Something big is going down. This is fascinating because they've already taken into account that the US and the west can and does manipulate commodities markets.

By playing both sides of the equation, i.e. linking the ruble to gold and then linking energy payments to the ruble, the Bank of Russia and the Kremlin are fundamentally altering the entire working assumptions of the global trade system while accelerating change in the global monetary system. This wall of buyers in search of physical gold to pay for real commodities could certainly torpedo and blow up the paper gold markets of the LBMA and COMEX.

The fixed peg between the ruble and gold puts a floor on the RUB / USD rate but also a quasi-floor on the US dollar gold price. But beyond this, the linking of gold to energy payments is the main event. While increased demand for rubles should continue to strengthen the RUB / USD rate and show up as a higher gold price, due to the fixed ruble – gold linkage, if Russia begins to accept gold directly as a payment for oil, then this would be a new paradigm shift for the gold price as it would link the oil price directly to the gold price.

For example, Russia could start by specifying that it will now accept 1 gram of gold per barrel of oil. It doesn’t have to be 1 gram but would have to be a discounted offer to the current crude benchmark price so as to promote take up, e.g. 1.2 grams per barrel. Buyers would then scramble to buy physical gold to pay for Russian oil exports, which in turn would create huge strains in the paper gold markets of London and New York where the entire ‘gold price’ discovery is based on synthetic and fractionally-backed cash-settled unallocated ‘gold’ and gold price ‘derivatives.