Gold/Jim Rickards: Russia just bought 22 tonnes of gold in May. Brings total reserves to 1,700 tonnes. No news on how much bitcoin they bought. My guess is....zero.
 
Friday's Trivia Question: Where is copper stored in the body?

Rio Tinto in search of next Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia/Mining.com: Last month, the landlocked country bordering China and Russia decided to open more than one-fifth of its territory for mining exploration, hoping to shore up its finances following an  International Monetary Fund-led bailout. Since mining accounts for around 25% of Mongolia’s GDP and more than 80% of exports, experts believe that increasing mining exploration could potentially raise the Asian nation’s GDP and economic security. Mongolia also revoked a controversial banking law that would have required companies including Rio Tinto — the country’s biggest investor — to funnel all sales revenues from foreign investment projects through local banks and proposed the wider exploration area.

Protesters block access to Tahoe’s Escobal silver mine in Guatemala / Cecilia Jamasmie: A group of protesters near the town of Casillas in Guatemala blocked Monday access to Tahoe Resources’ (TSX:THO), (NYSE: TAHO) Escobal silver mine, its flagship operation, delaying shipments and supplies. Despite the interruption of normal operations, the Latin America-focused miner said it did not expect the incident to affect annual production or cost guidance.“Our operations are performing well and we anticipate that our performance at mid-year will be well within expectations relative to our guidance,” President and CEO Ron Clayton said in a statement.

Copper from Hightower. A truly great overview that I felt I should share: The copper market easily outperformed the rest of the metals complex yesterday in a move that was probably tied to news of rising Chinese house prices. Furthermore, the latest round of new all-time highs in equities probably helps to improve copper demand expectations and the combination of better Chinese and global copper demand expectations is clearly cause to bring copper prices up and away from the middle of the last two months trading range. Limiting copper prices this morning is news overnight of softer price forecasts from Barclays and news that Kazakhstan copper production increased by 5% in the first 5 months of 2017. In the end, ongoing strength in equities certainly makes buyers more confident especially since LME copper stocks have continued their daily copper stocks decline unabated. While there were upbeat press reports regarding longer-term demand expansion for copper as a result of electric vehicles, that news was probably not instrumental in the Monday recovery.