Thanks Alasdair. I watched it on Sunday night. Very interesting and yet puzzling as to why they are allowing themselves to be accused of all sorts of shenanigans in regards to the supposedly hoard of gold, or not as the case may be. If they had it why not allow an audit 🤷🏻♂️. On the other hand, it's gone "allegedly". It's been lent out, swapped out and, again allegedly, pilfered by insiders. No one knows.
There must be some gold though as they are known to have "rescued", for want of a better word, tons of gold from countries they "brought democracy to".
Where is it?
Is it sitting in the vault with that countries name on it, who knows.
One thing is for certain though, they are being very secretive about it all plus it took years before Germany got a small quantity out of the total amount that they asked for, and they were refused entry to audit their own stash. And that is suspicious in anyone's book.
Highly valid point - ' IF ' DJT did indeed confiscate a huge hoard of Gold from the Vatican and elsewhere ,then where is it & when is he going to make it public ' OR ' was this always just a Psyop to keep us ( & the ' Deep State ' ) all dangling even longer while all manner of major moves are being enacted in the shadows ..??
Simon, there is a few articles going around on this subject so I spent an hour this morning trawling through the comments you replied to me on and I found the article you sent me on the missing gold. www.tapatalk.com missing gold scandal one. It's absolutely fascinating. Cheers for that👍
Alasdair, Is BTC siphoning off the dollars that otherwise be traded up for gold? It is quite frustrating for all of us who believe in sound money to see BTC rising every day and gold/silver struggling (in fiat terms which at present is what we use to buy things.). BTC is indeed Hot Air, but a Ponzi scheme will go on for a very long time and with all these governments getting so excited about it (U.S. included) it seems like there is nothing to stop it any time soon. Thank you in advance for any reply.
I expect so, but the effect might not be that great in terms of volumes. But if some of BTC demand diverted into gold ETFs, the price squeeze factor could be material.
It doesn't seem to be moving in that direction. The frustrating part is that gold is real money and BTC is Hot Air. In a normal world, all of our preparation over these many years would have done well for us, then along comes BTC with a narrative that defies history of money yet rises every day.
Could you summarize the effect of BTC on the gold/silver price. I do not understand your characterization of the effect in terms of volumes. Thank you again.
Have looked at any number of Michael Saylor's views on ' BTC '
with the most recent one's ( to me at least ) seemingly wildly insane and devoid of any grasp as to how the real world functions
This all said , he is without doubt a very , very clever man - just have to hope upon hope that he and other's like him don't have the inside track on all of this and don't turn out at the end of the day to be the very - Lunatics Who Are In Charge Of The Asylum".
RGC - As Alasdair has noted below - Sit tight and maintain your position's and don't what ever you do get so frustrated that you start flogging anything .
Over countless years those of us who have truly seen and understood where this is all going " All Roads Lead to Gold " ( & Silver ) have been played in the same way as an Angler does a Salmon on the Dee . Don't take their bait at this moment in time when we could be only weeks / month's away from the rug being pulled out from under this ' Ponzi Scheme ' and true price discovery
Personally , I ( and I'm sure all of us on this substack ) are every bit as frustrated as you are , but where BTC is concerned , I think there's all manner of toxic flows bubbling away under the surface and for the time being out of our collective sight .
As Mitch has noted , DJT during his first term is ( allegedly ) supposed to have confiscated some vast tonnage of Gold from from the Vatican and flown out of Italy via multiple flights of C130's & other transports . No concrete evidence / proof though so this just conjecture . As regards the , 8,130 ton Gold stash the U.S. say they've got , frankly I aside with may others who think it was sold / purloined / leased out years ago and precious little tangible remains .
' IF ' the cupboard is indeed bare & shortly possibly be shown to be , then what more opportune a time for ' DJT ' and the Bitcoin Mafia to subbish " The Real Thing " even more and direct the hoi-poloi's attention big timer toward ' BTC ' . There is of course the Tether Angle to be considered - and you're a better man than I am if you can join all of the dots to make any real sense of any of this and how it's ultimately going to play out
Always enjoy listening to Alasdair, but am I wrong in thinking the Liberty sponsor advertising Silver for "only $3.49 over spot" (10+%?) is a great argument for why precious metals may be a scam ?
Maybe there is some inside lingo I don't understand and this is really a great deal ?
Dan, if you go on YouTube and watch the video that Kinross Mining produced, you'd be staggered at the energy requirement to get the gold out of the ground and into a bar (it's not even 9999 fine). The huge trucks to carry tons of rock that result in only a few ounces of gold and the slow process to separate the gold from the rock would answer your question about spot price plus a 10% premium. Plus, that gold/silver has to be minted into coins, packaged, shipped, etc.
The cost of getting Gold and Silver out of the ground has nothing to do with Liberty advertizing $3.49 over spot as some sort of deal. Presumably Spot represents the market price for Silver which presumably would account for the cost of producing it plus some margin of profit to the producer.
The only argument that seems to hold water is that the $3.49 represents some sort of premium for physical silver vs paper silver.
Currency "invested" in BTC must be converted from BTC back into currency to be spent. I doubt that the round trip through BTC will cost anyone anywhere near the 20% implied in Liberties add.
I get the idea that one does not buy gold to spend, most BTC holders have the same mantra. But somewhere down the road there must be a pathway to spending gold or it is indeed nothing more than a collectible.
They don't mint the coins, they bought them, presumably wholesale. They surely did not pay spot price of silver for them since the cost of the mining, refining and minting has to get covered somehow. If they were way over the top in pricing, buyers would go to other sources and buy them.
Of course your points are valid and a good reminder. I'm also not arguing that what they offer is not in line with the current market for physical silver. I don't really know. My argument is that a 20%+ buy/sell round trip is evidence that metals are at best a very inefficient and shallow market and at worst a scam.
You should not take that to mean I am a gold/silver skeptic. If I was, I wouldnt be a paid subscriber to this substack. Nor should my comments about BTC suggest I am a BTC supporter. I'm not, but I continue to look at it because we shouldnt dismiss the phenomenon and 1 or 2 trillion dollar market cap (or whatever it is), without careful thinking about it.
BTC has some interesting lessons to teach. For example, we talk about CB gold holdings in the US, China and Russia and simultaneously take as a given that they might all be lying about what the actually hold. Does something like blockchain offer any answers to that...or is the hiddenness a feature rather than a bug...
My position is we should always be questioning our thinking and trying our best to examine arguments that challenge our accepted view. Because of that, I really appreciate your responses.
Even so our judgements will often boil down to what we "believe" - with "belief" being a very slippery idea in itself. In the equation of belief, gold/silver's 5000 year history carries a lot of weight
Thanks Alasdair. I watched it on Sunday night. Very interesting and yet puzzling as to why they are allowing themselves to be accused of all sorts of shenanigans in regards to the supposedly hoard of gold, or not as the case may be. If they had it why not allow an audit 🤷🏻♂️. On the other hand, it's gone "allegedly". It's been lent out, swapped out and, again allegedly, pilfered by insiders. No one knows.
There must be some gold though as they are known to have "rescued", for want of a better word, tons of gold from countries they "brought democracy to".
Where is it?
Is it sitting in the vault with that countries name on it, who knows.
One thing is for certain though, they are being very secretive about it all plus it took years before Germany got a small quantity out of the total amount that they asked for, and they were refused entry to audit their own stash. And that is suspicious in anyone's book.
Highly valid point - ' IF ' DJT did indeed confiscate a huge hoard of Gold from the Vatican and elsewhere ,then where is it & when is he going to make it public ' OR ' was this always just a Psyop to keep us ( & the ' Deep State ' ) all dangling even longer while all manner of major moves are being enacted in the shadows ..??
Simon, there is a few articles going around on this subject so I spent an hour this morning trawling through the comments you replied to me on and I found the article you sent me on the missing gold. www.tapatalk.com missing gold scandal one. It's absolutely fascinating. Cheers for that👍
Alasdair, Is BTC siphoning off the dollars that otherwise be traded up for gold? It is quite frustrating for all of us who believe in sound money to see BTC rising every day and gold/silver struggling (in fiat terms which at present is what we use to buy things.). BTC is indeed Hot Air, but a Ponzi scheme will go on for a very long time and with all these governments getting so excited about it (U.S. included) it seems like there is nothing to stop it any time soon. Thank you in advance for any reply.
I expect so, but the effect might not be that great in terms of volumes. But if some of BTC demand diverted into gold ETFs, the price squeeze factor could be material.
It doesn't seem to be moving in that direction. The frustrating part is that gold is real money and BTC is Hot Air. In a normal world, all of our preparation over these many years would have done well for us, then along comes BTC with a narrative that defies history of money yet rises every day.
Patience! Gold is money, BTC a bubble!
Spot On - would venture ' BTC ' is possibly - " The Mother Of All Bubbles "
Could you summarize the effect of BTC on the gold/silver price. I do not understand your characterization of the effect in terms of volumes. Thank you again.
Not alot to add. Only that Saylor's Microstrategy is ramping the price of BTC
Have looked at any number of Michael Saylor's views on ' BTC '
with the most recent one's ( to me at least ) seemingly wildly insane and devoid of any grasp as to how the real world functions
This all said , he is without doubt a very , very clever man - just have to hope upon hope that he and other's like him don't have the inside track on all of this and don't turn out at the end of the day to be the very - Lunatics Who Are In Charge Of The Asylum".
Finger Crossed ( Everything Crossed )
RGC - As Alasdair has noted below - Sit tight and maintain your position's and don't what ever you do get so frustrated that you start flogging anything .
Over countless years those of us who have truly seen and understood where this is all going " All Roads Lead to Gold " ( & Silver ) have been played in the same way as an Angler does a Salmon on the Dee . Don't take their bait at this moment in time when we could be only weeks / month's away from the rug being pulled out from under this ' Ponzi Scheme ' and true price discovery
returns from far too long an absence .
Personally , I ( and I'm sure all of us on this substack ) are every bit as frustrated as you are , but where BTC is concerned , I think there's all manner of toxic flows bubbling away under the surface and for the time being out of our collective sight .
As Mitch has noted , DJT during his first term is ( allegedly ) supposed to have confiscated some vast tonnage of Gold from from the Vatican and flown out of Italy via multiple flights of C130's & other transports . No concrete evidence / proof though so this just conjecture . As regards the , 8,130 ton Gold stash the U.S. say they've got , frankly I aside with may others who think it was sold / purloined / leased out years ago and precious little tangible remains .
' IF ' the cupboard is indeed bare & shortly possibly be shown to be , then what more opportune a time for ' DJT ' and the Bitcoin Mafia to subbish " The Real Thing " even more and direct the hoi-poloi's attention big timer toward ' BTC ' . There is of course the Tether Angle to be considered - and you're a better man than I am if you can join all of the dots to make any real sense of any of this and how it's ultimately going to play out
Thank you Alasdair.
Always enjoy listening to Alasdair, but am I wrong in thinking the Liberty sponsor advertising Silver for "only $3.49 over spot" (10+%?) is a great argument for why precious metals may be a scam ?
Maybe there is some inside lingo I don't understand and this is really a great deal ?
Dan, if you go on YouTube and watch the video that Kinross Mining produced, you'd be staggered at the energy requirement to get the gold out of the ground and into a bar (it's not even 9999 fine). The huge trucks to carry tons of rock that result in only a few ounces of gold and the slow process to separate the gold from the rock would answer your question about spot price plus a 10% premium. Plus, that gold/silver has to be minted into coins, packaged, shipped, etc.
The cost of getting Gold and Silver out of the ground has nothing to do with Liberty advertizing $3.49 over spot as some sort of deal. Presumably Spot represents the market price for Silver which presumably would account for the cost of producing it plus some margin of profit to the producer.
The only argument that seems to hold water is that the $3.49 represents some sort of premium for physical silver vs paper silver.
Currency "invested" in BTC must be converted from BTC back into currency to be spent. I doubt that the round trip through BTC will cost anyone anywhere near the 20% implied in Liberties add.
I get the idea that one does not buy gold to spend, most BTC holders have the same mantra. But somewhere down the road there must be a pathway to spending gold or it is indeed nothing more than a collectible.
They don't mint the coins, they bought them, presumably wholesale. They surely did not pay spot price of silver for them since the cost of the mining, refining and minting has to get covered somehow. If they were way over the top in pricing, buyers would go to other sources and buy them.
Of course your points are valid and a good reminder. I'm also not arguing that what they offer is not in line with the current market for physical silver. I don't really know. My argument is that a 20%+ buy/sell round trip is evidence that metals are at best a very inefficient and shallow market and at worst a scam.
You should not take that to mean I am a gold/silver skeptic. If I was, I wouldnt be a paid subscriber to this substack. Nor should my comments about BTC suggest I am a BTC supporter. I'm not, but I continue to look at it because we shouldnt dismiss the phenomenon and 1 or 2 trillion dollar market cap (or whatever it is), without careful thinking about it.
BTC has some interesting lessons to teach. For example, we talk about CB gold holdings in the US, China and Russia and simultaneously take as a given that they might all be lying about what the actually hold. Does something like blockchain offer any answers to that...or is the hiddenness a feature rather than a bug...
My position is we should always be questioning our thinking and trying our best to examine arguments that challenge our accepted view. Because of that, I really appreciate your responses.
Even so our judgements will often boil down to what we "believe" - with "belief" being a very slippery idea in itself. In the equation of belief, gold/silver's 5000 year history carries a lot of weight