Well I was fairly adamant that the BREXIT would fail (i.e. "Remain"), but it is increasingly looking like the British may vote to "Leave" which is a quick turn of unexpected events:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/nigel-farage-on-the-future-of-immigration-post-brexit/The majority of the money had bet on a failure of the BREXIT:
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/foreign-exchange/euro/brexit-sterling-euro/Unless TPTB somehow steal this election or do some other actions to nullify a "Leave" result (which would also drive volatility/uncertainty crazy), the "Leave" vote should cause volatility/uncertainty to skyrocket. So instead of getting a sustained deadcat rally in the Euro up to 1.25 which I expected if BREXIT failed, we could instead see the Euro collapse soon and the dollar rally blast off sooner. This might also drive private (safe haven) assets up sooner (e.g. US stocks, gold, and BTC), but if this reversal is too precipitous then it could also cause a liquidity crunch which might cause a selloff in liquid assets such as gold and BTC.
Note I've read that the UK leaving will take a minimum of 2 years and they have to negotiate with the EU to leave, which could take much longer than 2 years. So this could get very politically messy. Volatility/uncertainty appears to be on the verge of skyrocketing.
Gold moved back up when the Fed didn't raise rates. BTC seems to be on a vertical rise after finally completing a U bottom (which was my alternative scenario to a topping < $500 and continued decline to a lower low) won what appears to be an attempt to retest $1200, which normally one would expect a 33 - 67% pullback from such a vertical move out of a long-winded U bottom. The halving may be a buy the rumor, sell the news event. Perhaps the coming SegWit hard fork later this year is also inspiring some confidence in Bitcoin being able get forward movement on scaling transaction rate and towards Lightning Networks for instant transactions (btw all of that I think is flawed and won't scale to millions of users any time soon so I'd expect an exhale as the reality of those Rube Goldberg designs come to light). Btw, I am very happy about BTC moving up so much as it means a lot more wealth and interest in altcoins since as you know I am working on an altcoin.
Gold and BTC have always been out-of-phase, so gold had its rally to $1300 first then dumped. BTC is having its rally, and then I expect a dump once it is done.
The question is what impact will the BREXIT have on Fed interest rates and the movement of international capital. I think it going to cause immediately a strong dollar, which will send gold down. I think BTC will follow gold down but out-of-phase later (let's say a drop from $1200 to $800 or $400).
These smaller markets such as gold and BTC are more dependent on the dollar strength and interest rates because they are still for the moment primarily liquidity driven markets and not yet safe haven stampede driven markets. Eventually dollar, US stocks, gold, and BTC will all align as safe haven private assets as the world comes to realization of severity of the sovereign debt implosion ahead. But as this gathers inertia in the initial stages, then capital is still likely to be conservative and choose the dollar and then US stocks. Will the Fed view this influx of capital as an opportunity to unload its balance sheet and restore interest rates or continue to keep rates low to help Europe and China?
If the money initially moving into the dollar is into US Treasury bonds, the Fed might view raising interest rates as a way to deflect that capital since rising interest rates make bond investments loose value. Remember it is reverse of the way most people think. They think higher interest rates mean more yield (true), but if you buy a bond at 0.5% rate and the rate rises to 1%, then you sell the bond for less than you paid for it.
So a rush of conservative big money capital into the dollar is likely to be into US Treasuries for the last big hooray for US sovereign bonds, causing the Fed to finally start signaling rising rates to drive that capital out of bonds and the dollar, hoping this will sustain the Euro. But instead, that will drive the money crazy (not conservative) and into US stocks.
So this is why I am saying we can initially get a contagion that takes gold and BTC down. Maybe not. But maybe yes.
So OROBTC, in answer to your question, yes I would sell BTC at the peak of this move. Keep an eye on it. Looks like it can move higher still perhaps to $1200. The halving has not yet occurred. Then I would stay in dollars until gold has bottomed. Then repurchase gold and/or crypto-currencies on their pull backs.
But if you observe that the BREXIT instead causes a sustained up move into gold and BTC, with gold moving well above $1300s, then I'd presume I was wrong and the bottom in gold is behind us.
P.S. The BREXIT is one of those black swans that can't be predicted with cycles. The conflagration of the contagion in Europe in general is following cycles of nation building and collapse. The UK has always maintained an exceptional position in the EU and it may pull away for one last deadcat bounce on the former British Empire. The UK would be exception to the organism in the Petri dish that can't escape from its predicament (as I had written with "Understand Everything Fundamentally" where I predicted in 2010 that EU would not tear apart), because the UK has only had one foot in the EU and the other foot outside. The other EU nations are unlikely to be able to exit. The EU Troika will become much more ruthless now, so as to make sure the UK lead does not cause others to vote to leave. I think this BREXIT will begin the hot wars in Europe. TPTB use war when necessary when there is no other option. We are entering a very dangerous phase now.
Edit: appears that
an exodus from ETH that is probably going to soon be a stampede, might be contributing to the BTC rise?