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By Tom Mitchelhill of CoinTelegraph

The world’s largest settlement system, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), and blockchain oracle Chainlink have wrapped up a pilot program with several major banking firms in the United States to increase traditional finance fund tokenization.

The Smart NAV Pilot program was conducted to standardize a method of providing net asset value (NAV) data of funds across blockchains using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), according to a May 16 DTCC report.

“The pilot found that by delivering structured data on-chain and creating standard roles and processes, foundational data could be embedded into a multitude of on-chain use cases, such as tokenized funds and ‘bulk consumer’ smart contracts, which are contracts that hold data for multiple funds,” it wrote.

These capabilities could support future industry exploration, as well as powering “numerous downstream use cases” like brokerage applications, more automated data dissemination and easier access to historical data for funds, it said.

The pilot helped establish better-automated data management, limited impact on existing market practices for traditional financial institutions, enabled clients to retrieve historical data without manual record keeping and provided broader application programming interface (API) solutions for price data, the DTCC’s report noted.

The United States banking firms that participated in the pilot include American Century Investments, BNY Mellon, Edward Jones, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, JPMorgan, MFS Investment Management, Mid Atlantic Trust, State Street and U.S. Bank.

LINK has gained over 130% in the last 12 months amid a broader uptick in the crypto market.

The DTCC report comes amid wider enthusiasm for real-world asset tokenization from major traditional financial institutions.

On March 19, BlackRock launched a tokenized money market fund dubbed BUIDL on the Ethereum network, offering native U.S. dollar yields.

The fund allows investors to purchase tokens representing shares in the fund, which invests in assets like U.S. Treasury bills. The fund is referred to as the “digital liquidity fund” because it is digitized on the Ethereum blockchain and operates as an ERC-20 token called BUIDL.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) made a major, and tragic, announcement on Friday. IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military has recovered the bodies of three hostages from the Gaza Strip.

The deceased include the body of Shani Louk, the 22-year old girl filmed on Oct.7 lying half-naked, mangled and unconscious in the bed of a pick-up truck while being taken into the Gaza Strip. The military also identified Itzhak Gelerenter and Amit Buskila.

“Hagari says the bodies were recovered in an overnight operation carried out by the military and Shin Bet,” the statement said.

All three had been kidnapped from the Supernova music festival near Re’im on the morning of the heinous terror assault of Oct. 7. They are believed to have died during the events of Oct. 7, murdered by Hamas.

Shocking images and video of Louk’s body being paraded around by Hamas had immediately gone viral as news of the terror attack unfolded on the weekend of Oct.7. For weeks there had been speculation over whether she survived the ordeal, or if the video actually showed her deceased, as men sat on top of her.

The family says it is a relief to finally get her remains to Israel:

Shani Louk’s father Nissim tells Channel 12 while today’s announcement that the IDF has recovered her body was difficult to receive, it was also news that he had been waiting for. The family was long ago notified that she had been killed on October 7.

Nissim says military representatives showed him a picture of Shani’s body when they provided the news this morning.

Other than saying it was an “overnight operation” – few other details were given by the military as to exactly where the bodies were recovered or the specific mission details involved.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that he is “heartbroken” by the news their deaths have been confirmed. “My wife Sara and I grieve with the families,” he said before vowing “We will return all of our hostages — living and deceased alike.”

The body of Shani Louk has finally been rescued from the hands of her abusers and killers.
A horrible picture of Shani – stripped topless and lying lifeless on the back of a truck – shocked the world and became a symbol of the brutality of Oct 7. May her memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/JBw7u0vmvW

— Sabrina Miller (@SabriSun_Miller) May 17, 2024

“I congratulate our brave forces who, with determined action, returned our sons and daughters home,” Netanyahu continued. His words suggest that the recovery came during a high-risk raid as the IDF continues pressing deeper into southern Gaza, and elsewhere fighting in areas where Hamas has returned, such as in the north.

Netanyahu has long been under immense domestic pressure amid large protests led by hostage victims’ families who have complained that he has ‘forgotten’ the hostages while prioritizing the military aim of eradicating Hamas. The protesters want his government to strike a deal for the return of the rest of the captives.

Authored by Tristan Greene via CoinTelegraph.com,

OpenAI’s GPT-4, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, has passed the Turing test, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. 

The Turing test is a nebulous benchmark for AI systems purported to determine how human-like a conversational model is. The term was coined on account of famed mathematician Alan Turing who proposed the test in 1950.

According to Turing, at the time, an AI system capable of generating text that fools humans into thinking they’re having a conversation with another human would demonstrate the capacity for “thought.”

Nearly 75 years later, the person largely credited with conceiving the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency has interpreted recent preprint research out of the University of California San Diego as indicating that a production model has finally passed the Turing test.

Source: Vitalik Buterin

Researchers at the University of California San Diego recently published a preprint paper titled “People cannot distinguish GPT-4 from a human in a Turing test.” In it, they had approximately 500 human test subjects interact with humans and AI models in a blind test to determine whether they could figure out which was which. 

According to the research, humans mistakenly determined that GPT-4 was a “human” 56% of the time. This means that a machine fooled humans into thinking it was one of them more often than not.

Vitalik Buterin’s take

According to Buterin, an AI system capable of fooling more than half of the humans it interacts with qualifies as passing the Turing test.

Buterin added:

“It means people’s ability to tell if it’s a human or a bot is basically a coin flip!”

Buterin qualified his statement by saying, “Ok not quite, because humans get guessed as humans 66% of the time vs 54% for bots, but a 12% difference is tiny; in any real-world setting that basically counts as passing.”

He also later added, in response to commentary on his original cast, that the Turing test is “by far the single most famous socially accepted milestone for ‘AI is serious shit now’. So it’s good to remind ourselves that the milestone has now been crossed.”

The Turing test

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the Turing test are not necessarily related, despite the two terminologies often being conflated. Turing formulated his test based on his mathematical acumen and predicted a scenario where AI could fool humans into thinking it was one of them through conversation.

It bears mention that the Turing test is an ephemeral construct with no true benchmark or technical basis. There is no scientific consensus as to whether machines are capable of “thought” as living organisms are or as to how such a feat would be measured. Simply put, AGI or an AI’s ability to “think” isn’t currently measurable or defined by the scientific or engineering communities.

Turing made his conceptual predictions long before the advent of token-based artificial intelligence systems and the onset of generative adversarial networks, the precursor to today’s generative AI systems.

Artificial general intelligence

Complicating matters further is the idea of AGI, which is often associated with the Turing test. In scientific parlance, a “general intelligence” is one that should be capable of any intelligence-based feat. This precludes humans, as no person has shown “general” capabilities across the spectrum of human intellectual endeavor. Thus, it follows that an “artificial general intelligence” would feature thought capabilities far beyond that of any known human.

That being said, it’s clear that GPT-4 doesn’t fit the bill of true “general intelligence” in the strictly scientific sense. However, that hasn’t stopped denizens of the AI community from using the term “AGI” to indicate any AI system capable of fooling a significant number of humans.

In the current culture, it’s typical to see terms and phrases such as “AGI,” “humanlike,” and “passes the Turing test” to refer to any AI system that outputs content comparable to the content produced by humans.

A former diversity program manager at Facebook and Nike has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing more than $5 million from Facebook and Nike while working as a DEI executive. 

Barbara Furlow-Smiles has been accused of ” an elaborate scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fictitious paperwork, and cash kickbacks”, a press release from the Department of Justice said this week.

U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan commented: “Furlow-Smiles shamelessly violated her position of trust as a DEI executive at Facebook to steal millions from the company utilizing a scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fake invoices, and cash kickbacks.”

“After being terminated from Facebook, she brazenly continued the fraud as a DEI leader at Nike, where she stole another six-figure sum from their diversity program. Her prison sentence reflects the consequences of her decision to orchestrate an intricate scheme to defraud two of her employers for personal profit,” he added.

Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta added: “As Lead Strategist at Facebook, Furlow-Smiles’ employer put an extreme amount of trust in her, only to have that trust completely violated.”

Farley continued: “After she was fired, she carelessly continued her fraudulent schemes at Nike, thinking she was untouchable. As a result, she not only threw away a lucrative career, but will serve time behind bars for her excessive greed.”

The DOJ commented in their release that Furlow-Smiles served as Lead Strategist and Global Head of Employee Resource Groups and Diversity Engagement at Facebook (now Meta) from January 2017 to September 2021. According to U.S. Attorney Buchanan, Furlow-Smiles misused her position to defraud Facebook by making payments for services never rendered and directing recipients to kick back the money to her. 

She linked PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts to her Facebook credit cards to pay associates for nonexistent services, then submitted false expense reports to hide the fraud. The kickbacks were often returned to her in cash or through account transfers, with some payments concealed in packages sent by mail. 

Additionally, Furlow-Smiles onboarded vendors owned by friends and associates, approved fraudulent invoices, and received kickbacks from these payments. She recruited numerous individuals, including friends, relatives, and former interns, to participate in the scheme.

After leaving Facebook, Furlow-Smiles worked at Nike as Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion from November 2021 to February 2023, where she was responsible for DEI initiatives and events, including a Juneteenth event in New York.

“In total, Furlow-Smiles stole more than $4.9 million from Facebook and over $120,000 from Nike based on fictitious charges and fraudulent invoices,” the DOJ wrote. “She used the money to fund a luxury lifestyle in California, Georgia, and Oregon.”

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A doctor in Washington state has been fined for prescribing ivermectin against COVID-19. He must also take continuing education classes, according to newly filed documents.

Dr. Wei-Hsung Lin must pay $5,000, according to an order signed by the Washington Medical Commission on May 2.

Ivermectin is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating several conditions, including parasitic worms. Prescribing medicine for unapproved usage is common in the United States, but administration officials have warned against prescribing and using ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment. Regulators have pointed to a database of clinical trials, some of which found ivermectin did not confer a benefit against COVID-19 and some of which found ivermectin was beneficial against the illness.

Dr. Lin, who also signed the order, admitted to prescribing ivermectin to five people without detailing how the prescriptions were off-label, the risks involved, and alternative treatments.

One patient, a 71-year-old female, tested positive for COVID-19 at the emergency room on June 23, 2021. She saw Dr. Lin in a telemedicine visit the following day. He prescribed her 12 milligrams of ivermectin daily for five days after stating that a “substantial body of literature” showed ivermectin was “effective as a one-day therapy or five-day therapy.”

The woman went back to the hospital after taking ivermectin for four days but not seeing improvement. She was ultimately discharged and recovered.

In another case, Dr. Lin prescribed ivermectin to a 69-year-old male for COVID-19. Dr. Lin prescribed extra ivermectin because the man’s wife also had COVID-19. Neither the husband nor wife ended up taking the ivermectin because they went online and “observed the warnings about ivermectin for COVID-19 as well as the possible negative effects for those with heart conditions,” the order states.

Dr. Lin’s treatment was “below standard of care” in part because he did not discuss alternative treatments, according to the document. No alternatives are listed in the document. In 2021, remdesivir was the primary government-approved treatment for some COVID-19 patients.

Authorities also faulted Dr. Lin for not discussing COVID-19 vaccines with his patients.

According to the order, Dr. Lin’s actions constituted unprofessional conduct, defined in state law as “any act involving moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption relating to the practice of the person’s profession, whether the act constitutes a crime or not.”

The order prohibits Dr. Lin from prescribing ivermectin off-label to patients in Washington state and from prescribing any medication or providing care for patients without first establishing a doctor-patient relationship.

It also requires him to review the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UpToDate websites for current COVID-19 guidelines, take continuing medical education classes on preventing, treating, and managing COVID-19 and establishing a doctor-patient relationship, and write two papers of at least 1,000 words describing what he learned from the websites and classes.

The commission or its designee is also going to make annual compliance visits, including reviewing a random selection of records, and says Dr. Lin must appear within 12 months, and subsequently on an annual basis, at a date and location determined by the commission as part of compliance oversight.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said that the conditions are “extremely onerous” and require work that would “enormously increase the burden of practice and probably drive most physicians out of practice altogether.”

“Ivermectin is an extremely safe drug—much safer than most drugs physicians prescribe without all the ‘informed consent’ discussions demanded here,” Dr. Orient told The Epoch Times in an email.

“As to informing patients of alternatives, the reasons patients were calling this doctor was likely that no alternatives were available. It was ‘isolate and go to ER if you get worse.’”

She recommended doctors avoid Washington state if they’re able.

The Washington Medical Commission did not return an inquiry.

Dr. Lin is employed by the Kadlec Regional Medical Center clinic in Richland.

“After being made aware of an alleged violation by one of our providers, we fully cooperated with the Washington State Department of Health throughout their investigation. While Kadlec does not recommend or allow ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19, we respect the rights of patients and physicians to discuss and explore all available treatment options, based on patients’ unique health and medical situations,” a spokesperson for Kadlec told The Epoch Times in an email.

“We remain dedicated to providing high-quality care for all patients we serve, and we are pleased this matter has been resolved.”

If Dr. Lin had contested the allegations, the commission would have heard arguments and then ruled, potentially suspending his license. The commission has already ruled against several doctors who prescribed ivermectin for COVID-19, most recently forbidding pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole from practicing medicine in the state for five years.

“Dr. Lin was willing to fight this all the way but when we looked the risk-reward matrix we felt—and he felt—it was in his best interest to go ahead and settle,” Pete Serrano, an attorney with the Silent Majority Foundation representing Dr. Lin, told The Epoch Times.

“He was ready to kind of close the chapter and move on with his life,” Mr. Serrano added later.

Dr. Lin was initially facing a $25,000 fine and harsher repercussions but negotiations on the settlement ended up reducing some of the penalties.

Dr. Lin can petition to terminate the order in three years.

A heated catfight broke out Thursday evening during a House Oversight Committee hearing, during which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) asked if any of the Democrats present were employing the daughter of Trump Judge Juan Merchan – whose progressive political consulting firm has represented VP Kamala Harris, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and other liberals.

The committee was considering whether Attorney General Merrick Garland should be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to turn over recordings of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur – which the White House exercised executive privilege over earlier this week – when Greene asked the Democrats about Merchan’s daughter.

“I’d like to know if any of the Democrats on this committee are employing Judge Merchan’s daughter,” Greene asked.

“Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” shot back Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-MO).

“Oh, Goldman, that’s right. He’s advising,” Greene said, ignoring Crockett.

“Do you know what we’re here for?” Crockett said back, adding “You know we’re here for AG.”

To which Green said “I don’t think you know what you’re here for … I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.“

This triggered Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who moved to take down Greene’s words, saying “That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person.”

“Are your feelings hurt?” replied Greene.

To which ACO exclaimed “Remove her words down.”

“Aww,” Greene responded.

“Oh girl, baby girl,” AOC shot back. “Don’t even play.”

Following a brief recess, Crockett called a point of order and asked House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) if Greene’s behavior was ok.

“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” said Crockett. “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?“

At this point Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) jumped into the fray, demanding Crockett’s words be removed – to which Crockett exploded into a verbal tirade against Luna, shouting and using profanity.

“Calm down, please calm down,” said Luna. “You’re out of control!”

Watch:

Via SchiffGold.com,

Platinum is entering its second year of substantial deficit, according to the Platinum Quarterly report from the World Platinum Investment Council (WPIC).

Report authors labeled the Q1 deficit of 369k oz “significant” and predicted that the deficit will continue to deepen throughout the rest of the year, hitting 476k oz in total.

“High inflation, interest rates remaining higher for longer, and political uncertainty will weigh on commodity markets and platinum prices,” WPIC researchers said.

“The lower price environment, along with other factors, will continue to weigh on platinum supply during this year.”

Reduction in supply growth is coupled with “resilient” though slightly reduced year-over-year total demand in Q1. Together, these factors have combined to carry platinum prices above $1,000 per ounce this week, passing the four-digit mark for the first time since December of 2023.

South Africa is the top producer of platinum worldwide, supplying 140,000 kg to the global market in 2022 alone. Paul Dunne, Northam CEO, recently told Reuters that South African miners are facing “the worst crisis I have seen in three decades, on a relative basis,” adding that “the squeeze on the industry is severe” as mining companies have slashed thousands of jobs in response to declining profits. The resulting production drops have contributed significantly to the overall 2024 platinum deficit.

Russia, a distant follower at 20,000 kg produced in 2022, has managed to hold production steady year-over-year, despite facing joint economic sanctions from the U.S. and the U.K. Both countries announced in April that the London Metal Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange would no longer trade new aluminum, copper, or nickel produced by Russia. Platinum group metals, including palladium, were specifically excluded from the sanctions due to supply chain sensitivities.

WPIC researchers warn that supply risks will remain a challenge throughout the coming year, resulting in a 58k oz increase in the 2024 predicted deficit since the previous report was released in March.

Meanwhile, amid supply growth reductions, WPIC’s predicted investment demand has been revised upward by nearly double. The change is largely attributed to a rise in Chinese bar and coin demand.

As of 2022, China was the world’s largest platinum consumer, holding 34% of global consumption at 75 metric tons during the year. Among other uses, the precious metal plays a key role in catalytic converters and clean hydrogen production. Increasingly strict green energy regulations in China may partly explain the country’s rising demand for component metals.

Surprisingly, all this change may be good news for farseeing investors.

“The main current challenge for platinum investment is … not the underlying fundamentals, which look the strongest they have for years, but rather one of sentiment,” WPIC researchers concluded, suggesting three reasons why fundamentals and sentiment remain at odds.

Firstly, consumers may worry that increasing vehicle electrification will reduce the use of platinum and associated metals in combustion engines (ICE). WPIC researchers have found, however, that this result is likely to be “negligible through 2030,” as growth in the EV market is not necessarily driven by “cannibalization” of ICE and hybrid vehicles.

Secondly, dipping platinum prices have caused producers to implement aggressive cost-saving measures to offset profit reduction. The scale of these adjustments may reduce the participating firms’ ability to respond to the possibility of increased demand or higher prices, slowing market recovery.

Finally, potential platinum investors have been distracted by the comparatively extraordinary performance of gold, which WPIC researchers say is doing unexpectedly well amid a high-interest rate environment. Gold prices are setting records this year, with spot prices remaining comfortably above $2,000 per ounce throughout most of the last six months.

“Overall for platinum, however, the market’s lack of conviction will in time be addressed by higher-for-longer automotive demand and ongoing supply challenges,” WPIC researchers said.

“…Platinum’s investment case continues to be compelling despite economic headwinds.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

President Joe Biden polls at or below 40 percent approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected.

Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than the presidency, which apparently allows for a three-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country.

So how does Biden become renominated and reelected, as polls show he is behind in almost every critical swing state on nearly every issue?

Answer: not by campaigning, not by championing his record, and especially not by doubling down on his neo-socialist and now unpopular agendas.

Instead, his campaign is focused on four other strategies to beat former President Donald Trump.

First, left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House.

Even if Trump is not convicted by blue-state prosecutors, in blue-state courtrooms, in front of blue-state juries, he will lose critical campaigning time.

Trump may end up paying out $1 billion in legal fees and fines. At 76, the monotonous days in court are designed to destroy him financially, physically, and mentally.

Biden and his operatives know that, in the long term, they may have fatally damaged the American legal system with such judicial sabotage. But short-term, they hope to destroy Trump before the ballots are cast.

Second, in his fourth year, Biden is suddenly selling government favors to special-interest voting blocs, or hoping to bring short-term relief to voters at the expense of long-term damage to the nation.

For elite college students and graduates, there are now billions of dollars in student-loan cancellations, despite a Supreme Court ruling declaring such targeted contractual amnesties illegal.

For consumers, before the election, Biden will likely drain the last drops from the critical Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices — now sky-high due to his previous disastrous green policies.

If that is not enough, Biden has ordered Ukraine not to hit Russian oil facilities to avoid panic in the global petroleum markets before early and mail-in balloting begin.

Biden will quietly jawbone the Federal Reserve Bank to lower interest rates and reinflate the economy, despite his own creation of hyperinflation that caused interest rates to rise in the first place.

He will pander to Arab-American voters in swing-state Michigan by cutting arms deliveries to Israel, even as it seeks to destroy the killers of Oct. 7.

And if that mollification is not sufficient to win Michigan, he will suddenly slap higher tariffs on imported Chinese electrical vehicles to win back apostate union auto workers.

Three, the left learned after 2016 that the only way to beat Trump is to change the way Americans vote.

So under the cover of the COVID-19 lockdown, the left sued in critical states to reduce Election Day to a mere construct, while 70 percent of voters mailed in their ballots or voted by early, rolling balloting over many weeks.

The key was the inability to fully authenticate votes, given the old practice of showing up on Election Day and presenting an ID was declared “racist.”

Four, Biden, as he did in 2020, will outsource his campaign to the media, 95 percent of which is left-wing. Talking televised heads will claim Biden is “sharp as a knife” while focusing on Trump’s tweets, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and lurid but irrelevant testimonies that permeate Trump’s court appearances.

Trump will continue to hold weekend-long, massive 100,000-person rallies, even in blue states. Meanwhile, Biden’s fixers in the media, administrative state, and legal community will counter that even with no crowds and no campaigning, Biden can win through 24/7 nonstop “October Surprises” — all summer long.

So expect more false “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” and “Jan. 6 insurrection” hoaxes and their new replacements designed to smother the airwaves with salacious scandals nonstop.

Biden’s fading tenure is similar to the last sad months of Woodrow Wilson’s second term, when in 1919-20, the country was assured that a bedridden president was somehow hard at work, even as his wife, doctors, and handlers kept everyone else away.

Biden’s keepers do not seem to care about the president’s own failing health or his dismal polls. They discount his rare, anemic, and disastrous public appearances. They laugh off the huge Trump rallies.

And they certainly could care less about the bad optics of pandering to special interests at the expense of the country or the damage done to the American legal and balloting systems.

Instead, Bidenites believe they can reelect an unhealthy, unpopular, and unsuccessful president by any means necessary.

And they may be right.

Authored by Ven Ram, Bloomberg cross-asset strategist,

Gold looks well poised to build on this year’s gains, with speculative momentum seeming to entice marginal buying and perpetrating a virtuous circle.

Bullion is on track for a fourth successive monthly rally, with its gains so far this year of over 15%.

While those gains appear stunning, in reality, gold adjusted for prices in the economy is far less impressive. At around $2400, it is in line with the 2011/12 highs after adjusting for inflation.

Gold must be viewed for what it actually is: an asset that delivers inflation-adjusted returns in fits and spurts with a highly inconsistent trajectory. Even so, given that we are now in a world where there is little conviction of returning to a 2% inflation regime anytime soon, bullion has room to grind higher.

Over in the US, the markets are again warming up to the idea of interest rate cuts from the Fed after the softer-than-forecast inflation prints for April. Traders now seem to be converging on September for a first reduction and are factoring in nearly two cuts by year-end. Whether or not that positioning proves accurate needs to be seen, but gold traders will be inclined to price those cuts into bullion pricing first and ask questions later.

And with geopolitical tensions staying elevated, gold will find the extra bid going in its favor.