Gold Down $200 This Week, Silver Spike Gone on Rates, India, Bitcoin Reserve

SILVER SANK and gold prices fell near 2-week lows on Friday as interest-rate forecasts jumped, bullion demand in India evaporated on this week's import-duty hike, and US lawmakers pushed ahead with a bill to use Washington's huge gold reserves to buy cryptocurrency Bitcoin instead.

Global stock markets also fell hard as the Iran War's continuing oil-price shock drove long-term borrowing costs higher.

Gold prices in India, the metal's No.2 consumer nation after China, today traded more than $200 per troy ounce below London quotes when adjusted for the Modi Government's sudden return to 15% import duty plus 3% GST sales tax on gold, silver and platinum.

That's "a record discount," according to Reuters, "as demand virtually disappeared and scrap supplies increased."

The Trump administration will meantime announce details of its much-hyped US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve "in the next few weeks" says the President's senior digital assets advisor in comments noted yesterday on a macro-and-geopolitics webinar for members of gold-and-silver trade association the LBMA.

Losing $214 per troy ounce today from last Friday's 3pm London benchmark auction, the price of gold recorded its worst ever weekly drop in Dollar terms outside of mid-March's $482 plunge.

That put gold down at $4527 after testing its lowest spot-market price since the end of March near $4510 at lunchtime.

The price of silver had meantime been heading for its second 10% weekly gain in a row on Wednesday amid signs of strong China silver demand and copper prices hitting new all-time highs.

But the more industrially-useful precious metal flipped that into a 2.4% loss from last Friday at today's midday auction in London, before sinking a further 3.5% in late-London spot trade to fall as low as $76 per troy ounce.

That was silver's lowest spot-market price since Wednesday last week.

"The Bitcoin Act of 2025," noted Thursday's LBMA webinar in-between analysis of the Iran War, global interest-rate outlook and US trade tariffs, "would use the proceeds from revaluing US gold reserves" − currently priced at the official 1973 level of $42.22 per troy ounce − "to buy Bitcoin."

With gold down 4.5% for the week today, BTC traded 0.7% lower in Dollar terms from last Friday as the US currency rose yet again with crude oil prices.

Today's surging interest-rate fears saw stock-market listed crypto plays Coinbase and Strategy both sink, more than erasing the jumps made on yesterday's approval by the Senate Banking Committee of the Clarity Act − set to assign responsibility for digital assets to US regulators, enabling wider adoption − to show a small loss for the week.

AI chip-maker stocks Nvidia, AMD and Intel also sank after President Trump's summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping failed to deliver any semiconductor trade deals or show any progress in finding an end to the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Oil prices in contrast rose for the 4th session this week, gaining 7.2% in Dollar terms from last Friday's finish on Brent crude futures at $108 per barrel.

As precious metals and risk assets fell hard Friday, government bonds also sank in price, driving yields up to the highest in 12 months on 10-year US Treasury debt − plus fresh decade-plus highs on German Bunds, Japanese JGBs and UK Gilts − after an auction of $25 billion in new 30-year US debt achieved a yield above 5% per annum for the first time since 2007, eve of the global financial crisis.

Betting on US interest rates now forecasts that the Federal Reserve will raise its short-term borrowing cost by January 2027, with a Fed rate-hike at this December's meeting now a 50-50 shot.

Back on the last day of February, eve of Israel and the USA striking Iran, the market expected the Fed to cut rates this June.

That day also capped the first of two full weeks of gold trading above $5000 per ounce.