Markets Sniper

Data from the People's Bank of China shows its #gold reserves rose by 5 tonnes in March, the largest monthly increase since February 2025. This also extends its monthly increases to 17 consecutive months. Its gold holdings now total 2,313 tonnes.

BREAKING: Russia just sold physical gold from its central bank reserves for the first time in 25 years. And then Putin signed a decree banning the export of refined gold bars over 100 grams. Selling gold while banning gold exports. That sounds contradictory until you understand the mechanism. The Central Bank of Russia sold 300,000 troy ounces in January and 200,000 in February 2026 per CBR and MinFin data reported by bne IntelliNews. Total: 500,000 ounces, roughly 15 tonnes, worth approximately 3.5 trillion rubles. Reserves dropped to 74.3 million ounces, a four-year low. Russia is not selling gold because it is desperate. Russia is selling gold because yuan is more useful than gold when you need rubles for a war budget, and converting yuan to rubles has become nearly impossible through the banking system. Here is the part the market has not connected. Russia receives enormous yuan inflows. Roughly 80 to 90 percent of Russia-China bilateral trade now settles in yuan or rubles per Carnegie and Trade Data Monitor. Russian banks hold over $60 billion in yuan assets. The yuan has replaced the dollar as Russia’s primary foreign currency. But yuan cannot pay Russian soldiers or fund domestic military procurement. That requires rubles. On March 18, the Central Bank of Russia exhausted its RMB 5 billion yuan swap facility. Demand for this facility was zero a year ago. Overnight yuan borrowing rates on the Moscow Exchange spiked above 20 percent per the Moscow Times and Sovcombank data. Chinese banks have been tightening compliance on Russian transactions due to fear of US secondary sanctions, with processing delays reaching 18 days in some cases. Russia is drowning in yuan it cannot spend domestically. Gold solves this. The CBR sells physical gold bars on the domestic market. Buyers pay in rubles. The rubles go directly into the federal budget. No yuan conversion needed. No printing press inflation. No dependence on Chinese banking compliance. Gold at roughly $4,400 per ounce means Russia is monetizing its reserves at record prices, extracting maximum ruble value per ounce sold. The May 1 export ban completes the logic. Deputy Finance Minister Moiseev stated the rationale explicitly: gold bars had become a tool for capital flight and shadow economy transactions, functioning as an illicit foreign exchange substitute. The ban on bars over 100 grams keeps the physical metal inside Russia while allowing the CBR to continue domestic sales for budget liquidity. Banks are exempt. Now connect this to the broader architecture. China tolerates Russia’s gold sales because they stabilize a partner whose fiscal collapse would disrupt China’s primary overland energy supply. Russia stabilized by gold sales remains a reliable supplier of discounted oil and gas settled in yuan. The trade loop stays intact. The ruble bridge stays funded. The de-dollarization testbed keeps running. This is not “Russia dumping gold in panic.” This is a sovereign state operating a dual-currency regime where yuan handles trade and gold handles fiscal liquidity, because the banking infrastructure connecting the two currencies has been deliberately degraded by the same sanctions architecture that was supposed to isolate Russia from global markets. The sanctions created the yuan dependency. The yuan dependency created the ruble liquidity gap. The liquidity gap created the gold sales. The gold sales fund the war. The war sustains the Hormuz crisis. The Hormuz crisis accelerates yuan settlement at the strait. The snake is eating its own tail again. Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack