summer gold plunge, investors were actually buyers. As discussed in my gold-investment-apathy essay last week, the best high-resolution proxy for global gold investment demand is the daily holdings changes in the dominant GLD SPDR Gold Shares and IAU iShares Gold Trust gold exchange-traded funds. They actually enjoyed a nice build in that span.

During those same three trading days after mid-Junes hawkish-dots surprise, GLD+IAU holdings climbed 0.6% or 9.2t. Rising holdings reveal gold buying, stock-market capital migrating into the yellow metal. But golds sharp plunge back below its critical 200-day-moving-average upleg support unleashed major psychological damage that has festered since. That single event broke the back of mounting gold bullishness.

But gold-futures speculators capital is very finite, so major buying or selling quickly exhausts itself. Gold started recovering in July, regaining its 200dma. Yet Fed-hawkishness-driven gold-futures selling soon flared again in early August, on the granddaddy of all market-moving economic reports. The latest US monthly jobs proved better than expected, leaving traders more convinced the Fed would have to soon tighten.

The USDX surged 0.8% over a couple trading days starting on that Jobs Friday, unleashing gold-futures selling intense enough to bludgeon gold 4.1% lower. That included a rare Sunday-evening gold-futures shorting attack. During the CoT week straddling that second summer gold plunge, specs short-sold an epic 35.7k contracts or the equivalent of 110.9t of gold! That was the third-largest CoT week of shorting ever.

But as extreme gold-futures selling is never sustainable, gold quickly recovered and regained all its jobs-report losses by early September. Then another upside surprise in more economic data shook loose yet more gold-futures selling. Mid-month US retail sales beat expectations, likely on rising prices since that data isnt adjusted for inflation. That left traders more convinced the Fed would have to soon start tightening.

Specs again freaked out, spewing enough gold-futures selling to hammer gold 2.2% lower that day as the USDX surged 0.4%. Investors werent shaken, as GLD+IAU holdings enjoyed a slight 0.1% or 1.5t build that day. In the CoT week straddling that third summer gold selloff, specs dumped 21.6k total contracts on both sides of the trade. That added up to the equivalent of 67.2t of gold jettisoned in that short span.

The FOMC was meeting again the following week in late September, and was widely expected to lay out a timeline for starting to slow its colossal money printing from its fourth quantitative-easing campaign. In that very FOMC statement itself, the upcoming QE4 taper was pre-announced. Leveraged gold-futures speculators feared another ugly taper tantrum like back in June 2013 when the QE3 taper was announced.

That original QE taper hadnt been telegraphed in advance, so it shocked traders at the time. In seven trading days starting with that FOMC meeting, gold collapsed a brutal 12.3%! In a couple essays in mid- and late-September 2021, I argued that golds QE4 taper tantrum had largely already happened. Those bouts of extreme gold-futures selling last summer in anticipation of Fed tightening mostly exhausted its potential.

Over the next week or so after that late-September FOMC meeting, gold still swooned a bit further with a 2.8% loss on a 1.3% USDX surge. Specs had dumped another 22.5k gold-futures longs and shorts in that FOMC-straddling CoT week, the equivalent of 70.0t of gold. Investors were starting to worry a little, with GLD+IAU holdings slipping 0.7% or 10.2t in that span. That was still a small fraction of futures selling.

Yet again inherently-limited gold-futures selling soon petered out, so gold rebounded in October. At its next meeting in early November, the FOMC officially launched its QE4 taper. The massive $120b per month of QE4 money printing would be reduced by $15b each month until it was finished. At that pace, QE4s bond monetizations would finally end by June. That tapering would add on another $420b to QE4s size.

By the time the dust settled, QE4 would have ballooned to an inconceivably-colossal $5.1t! As of that QE4-taper day, fully 19/20ths of QE4 had happened in just 20.3 months since March 2020s pandemic-lockdown stock panic. Fed officials had feared its negative wealth effect would spawn a full-blown depression, so they started printing money like there was no tomorrow. The Feds balance sheet skyrocketed 106.2%!

The goofy gold-futures speculators should never have assumed QE4 tapering is bearish for gold. Merely slowing the pace of money printing leaves that vast deluge of $5.1t of freshly-conjured US dollars still in the economy. This quickly-doubled money supply competing for and bidding up the prices on far-slower-growing goods and services is the sole reason inflation is raging out of control. Tapering leaves QE4 intact.

That monetary deluge can only be unwound by quantitative tightening, the Fed selling the bonds it bought in QE4 to destroy the trillions of dollars of money wished into existence. QT isnt even on the table, since it would crash these lofty QE-levitated US stock markets. Maybe gold-futures specs started to realize this after early Novembers FOMC meeting, or maybe their selling firepower had simply been exhausted.

Whatever the reason, huge gold-futures buying erupted in the CoT week straddling that formal QE4-taper launch. Relieved that gold didnt plunge on that news, specs flooded back into longs adding a gargantuan 34.2k contracts. That along with slight short covering added up to the equivalent of 110.8t of gold buying! That helped propel gold 8.2% higher by mid-November, despite Fed officials talking tougher on tightening.

Unfortunately specs positioning in gold-futures longs grew overextended, so a rebalancing selloff soon erupted after Biden renominated Jerome Powell for another Fed-chair term. With investors still missing in action, big gold-futures selling hammered the yellow metal lower. Investors dont return until gold-futures buying drives gold high enough for long enough to convince them upside momentum is back, which hadnt happened.

Between mid-June and this week, all golds significant volatility was fully explainable by gold-futures selling and buying! Huge gold-futures selling had flared on distant-future rate hikes, better-than-expected US economic data, and the QE4-taper pre-announcement. But that reversed to extreme gold-futures buying when the FOMC actually kicked off the QE4 taper. Yet how would gold weather soaring rate-hike odds?

Theres no doubt gold-futures specs were worried heading into this weeks uber-hawkish FOMC meeting. Would some surprise in the FOMC statement, dot plot, or Powells post-meeting press conference spark another bout of heavy gold-futures selling? Fears of that left gold relatively-low technically, on the verge of a breakdown this week if more selling erupted. I argued the contrarian side in our weekly newsletter Tuesday.

On FOMC eve this week I pointed out that federal-funds futures were already pricing in plenty of rate hikes next year, so hawkish dots shouldnt be a surprise. Markets were expecting the first quarter-point hike in May 2022, with better-than-even odds for the second by mid-June. Thus hawkish dots should prove another big sell-the-rumor-buy-the-news event for gold like late Septembers QE4-taper pre-announcement.

This Wednesday the FOMC indeed doubled the pace of its QE4 taper as expected, ramping that to a $30b-per-month reduction in money printing starting in January. That meant QE4 will be finished a few months earlier in March, paving the way for rate hikes sooner. And the accompanying dot plot was every-bit-as-hawkish as feared. The previous late-September one barely had one rate hike in 2022 and another in 2023.

But the raging-if-not-runaway inflation unleashed by this profligate Feds insane QE4 money printing has finally galvanized Fed officials into thinking about acting. So in this weeks new dot plot, their individual projections revealed fully three rate hikes in 2022 then another three following that in 2023! That was one of the most-dramatic pulling forwards of and intensifying a coming rate-hike cycle that has ever been witnessed.

So with a new rate-hike cycle looming larger and faster than almost anyone imagined just a few months ago, gold-futures speculators had every excuse to run for the hills. But they didnt in the wake of one of the most-hawkish FOMC meetings on record! Whether they expected such a huge jump in coming rate hikes or their selling firepower had already dwindled too much, they stood their ground so gold rallied a bit.

The contrast between golds reaction to the mid-June and mid-December FOMC meetings was stunning. Last summer gold plunged 5.2% in several trading days on the dots showing two potential rate hikes way out into year-end 2023. This week gold rallied in the wake of new dots revealing three imminent rate hikes starting next spring with another three following in 2023! Golds resiliency in this test is super-bullish.

That implies speculators are mostly done dumping gold futures regardless of what the Fed does. And that sure makes sense. QE4 is now running $4,922b over 26.9 months, of which $4,506b came during the 21.4 months since March 2020s stock panic. QE tapering leaves that vast monetary excess baked into the system, continuing to bid up prices. Gold has been the ultimate monetary-inflation hedge for millennia.

Its hard to imagine a more-bullish environment for gold than with a rapidly-more-than-doubled money supply. Gold was averaging about $1,575 in early 2020 before the stock panic, and all the Feds crazy money printing since should eventually fuel gold more than doubling in proportion. That would take it up near $3,150, way higher than todays piddling $1,800. And Fed-rate-hike cycles are no threat to gold either.

The last one ran from December 2015 to December 2018, when the Fed hiked its FFR nine times for 225 basis points total. Eight of those hikes were grouped together in streaks of three and five done at consecutive FOMC meetings, like Fed officials are implying in 2022. During the exact span of that rate-hike cycle, gold rallied 17.0%. During the 11 previous rate-hike cycles since 1971, gold averaged strong 26.9% gains!

So theres nothing inherently bearish for gold about the Fed raising its federal-funds-rate target. And with QE4 now scheduled to top $5.0t by March when this taper ends, gold should power dramatically higher in coming years on this radically-unprecedented monetary excess. Far more money will remain available to chase and bid up prices on relatively-much-less goods, services, and commodities including gold itself!

Gold successfully weathering this weeks uber-hawkish FOMC meeting showing a major rate-hike cycle looming dead-ahead off the bow is momentous. Gold-futures speculators finally seem to fully expect and accept big Fed tightening coming in 2022 and 2023. Thus they should be less excitable on Fed-hawkish news and economic data going forward. So the secular gold bull their selling delayed should be resuming.

Fundamentally-superior mid-tier and junior gold stocks remain the biggest beneficiaries of much-higher gold prices ahead. They rallied sharply with gold into mid-November, but were dragged back down to their stop losses on this latest bout of heavy gold-futures selling. Our stoppings averaged out to neutral, fully recovering our capital. So weve been aggressively redeploying buying back in low in our weekly newsletter.

The bottom line is gold weathered this weeks uber-hawkish FOMC meeting with flying colors. Not only did the Fed double its QE4-tapering pace, but top Fed officials dramatically pulled forward and intensified their rate-hike outlook. A major new hiking cycle now looms dead-ahead, likely to start within months. Yet instead of wilting on this hawkish revelation, gold-futures speculators finally accepted it and resumed buying.

QE tapering isnt bearish for gold, as it leaves in place the many trillions of dollars of QE money printed. Those directly drive price inflation, competing for far-slower-growing goods and services and bidding up their prices. Gold has also rallied strongly on average through the past dozen Fed-rate-hike cycles since 1971. This next one shouldnt prove any different, especially in such a super-bullish environment for gold.

(By Adam Hamilton)

The rest is here:

Gold weathers hawkish Fed - MINING.COM - MINING.com

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A data-driven approach to reputation management that could help trucking companies counter plaintiffs attorneys attacks in trials involving crashes is under development, led by an industry veteran known for crafting technological solutions to vexing problems.

If the trucking industry is adopting all of these amazing technologies, why is it that these trial lawyers are having so much success painting the industry as bad operators? said Steve Bryan, an industry data expert and founder of safety data firm Vigillo, which later was acquired by SambaSafety. Then it hit us, Bryan said. Oh my gosh, its so simple. Its the reputation of motor carriers.

Where Vigillo helped companies manage data used by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrations Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, Bryans new venture Bluewire aims to build on cutting-edge artificial intelligence software to provide carriers and their insurance partners with a scientific, data-driven methodology for protection against the vulnerabilities that lead to what he called reputation-damaging false narratives.

When I left Samba last fall, I started talking to people and bouncing ideas; it just started snowballing, Bryan told Transport Topics. Theres lots of people out there with good services and good products nobodys suggesting we cant keep promoting all the good safety technologies, software and services. But when you put all of this good stuff together, what hit us between the eyes as we started digging in is that the reputation of a motor carrier [is] what the plaintiffs attack.

The company, headquartered in Government Camp, Ore., should be bringing the first iteration of the service to the market in the first quarter next year, Bryan said. He thinks this is just the beginning of a software platform that likely will grow in sophistication over the next 10 years.

Bluewire Chairman and CEO Steve Bryan

Bluewire is designed to provide information to carriers that can be used to counter a tactic used by many plaintiff attorneys called the reptile theory, a strategy aimed at creating fear and anger in juries. The reptile theory dictates that plaintiff attorneys go beyond the accident, and delve deeply into a carriers safety records and procedures to persuade jurors to send a message to the industry with multimillion-dollar verdicts.

The idea is to be proactive and try to head off carriers vulnerabilities, with the ultimate goal of truckers to be able to say to the reptile attorney, Im glad you asked that question, said Doug Marcello, a trucking industry attorney who represents Bluewire.

Marcello

Bryan said Bluewire will feature several levels of data mining to identify a carrier or drivers reputation. First, it will use traditional methods of gaining information from databases using a modular mining application programming interface. From there, it will conduct more sophisticated text mining, extracting raw text data from places such as job board postings, social media posts and other things that are textual in nature.

In addition, Bryan said Bluewire will use artificial intelligence to read tens of thousands of pages of text and make them meaningful.

Thats what we think is a new ingredient in what were doing, he said, but its just one of the kinds of data mining that well do.

We can look for things called sentiment analysis so you can see in these volumes of text that people are focused on certain topics like if theyre being critical of a particular company, or even a particular driver, Bryan added. You can glean from this text mining what their attitudes are about that person or company. You could call our service an ongoing audit of motor carrier weaknesses.

Although the company has not yet made public its pricing structure for prospective clients, Bryan said it will be affordable for large and small motor carriers.

Bluewires level of collaboration and communication within the industry on its technology platform largely will be limited to trucking companies, defense attorneys and insurance companies, and other allied partners that will assist in providing potential solutions.

When problems are identified, Bluewire can refer a carrier to one of its partners such as McLeod Software, Drivewyze, Kelly Anderson Group, TranSharpe Solutions, UVeye and others for solutions. Bluewire and McLeod are excited to explore ways all this available structured and unstructured data can be used within the Bluewire applications and tools to help defend our customers against nuclear verdicts, McLeod said in a statement.

Sandberg

Bluewires directors and advisory board consist of some of the industrys longtime safety advocates, such as Annette Sandberg, a Davenport, Wash., defense attorney, consultant and former administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Bill Kanasky Jr., senior vice president of litigation psychology for Courtroom SciencesInc., said, One of the biggest reasons for nuclear verdicts is that the plaintiffs bar is extraordinarily well-coordinated, and they communicate really well together. They dont compete with each other. Whereas, the defense is the complete polar opposite in that regard.

Kanasky is a member of Bluewires advisory board.

Bluewire is a very secure community where members can come in we have on the advisory board several experts from various areas of trucking and transportation and really share solutions and ideas and support each other and increase that communication, Kanasky said. Thats really, really important.

I think the whole concept is to really get trucking companies more prepared, Sandberg said. A lot of companies are doing really good things, but I think they get caught flat-footed when they get handed one of these lawsuits, and suddenly they forget theres a really good story they could tell.

Redefining the Reptile Theory by Transport Topics on Scribd

Nuclear verdicts are one of the biggest issues in trucking today, said Mike Card, president of Combined Transport of Central Point, Ore., and a member of Bluewires board of directors. I could have one minor issue that our driver gets involved with that could put us out of business in the blink of an eye. Its the single biggest fear I have when I close my eyes at night.

Probably most important is using the data analytics that Vigillo and Steve Bryan do so well [to] show jurors that this doesnt deserve a nuclear verdict, that this company is a positive force for society. There are other safety people out there, but this is a different animal.

Brenda Lantz, a commercial motor vehicle researcher at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute in Fargo, N.D., said, I have never heard of anybody doing this type of work before.

Lantz has has worked with Bryan for years and, as a strong advocate for truck safety, she joined Bluewires advisory board because she thought the work would be valuable in terms of working with trucking companies and trying to improve safety.

Enos

Said Paul Enos, president of the Nevada Trucking Association and chairman of American Trucking Associations Trucking Association Executives Council: Its looking at what your vulnerabilities are on the internet and being able to get rid of some of those before youre in the frying pan.

But what I really am excited about the company is that it provides a forum for trucking companies, insurance companies, our defense attorneys, and state trucking associations. Its going to protect us better as an industry.

Bryan believes Bluewire is a first-of-its-kind service but realizes innovation moves fast.

You always have to be careful to say we have no competition, because theres always competition, he said. Theres always people that will be waiting in the wings. Once a pioneer approves a concept, we will definitely find competition later on. Thats fine. Thats what makes America great.

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Bluewire Aims to Save Carriers' Reputations - Transport Topics Online

Dublin, Dec. 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Military Intelligence Analytics Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Military intelligence (MILINT) AI is a growing phenomenon that generates conceptual transformation in future battlefield concepts of operations (ConOps), gathered by demand for AI-analytics-based sensors paradigm. It increases intelligence resources in defense budgets, and becomes a strategic national asset that reflects deeply international superpower relations.

With its strategic implications on armed forces around the globe, intelligence warfare will take place across a multi-domain battlespace with further integration of air, maritime, land, and cyber-based intelligence analytics domains.

New APIs are also driving these developments in MILINT requirements, such as NLP, data mining, real-time analysis, and automatic target recognition (ATR) based on AI. These systems will both need to be integrated into current IT and distribution systems, as well as analytics APIs that need to manage large amounts of data for operational use and demands.

This study covers the quantitative and qualitative discussion of the key aspects of the trends in the military intelligence market, including drivers and restrains, market commercial ecosystem, and technological overview, including leading APIs and main projects.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

2. Growth Opportunity Analysis - Military Intelligence Analytics

3. Overview

AI Era in MILINT - A Rapid Change

The Substantial Challenge for Intelligence Agencies

Revolution or Evolution in the Intelligence Process

Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning and Deep Learning

Market Definitions

MILINT Analytics 2020-2035

Deep Learning Algorithms that Execute Diverse Tasks

4. Forecast Assumptions

5. Strategic Scope

Story continues

6. MILINT Analytics Impact on ConOps

Trends Impacting Demand of MILINT Analytics 2020-2030

MILINT Analytics Catalyze Changing Military ConOps

How Battlefield Trends Impact MILINT AI Demands

AI MILINT Surge Dilemmas

Revolution or Evolution - From Data Lake to Data Warehouse

MILINT Analytics Architecture

7. External Challenges - Drivers and Restraints: Total Big Data Analytics Market

MILINT Analytics - Implementation of Digital Solutions

Growth Driver Analysis for Military Intelligence Analytics

Growth Restraint Analysis for Military Intelligence Analytics

8. Application Diversity

MILINT Analytics Schematic Segments Architecture

Definitions of AI Structures

MILINT Analytics Key Technologies and Applications - Methods of Extracting Valuable Intelligence from Unstructured Data

Deep Learning Algorithms that Execute Diverse Tasks

Diligent Resources to Support AI Applications

Case Study 1 - Social Network Analysis: The Boko Haram Terrorist Organization (Central Africa)

Case Study 2 - Automatic Target Recognition and Acquisition (ATR)

Case Study 3 - Situational Awareness

9. Market Overview and Analysis

Key Growth Metrics for Military Intelligence Analytics

Forecast Assumptions and Discussion

Total Spending Forecast 2020-2030 - Military Intelligence Analytics

Regional Spending Forecast 2020-2030 - Military Intelligence Analytics

Forecast Discussion

Current Main Programs in the US - Military Intelligence Analytics

Examples of Contracts 2020-2024 - Military Intelligence Analytics

Key Competitors - Military Intelligence Analytics

10. Mergers & Acquisitions - Military Intelligence Analytics

11. Growth Opportunities and Companies to Action - Military Intelligence Analytics

Growth Opportunity 1: Narrow AI Short-term Focus for IC

Growth Opportunity 2: AGI - Mid-term Focus for Human-like Performance

Growth Opportunity 3: AI-as-a-service (AI-aaS) Across MILINT Verticals for Harnessing Treasure Troves of Data to Improve Efficiency

Growth Opportunity 4: Intelligence Supremacy Rivals for Enhancing US MILINT AI Capabilities

Growth Opportunity 5: MILINT NLP to Automatically Classify and Match Incoming Data

Growth Opportunity 6: Training Data for Building Trust in MILINT AI Algorithms

Strategic Imperatives to Achieve Growth Within the DoD Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wed0am

About ResearchAndMarkets.comResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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Visionary Perspective of AI is the Next Big Military Intelligence Strategic Advantage - Yahoo Finance UK

Though it briefly popped above $50,000 on Sunday, the price of bitcoin retreated at the start of the week.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value is trading at around $47,358 as of Monday afternoon, according to Coin Metrics.

Other top cryptocurrencies are also down, including ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency. Ether is currently trading at around $3,813.

Along with price movement, here are five important things that happened in the cryptocurrency space last week.

On Wednesday, crypto industry executives testified before the House Financial Services Committee.

The hearing was called by committee leader Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., in an effort to understand crypto assets better and discuss potential regulation.

"Because of their nascent stage of development and unique underlying technology, digital assets trade in markets that are fundamentally different from traditional financial markets," Alesia Haas, Coinbase chief financial officer, said in her testimony. "As a result, existing regulatory regimes often do not accommodate this new technology."

The discussion was overall positive, rather than contentious, Jeremy Allaire, chief executive officer of Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin USDC, said after the hearing.

Also on Wednesday, Kickstarter announced plans to create a decentralized version of its crowdfunding platform.

"We're supporting the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter's core functionality," the company wrote in a blog post. "This will live on a public blockchain, and be available for collaborators, independent contributors, and even Kickstarter competitors, from all over the world to build upon, connect to, or use."

The new protocol does not yet have a name, but Kickstarter plans to move its site onto the protocol in 2022,Bloomberg reported.

Developers activated Arrow Glacier, an upgrade to theEthereumnetwork,on Thursday.

The upgrade pushed back the so-called "difficulty bomb," which could potentially slow or freeze mining on Ethereum, back to June 2022. By that time, developers hope to have transitioned Ethereum from a proof-of-work model for mining to a proof-of-stake model.

Developers plan to introduce the "bomb" to motivate the transition to proof-of-stake, since it will make proof-of-work mining significantly more difficult.

Delaying the "bomb" gave developers more time to work on Ethereum 2.0, or Eth2, before the shift.

To learn more about Eth2, read here.

TheConstitutionDAOannounced in November that it would shut down afterbeing outbid for a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution during a Sotheby's auction. But the DAO's token, called PEOPLE, continues to surge.

PEOPLE hit an all-time high of 17 cents on Sunday, according to Coin Gecko. It's up over 152% in the last seven days.

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90% of bitcoin's supply has been mined and 4 other crypto updates you should know - CNBC