Connect with us
DAPA Banner

Crypto World

Copper joins gold in broad commodities sell-off. There’s a worrying reason behind it

Published

on

hide content

Workers roll up copper rods made from recycled copper at a metal melting facility in Yuexi County, central China’s Anhui Province, Friday, July 11, 2025.

Feature China | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Prices for metals fell sharply across the board Thursday as investors worried about the impact rising oil prices due to the U.S.-Iran war will have on the global economy.

Advertisement

Gold fell nearly 6%, while silver was off 8%. The sell-off extended beyond just those two, as industrial metals like copper and palladium came under pressure, declining 2% and 5.5%, respectively. 

While the selling intensified on Thursday, gold and silver have been falling since the war in Iran began, despite the former being viewed as a safe-haven asset. Surging oil prices have created concerns that inflation will reignite and keep interest rates higher. Higher rates weaken the appeal of the bullion, which is non-yielding. 

A stronger dollar as a result of the higher rates has also weighed on gold, as it cheapens the metal.

“The risks to inflation taking away the Fed rate cuts that were priced in, and seeing interest rate increases across the world, and real rates rising, that has been the drag on gold,” said Peter Boockvar, CIO at One Point BFG Wealth Partners. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield at one point on Thursday crossed 4.300%.

Advertisement
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
hide content

@GC.1 v. @SI.1 since Feb. 27, 2026.

Meanwhile, copper and palladium, after declining at the onset of the war, stayed relatively stable.

But that has changed as growth concerns begin to weigh on these industrial metals. 

Advertisement

Recession risk

Industrial metals are used in practical ways. Copper, for example, is in everything from electronic devices to electrical wiring and plumbing systems. A decline in copper prices is normally viewed by the Street as a sign of slowing economic growth. 

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
hide content

@HG.1 v. @PA.1 since Feb. 27 2026 chart.

Wall Street consensus has generally been that the longer the war goes on, the greater is the risk that oil prices remain elevated for long enough that it alters the spending habits of consumers and businesses and leads to a recession

Advertisement

It’s the “demand destruction” phase of an energy shock that traders and investors are chattering about.

“On the industrial metal side… people are now really worried about the recession risks,” Boockvar said. 

And slower growth combined with higher inflation is a “stagflation” scenario. But while investors begin to make “stagflation” trades, others see the possibility as extremely unlikely.

Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, wrote in a Tuesday note that “oil shocks are less likely to trigger the kind of sustained stagflation seen in the past, particularly during the 1970s,” referencing the economic consequences of the 1973 OPEC embargo. He noted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, while it caused an oil shock and higher inflation, didn’t lead to a recession. 

Advertisement

It’s a belief that Fed Chair Jay Powell repeated in a press conference on Wednesday. “I would reserve the term stagflation for a much more serious set of circumstances.”

While Boockvar thinks the war needs to end for industrial metals’ prices to stabilize, he said gold can likely recover as focus returns to countries’ rising debts and deficits, which gold typically does well against as a “debasement trade” play. He added that those deficits might only worsen due to military spending on the war. 

And even if stagflation does arrive, head of asset allocation research at Goldman Sachs Christian Mueller-Glissmann wrote in a Thursday note gold is a play in that environment.

“In case of a continued stagflationary shock, especially if real yields are declining, we would expect more support for Gold prices due to investor demand for real assets and FX diversification,” he wrote.

Advertisement

Markets shift and headlines fade, but the core principles of building long-term wealth remain constant. Join us for our third CNBC Pro LIVE, where investors of all backgrounds – from financial professionals to everyday individuals – come together to cut through the noise and gain actionable strategies for smarter, more disciplined investing. No matter where you’re starting from, you’ll leave with clearer thinking, stronger strategies. Enter your email here to get a discount code

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Crypto World

Coinbase Commerce seed phrase page alarms security community ahead of March 31 shutdown

Published

on

Epstein files show crypto ties to Coinbase, Blockstream: DOJ

Coinbase Commerce’s seed phrase withdrawal page is drawing fierce criticism from security researchers, who warn it normalizes typing 12-word recovery phrases into a website just days before the March 31 shutdown deadline.

Summary

  • A Coinbase Commerce subdomain at withdraw.commerce.coinbase.com/seed-phrase asks merchants to type 12-word seed phrases into a plain-text web form to recover funds.
  • SlowMist’s Cos, CISO 23pds and on-chain sleuth ZachXBT say the page and its cloneable front end create a powerful phishing template, especially as Commerce is wound down into Coinbase Business by March 31, 2026.
  • Critics argue the flow trains users to ignore the industry rule to never enter a seed phrase online, reviving fears after earlier Coinbase impersonation scams stole about $2 million from users.

A subdomain page belonging to Coinbase Commerce — the company’s merchant payments product — has drawn sharp criticism from leading blockchain security researchers after it was found to be prompting users to enter their 12-word seed phrases, also known as mnemonic or recovery phrases, directly into a web form in plain text. The controversy erupted on Wednesday and intensified Thursday morning, with the discovery coming at a particularly sensitive moment: Coinbase is winding down Commerce entirely by March 31, 2026, as part of a broader platform consolidation under Coinbase Business — meaning tens of thousands of merchants have a narrow window to withdraw their funds.

The page in question, hosted at withdraw.commerce.coinbase.com/seed-phrase, was referenced in a now-deleted Coinbase Commerce help document that directed users to recover funds by importing their recovery phrases into compatible wallets such as Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask. SlowMist founder Yu Xian (known online as Cos) described the practice as demonstrating an “unbelievable lack of security awareness” from a major industry player, having received multiple user reports about the page. On-chain investigator ZachXBT independently flagged the page, warning that its existence creates a direct attack surface for social engineering campaigns targeting Coinbase users.

Advertisement

The concerns go beyond the page itself. SlowMist’s Chief Information Security Officer, known as 23pds, escalated the alarm by pointing out that the page’s sitemap contains structural flaws that make it trivially easy for malicious actors to replicate. Using tools such as ResourcesSaver, attackers can download the front-end code and deploy visually identical phishing sites — particularly dangerous when combined with Coinbase-lookalike domains that could credibly deceive even experienced users.

The fundamental problem is one of normalisation. Every legitimate security protocol in the cryptocurrency industry is built on a single, non-negotiable principle: a seed phrase should never be entered into any website, form, or app under any circumstances — not even an official one. Seed phrases are the master cryptographic keys to a wallet; whoever possesses them owns the funds. By building a recovery workflow that requires users to type their phrase into a browser, Coinbase has — whether intentionally or through oversight — trained users to accept a behaviour that scammers routinely exploit. Coinfomania noted that the tool even suggests copying phrases from Google Drive as an intermediate step, compounding the risk.

ZachXBT’s warning carries particular weight given his track record. In January 2026, he exposed a Coinbase support impersonation scam that resulted in approximately $2 million in stolen crypto — a scheme that relied on users being conditioned to trust Coinbase-branded interfaces. The Commerce seed phrase page represents a ready-made template for a follow-up attack of potentially far greater scale.

Advertisement

As of Thursday, Coinbase had not publicly responded to the criticism, despite multiple requests for comment. The company has offered alternative withdrawal methods — including a separate commerce withdrawal tool considered safer by researchers — but has not removed or modified the seed phrase page. With twelve days remaining until Commerce is permanently disabled, the pressure on the exchange to act is mounting rapidly. For the crypto industry’s most prominent publicly listed company, the reputational stakes of a mass phishing event triggered by its own migration tooling could scarcely be higher.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto World

EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

Published

on

EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

EtherFi has allocated $25 million to Plume’s real-world asset (RWA) protocol Nest, marking a move to integrate tokenized RWA yield directly into its platform as it looks to expand beyond crypto-native sources of return.

According to Thursday’s announcement, rollout will begin with exposure to Plume’s nBASIS vault, which is tied to Superstate’s USCC crypto carry fund, with plans to add a dedicated real-world asset vault directly into EtherFi’s interface in a later phase.

The initial allocation gives EtherFi users indirect exposure to a strategy combining crypto basis trades, staking rewards and government securities, a structure traditionally available only to institutional or sophisticated investors.

Advertisement

The integration will extend RWA exposure across EtherFi’s more than $6 billion in user deposits. According to Plume, the vault structure is designed to simplify access by handling execution and reporting onchain, while incorporating predefined risk controls and compliance features.

EtherFi is a crypto yield platform that began with Ethereum liquid staking and has since expanded into broader yield offerings, while Plume provides infrastructure that packages institutional investment strategies into onchain vaults, giving users exposure to institutional strategies managed offchain through integrated crypto platforms.

Plume has also taken steps toward integrating with traditional financial systems, including registering as a transfer agent with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in October.

Related: Babylon-Ledger tie-up expands access to Bitcoin Vaults for collateral use

Advertisement

Tokenized real-world assets activity surges

Unlike traditional DeFi yield, which is generated within crypto markets, real-world assets strategies derive returns from income streams such as interest on government securities and lending activity.

According to data from RWA.xyz, the value of tokenized real-world assets has surged to more than $27 billion from about $5.7 billion at the start of 2025. Much of that growth has been driven by tokenized US Treasury products, which account for over $11 billion in onchain value.

Real-world assets onchain. Source: RWA.xyz

Tokenized Treasurys give investors onchain access to government-backed debt instruments, combining blockchain-based settlement with yield from short-term bills and money market funds. 

Products from companies including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Circle account for a significant share of the market, with Circle’s USYC holding about $2.3 billion, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund around $2 billion and Franklin Templeton’s onchain fund over $1 billion in assets.

Tokenized Treasurys. Source: RWA.xyz

Plume reports 262,325 RWA holders holding more than $348 million in tokenized assets, with distributed asset value up 69% over the past 30 days, according to RWA.xyz data. Its Nest vault products are already live, including a basis-focused vault with more than $26 million in assets

In November, Plume co-founder and CEO Chris Yin told Cointelegraph that the tokenized real-world asset market could grow as much as fivefold this year.

Advertisement

He added that while most RWA value is currently concentrated in US Treasury bills, a maturing market and shifting interest rate environment are driving users to seek higher-yield opportunities elsewhere.

Magazine: Are DeFi devs liable for the illegal activity of others on their platforms?