Latest / SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics / Gold & Silver Stackers - Are You Ready for It? - (FINANCIAL STORMS APPROACHING)

Transcript

Gold & Silver Stackers - Are You Ready for It? - (FINANCIAL STORMS APPROACHING) · SILVER / GOLD / $UFD Meme Coin Investing & Global Economics

• 0:00
  This dollar bubble and we're looking at gold saying how many
• 0:03
  dollars is my gold worth? When actually it's to your
• 0:07
  point. And I wouldn't quite say we
• 0:09
  didn't go off the gold standard. I mean, as a monetary system we
• 0:12
  did. But they never really got rid of
• 0:15
  gold as thoroughly, you know, as as they would have liked.
• 0:19
  They sort of banished it. But you know, the dollar's value
• 0:23
  comes from the gold bid on the dollar.
• 0:25
  So if you look at the gold is the money and the dollar is
• 0:28
  credit and it's gold bidding on the dollar, not the other way
• 0:31
  around. Today we're honored to be joined
• 0:38
  by Keith Weiner. He's the founder and CEO of
• 0:41
  Monetary Metals. This is a company that's doing
• 0:44
  some very innovative things within the precious metals
• 0:48
  sector. We're going to talk to Keith
• 0:50
  about what motivated him to get into the precious metal sector
• 0:54
  because he has a very interesting background and he's
• 0:58
  going to share with us what his company is doing right now.
• 1:01
  Keith, welcome to Ron's basement.
• 1:03
  Thanks for having me, Ron. So what?
• 1:05
  What got you into silver and gold?
• 1:06
  Keith, Tell us please. You know, the first part of my
• 1:10
  career. I mean, I was your classic
• 1:12
  computer nerd in high school. Went off to computer science
• 1:15
  school. Felt that I'd absorbed
• 1:17
  everything there was to to get at least at the undergraduate
• 1:20
  level. Dropped out because wanted to
• 1:23
  build a software company like so many of my heroes had done
• 1:25
  before me. Built a software company called
• 1:28
  Diamondware. We made a 3D spatial audio
• 1:31
  technology for voice communications, voice over
• 1:34
  Internet. Sold that company to Nortel
• 1:36
  Networks August 19, 2008. Now that was one of the last
• 1:42
  decent exits that anybody would have had before the financial
• 1:46
  crisis. And as a historical footnote,
• 1:49
  the last transaction that Nortel ever did.
• 1:53
  They spiralled into bankruptcy, you know, shortly thereafter.
• 1:58
  It was a surreal experience. At first.
• 2:00
  I, I kind of felt pretty bemused and then increasingly alarmed as
• 2:04
  I saw what was going on in markets, you know, that fall of
• 2:08
  2008. So I started to obsessively read
• 2:12
  about markets 1st and then economics ultimately to try to
• 2:15
  understand, OK, what is going on.
• 2:17
  And nothing really seemed to be trying to get to the root of it
• 2:25
  until it came across this old Hungarian professor had some
• 2:30
  pretty radical ideas. And I thought, well, I don't
• 2:32
  know if he has the right answers, but at least he's
• 2:33
  asking the right questions. So, you know, I flew out to
• 2:38
  Hungary where he was teaching a course without really intending
• 2:42
  it, kind of became his student without really intending it,
• 2:45
  kind of getting sucked into. OK, well, I'll do you know the
• 2:48
  degree program now. It's my, my caveat, this is not
• 2:51
  an accredited PhD. It's not a credential I could
• 2:54
  ever get a job with, but the work was real.
• 2:57
  And you know, he called the field monetary science.
• 3:02
  So studying money and, and that that means gold really, but
• 3:05
  irredeemable currency, interest rates, the bond market as a
• 3:09
  science and have a look at it that way.
• 3:12
  And you know, I, I, my dissertation was accepted in
• 3:18
  2012. So, you know, after that, during
• 3:24
  that time, really I was thinking about the problem in the world.
• 3:27
  You know, if, if it was a normal world, I would have built
• 3:30
  another software company. I had a great team that had
• 3:32
  followed me to hell and back. They were saying, Keith, we want
• 3:35
  to jump off this big company. What's the next venture?
• 3:38
  What can we do? We were brainstorming all kinds
• 3:41
  of crazy ideas and, you know, but I eventually came to the
• 3:47
  realization, OK, there's this problem.
• 3:49
  I want to do something with the problem.
• 3:50
  Gold clearly, you know, has something to do with the
• 3:54
  solution. And you know that the idea of
• 3:58
  monetary metals was really around interest on gold because
• 4:02
  interest is, is the key to circulation.
• 4:05
  If there's no circulation, you have to increase the interest
• 4:08
  rate and that will pull gold into the market.
• 4:10
  And if you push the interest rate down, you'll push gold out
• 4:13
  of the market. And so that was the that became
• 4:16
  the business thesis, right? If we pay interest on gold,
• 4:18
  people will deposit their gold. And that turned out to be true.
• 4:22
  And so, you know, the rest is history, as they say.
• 4:26
  Yeah. So, so, so you identified what
• 4:28
  you thought were, oh, I guess some scary situations in the
• 4:33
  world monetary system back in 2012.
• 4:38
  Is that, is that accurate to say?
• 4:39
  Like you kind of looked at what was going on with the financial
• 4:42
  system, you grew concerned and, and that was kind of the
• 4:47
  motivation or the pedestrian to kind of start and, and to, to,
• 4:51
  to start this innovative company, which I guess for lack
• 4:56
  of a better way to say it makes gold and possibly silver more
• 5:00
  functional. Is that is that a a a a fair
• 5:03
  statement? Yeah, I mean, you know, the, the
• 5:05
  realizations were going back to about 2009, all kind of
• 5:09
  culminated. And I, I incorporated monetary
• 5:12
  metals in 2012. And yeah, I mean, you know, if
• 5:17
  you read my article When Gold Backwardation Becomes Permanent,
• 5:21
  so there'd been this intermittent gold backwardation
• 5:24
  that was happening. And it should never, gold should
• 5:26
  never be in backwardation, but it was.
• 5:29
  And that was, you know, I looked at that and said, this is the
• 5:32
  harbinger of the collapse of Fiat.
• 5:35
  You know, people say, well, how can, how can the dollar
• 5:38
  collapse? Because, you know, they can
• 5:41
  always issue more dollars to pay whatever debt, right?
• 5:44
  I mean, if, if, if you borrow in a currency you issue, it should
• 5:47
  never, never fail in that sense. And as the world's reserve
• 5:52
  currency, boy, does the US government get an enormous
• 5:55
  license to indulge in what, what has been called exorbitant
• 6:00
  privilege. But there's a, there's a finite
• 6:03
  limit to it. And most people think, OK, well,
• 6:05
  they're gonna, they're gonna print themselves to Infinity and
• 6:08
  it will cause hyperinflation. And the gold backwardation
• 6:11
  thesis is a different look, I think a more scientific look,
• 6:14
  because this is what's going to happen.
• 6:15
  Yes, it's going to fail. But now it's a function of
• 6:18
  quantity. It's a, it's a function of the
• 6:20
  failed quality as the, the quality of the assets backing it
• 6:25
  are, you know, it's declining, you know, and, and exponentially
• 6:29
  so. And we'll get to a point where
• 6:31
  the currents will be repudiated, not because there's too many
• 6:34
  units of it, but because it's not trusted anymore.
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  Confidence confidence lack or lack of confidence.
• 6:41
  But particularly confidence in the counterparty by the gold
• 6:46
  owners. The gold owners will pull the
• 6:48
  gold back and not participate anymore.
• 6:51
  And everyone who doesn't have gold is not a participant in
• 6:54
  this. It's only the gold owners that
• 6:55
  get a vote in this particular, you know, election, if you could
• 7:00
  call it that. And the gold donors will pull
• 7:03
  their their metal back. So, so my, my brain is firing in
• 7:08
  so many directions right now, Keith, because I have the
• 7:10
  hardest time explaining what I think you just explained.
• 7:15
  And I've, I've said this many times on my channel down here in
• 7:18
  the basement that like eventually, and I've made this
• 7:22
  argument that the world never really went off the gold
• 7:25
  standard, right? I mean, it's kind of the, the
• 7:27
  temporary, you know, you could even say since 1971 kind of
• 7:31
  these temporary journeys into pure paper.
• 7:35
  But at the end of the day is, is that that that gold and silver
• 7:40
  for that matter? I have a hard time verbalizing
• 7:44
  it, but I think you did a pretty good job.
• 7:45
  But it's like they come back to the top or they rise to the top.
• 7:50
  They become eventually people realize that paper money is just
• 7:55
  paper money and especially are in particular when there's been
• 8:00
  abuse of the exorbitant privilege.
• 8:02
  Is that is that accurate to say it all?
• 8:04
  Oh yeah, they there is an exorbitant privilege and oh boy,
• 8:07
  have they been abusing it. Yes.
• 8:11
  Yeah, and and eventually gold and and silver re emerge as the
• 8:17
  preferred store of value. I mean, I know I'm simplifying
• 8:20
  things, but. Yeah, it's, you know, so if you
• 8:24
  have, if you have gold, there's a few other things you can do to
• 8:26
  try to, you know, get a return on it, right.
• 8:28
  I mean, you can, you know, sell it, buy AT Bill, you know, mix
• 8:32
  of interest. But at the same time that you do
• 8:35
  the cell transaction, you buy it forward.
• 8:37
  So there's various arbitrages between gold and the dollar and
• 8:41
  it's when people refuse those arbitrages anymore.
• 8:44
  So here's another way of looking at all this.
• 8:46
  I've heard any number of speakers, you know, if you go to
• 8:49
  all the usual conferences, whether it's the New Orleans
• 8:52
  Investment Conference, Money Show, you know, Freedom Fest,
• 8:56
  there's a lot of conferences for gold and silver minded people to
• 9:00
  talk about investing and alternative investments and gold
• 9:03
  as a sort of value. And there's always, you know,
• 9:06
  almost inevitably there's a speaker talking about at the end
• 9:09
  of the day, you know, you're going to see the, the board of
• 9:13
  all the different instruments, whether it's Apple shares or
• 9:16
  real estate or gold. And gold is going to go no offer
• 9:20
  that the offer will be removed from the board and you can't buy
• 9:23
  gold anymore. And you know, looking at this in
• 9:27
  a scientific way, this is kind of, and I'll use an analogy,
• 9:31
  back in the day of Copernicus, they thought that the plant,
• 9:34
  because they believed everything revolved around Earth.
• 9:36
  And if everything's revolving around Earth, then you look at
• 9:39
  some of the other planets and there's this retrograde motion
• 9:43
  where they, they go forward a bit and then backwards and then
• 9:47
  forward some more and then backwards a little bit and
• 9:49
  forward some more. And it doesn't make any sense.
• 9:52
  It's backward stuff. When you realize everything's
• 9:55
  going around the sun, including the Earth, then that simplifies.
• 9:58
  That's just an artifact of our vantage point.
• 10:01
  And normally, in times of crisis, it's the bid that's
• 10:06
  withdrawn. Suppose that the US Geological
• 10:09
  Survey said there's going to be an earthquake in LAA, magnitude
• 10:14
  15 on the Richter scale. Nothing taller than a dollhouse
• 10:17
  will be low standing. You know, there'll be no lack of
• 10:20
  offers to sell real estate. And some sellers would be cagey
• 10:24
  and try to give you a 5% discount.
• 10:26
  Other people might be desperate and give you a 50% discount.
• 10:29
  But what you would not find probably from Santiago, Chile,
• 10:33
  all the way up to British Columbia and Canada, all along
• 10:36
  that entire Ridge of mountains, what you would now find is a
• 10:38
  bid. The whole world would be holding
• 10:42
  its breath waiting for the earthquake.
• 10:44
  And after the earthquake, the bid would come back.
• 10:46
  And, and obviously, depending on the damage, the bid could be a
• 10:49
  lot lower. So, you know, bid with withdraws
• 10:53
  in times of crisis or stress. But why is it that offer
• 10:58
  withdraws in gold? Why is gold so uniquely
• 11:00
  different? And I think the answer to it is
• 11:04
  no, it is a bid being withdrawn. But we've actually looked at
• 11:07
  this inside out. We're in this dollar bubble and
• 11:09
  we're looking at gold saying how many dollars is my gold worth?
• 11:12
  When actually it's to your point.
• 11:15
  And I wouldn't quite say we didn't go off the gold standard.
• 11:18
  I mean, as a monetary system we did.
• 11:21
  But they never really got rid of gold as thoroughly, you know, as
• 11:26
  as they would have liked. They sort of banished it, but
• 11:29
  you know, the dollar's value comes from the gold bid on the
• 11:32
  dollar. So if you look at the gold is
• 11:34
  the money and the dollar is credit, and it's gold bidding on
• 11:38
  the dollar, not the other way around, then things become
• 11:41
  really simple in that final crisis.
• 11:44
  In the end, gold withdraws its bid on the dollar.
• 11:47
  It's a bid withdrawal, which is consistent with everything else
• 11:50
  in a crisis, not an offer withdrawal.
• 11:53
  And so at the end of the day, the gold owners stop bidding on
• 11:57
  the dollar, which which precipitates this whole crisis
• 12:00
  that I described in that in that article and an an event and the
• 12:05
  dollar eventually collapses to 0 because gold won't bid on it
• 12:10
  anymore. And if gold won't bid on it
• 12:11
  anymore, it doesn't actually have any value.
• 12:12
  So there's gold owners that have a vote in all of this.
• 12:16
  That's kind of the interesting thing.
• 12:18
  You know, not quite a week, week will inherit the earth thing a
• 12:21
  little bit different, more like the those who have the gold
• 12:24
  makes the golden rule, those with the gold makes the rules.
• 12:27
  Yeah. First Mining Gold is a
• 12:29
  development company advancing two of the largest gold projects
• 12:33
  in Canada, Spring Pole in Ontario and Duparque, located in
• 12:37
  Quebec. Each already has 5 million
• 12:40
  ounces of gold reserves, but exploration initiatives are
• 12:45
  underway at both projects to find even more gold.
• 12:49
  First, Mining is well financed, has zero debt and owns an
• 12:53
  interest in four additional Canadian gold development
• 12:57
  projects. What what about this?
• 12:58
  What about this idea that that, and this is a great
• 13:01
  conversation, so thank you. That gold is universal.
• 13:05
  I've heard people say, and I agree, and I'd imagine you would
• 13:07
  as well, that, you know, you and I could hop in an airplane right
• 13:09
  now, fly anywhere in the world and get off the airplane.
• 13:14
  And there's a market for gold. There's a likely a market for
• 13:17
  silver everywhere in the world. And that's been that the case
• 13:22
  for like, you know, thousands of years, right?
• 13:25
  So does that is that that is that why they couldn't
• 13:27
  completely kill it, right? I mean, like they couldn't
• 13:29
  completely squash gold. And when we and when we compare
• 13:34
  this hit me the other night, Keith, and, and, and you tell me
• 13:37
  I'm crazy if I'm wrong, but you know, everybody thinks all the
• 13:40
  dollars that you know, and it is right, The most powerful,
• 13:42
  biggest currency in the world, but it's still not as big and
• 13:46
  powerful or universal necessarily as gold.
• 13:51
  Gold has still maintained that. And so at then I want to ask you
• 13:54
  this one question because this is a, a crazy thesis that I've
• 13:57
  developed lately that as a result of this universal nature,
• 14:01
  timeless nature, gold is, is, is very wise as a market.
• 14:06
  Like it can, you know, with, with age comes wisdom.
• 14:11
  And on top of that, that it's also maybe one of the purer
• 14:15
  markets in the world because it's, it's, it's impacted by
• 14:18
  market like a, a, a, an aggregate of market forces from
• 14:23
  everywhere on the planet that gold is.
• 14:26
  Does that make sense? Yeah.
• 14:27
  I mean, I think, you know, people try to, you know, plot
• 14:31
  charts, you know, for technical analysis and predict price.
• 14:35
  And I, I think every asset category, you could sort of rank
• 14:39
  it on less than a scale of one to 10 of how much its price is
• 14:44
  affected by charts. Like, you know, it's how many
• 14:46
  people are buying and selling it solely based on the charts.
• 14:50
  You pick something like Bitcoin, it's everybody in the Bitcoin
• 14:53
  world is watching the charts now.
• 14:55
  Some of them say, well, they're going to hobble forever.
• 14:57
  And, you know, a lot of that rhetoric I think is insincere.
• 15:01
  It's all the, it's all the Bros pumping each other on Twitter.
• 15:04
  And you know what the real intentions are when they intend
• 15:07
  to defect the gains. You know, they're not going to
• 15:10
  say that until after they sell, of course.
• 15:12
  But the case of gold would be the opposite extreme.
• 15:16
  There's so many people or billions of people in the world
• 15:18
  that own some gold and they're faced with a set of
• 15:21
  circumstances that are so alien to somebody sitting behind a
• 15:25
  computer screen with, you know, 3 computer monitors.
• 15:28
  They have social media on one, they have, you know, Bloomberg
• 15:31
  or CNBC on the middle and they have all their tickers and
• 15:34
  charts scrolling in real time on the right.
• 15:36
  And you know, what's going on with most of the people in the
• 15:39
  world that have gold, either buy it or sell it or, you know, own
• 15:43
  it is not is a completely hellion to that.
• 15:47
  And I'll, I'll give an example. And and some of us are fairly
• 15:50
  sad, but they, you know, people are in bad circumstances and
• 15:53
  they use gold to make the best of it.
• 15:55
  So there's certain societies that are, shall we say, low
• 15:58
  trust and particularly for women, they can't really even
• 16:02
  trust their husband because the husband has the right legally to
• 16:06
  say, I divorced these three times.
• 16:07
  And then the woman is done and basically out on her ear.
• 16:11
  And but, but in in some of these societies, the thing that
• 16:15
  sacrosanct is she gets allowed to take her possessions and the
• 16:19
  law recognizes her clothing and her jewelry as hers.
• 16:24
  And so when, when you know, some of these families have a lot of
• 16:27
  money and so she gets an allowance and, and they, and
• 16:30
  I've seen them in like in the gold souk in Dubai, they grimly
• 16:33
  walk into the jewelry store. Like for a Western woman to walk
• 16:37
  into a jewelry store is a happy occasion and they're excited and
• 16:40
  you know, they're trying on pretty things, right?
• 16:41
  But you know, some of them walk in, it's pretty grim and they
• 16:45
  have their allowance and they just want to buy a piece of
• 16:47
  jewelry because that's their safety margin against whatever
• 16:52
  may come in life because it's a low trust society.
• 16:55
  I, I guarantee you she is not looking at a price ticker.
• 16:58
  She's not looking at how Jay Powell may have said right
• 17:02
  yesterday in the Federal Open Market Committee, oh, interest
• 17:05
  rates are going to go down, therefore that's going to be
• 17:07
  inflation, therefore that's going to be good for gold or
• 17:09
  whatever the thinking may be. Who's thinking I got to get me
• 17:12
  another, you know, necklace. And in these jewelry stores, by
• 17:17
  the way, and if you've only been in the West, it's impossible to
• 17:20
  imagine. Whenever you see a piece of gold
• 17:23
  jewelry that looks kind of chunky, it's always either just
• 17:26
  hollow on the inside or it's like AC shape like this.
• 17:31
  I picked up a necklace that looked completely unassuming, 89
• 17:35
  1/2 grams of 20 gold. This thing's 3 oz.
• 17:39
  I mean, it has some, you know, and you know, it's, it's
• 17:45
  monetary in nature. I mean, yeah, OK.
• 17:46
  It has a beautiful. It has a design that maybe you
• 17:48
  considered beautiful, arguably, but it's monetary in nature.
• 17:52
  That's the whole point of it. And anyway, so you know.
• 17:57
  Now you brought you, you, you brought up a great point.
• 17:59
  So I've never thought of, right that, you know, I, I gave my,
• 18:04
  you know, description of how I thought the gold's universal,
• 18:06
  timeless, all that great stuff. But another component of that is
• 18:10
  indeed the fact that like all these people in China, in India,
• 18:15
  right? And I hear that like Indian
• 18:16
  households have 25,000 metric tons of gold.
• 18:20
  That's the, the, the statistic that I've heard.
• 18:23
  I mean, that's a lot of gold. A lot.
• 18:24
  More than that. Yeah, I mean that these people
• 18:28
  aren't like trading at, like you said, making buy, sell decisions
• 18:31
  based on if they think the Fed's going to lower rates in
• 18:34
  September or, you know, whatever they're they're, they're, you
• 18:39
  know, they're. And then same thing I know with
• 18:41
  silver in India with the farmers that they aren't necessarily
• 18:44
  buying and selling based on that.
• 18:46
  This is a universal market that's affected by more, I would
• 18:51
  say almost different and stronger market forces than any
• 18:55
  other market maybe in the world. I know the oil market's huge,
• 18:58
  but and I, I don't know a lot of individuals who are, who are
• 19:01
  dabbling and, you know, purchasing barrels of oil or
• 19:04
  anything like that. Yeah.
• 19:06
  I mean, if you count the total. So I argue that the total amount
• 19:13
  of gold that's actually out there in human hands is a lot
• 19:17
  higher than the official estimates.
• 19:20
  And so I had somebody from the World Gold Council, John Reed on
• 19:24
  my podcast a couple years ago now.
• 19:28
  And you know, I'm, I, you know, our podcast is not a
• 19:31
  confrontation, makes the guests look bad, you know, kind of
• 19:34
  thing. It's, it's conversation and
• 19:36
  exploring different ideas. But I kind of pushed him a
• 19:37
  little bit as like, you know, the World Gold Council is the
• 19:41
  one who works with all the central banks and all the
• 19:43
  bullion banks and all, you know, brings in everybody and
• 19:46
  governments to come up with that estimate of how much gold there
• 19:49
  is. And they estimated it's 207,200
• 19:52
  and 6000 tons. I think at the time, it's
• 19:54
  probably up to 3000 tons. Since then, we'll call it
• 19:56
  200,000 tons, which, you know, today's prices is what, $14
• 20:00
  trillion or something. I think the actual amount of
• 20:04
  gold that's out there is a lot higher.
• 20:06
  We do know, I used to say that people have been accumulating
• 20:09
  gold for 5000 years. But last year, I don't know when
• 20:13
  the find occurred. I read the article about this
• 20:16
  find. In this cave in Bulgaria where
• 20:19
  they found some ancient warrior king who's buried 7 kilos of
• 20:23
  obviously ceremonial gold 6500 years ago.
• 20:27
  So for at least 6500 years, man has highly valued and prized
• 20:31
  gold to the point where they're burying their warrior kings with
• 20:35
  it. And, you know, gold has always
• 20:38
  been the kind of thing, not only is it always universal, and I
• 20:40
  agree with that, but it's also been the kind of thing that
• 20:45
  people don't talk about. They hide it from their nosy
• 20:48
  neighbors and you know, who could steal it and from their
• 20:51
  governments. And they've been doing so, so
• 20:53
  far as we know, for 6500 years. It's, it's it's Gandalf saying
• 20:58
  to Frodo and Lord of the Rings, keep it safe.
• 21:04
  Every once in a while I'm in, I'm in somebody's office in the
• 21:06
  gold space. There's always a safe from the
• 21:08
  corner. And I, you know, I don't say
• 21:11
  anything about that safe because it's not my place.
• 21:14
  And people don't, you know, appreciate nosy questions or
• 21:16
  stuff like that. But I'm talking about this.
• 21:19
  I'm talking about the idea that people don't talk about their
• 21:21
  gold and even to their own kids. And, you know, the old man is on
• 21:25
  his deathbed and he says, bring my oldest son.
• 21:28
  And. And then he says, you know,
• 21:29
  there's gold, you know, under the throat, you know, in his
• 21:33
  dying breath. And this guy just starts to
• 21:35
  laugh. And he says, you see that safe
• 21:37
  over there? And.
• 21:38
  Yeah, and he says, and he looks at me over his bifocals and he
• 21:42
  says there's a lot of gold in there going to look at him.
• 21:45
  He says, I mean a lot. Now, the safe was, you know, I
• 21:50
  don't know, a meter tall and, you know, 2 feet wide and 2 1/2
• 21:56
  feet deep or something. A pretty big safe.
• 21:58
  If that thing were full, like solid packed up ours, you know,
• 22:01
  it'd be a couple tons of gold in there.
• 22:02
  I'm sure it wasn't much. I don't know what he meant, but
• 22:05
  you know, some people say a lot and they mean they have 12 whole
• 22:07
  oz and other people say a lot and they mean, you know, 12
• 22:11
  kilos and some other people might mean he has a ton in
• 22:13
  there. I don't know.
• 22:14
  But that's how it's always been for thousands of years.
• 22:19
  And so you can't inventory and I think it's a multiple of all
• 22:21
  that. But here's here's the point of
• 22:23
  all this. I argue that all of that gold is
• 22:28
  potential supply at the right price and under the right
• 22:31
  conditions. And 8 billion people on this
• 22:35
  planet are potential demand at the right price and under the
• 22:38
  right conditions. So you know, when people say,
• 22:41
  well, you know, the miners produce 3000 tons a year of
• 22:45
  gold, and that's the supply. No, no, no, no, all that gold is
• 22:49
  supply and it will come to market in the right condition or
• 22:51
  could come to market in the right conditions.
• 22:53
  And that's how you have to look at it.
• 22:54
  So yeah, this is a massive, massive, massive market.
• 22:58
  Much, much, much, much bigger than most people really
• 23:00
  appreciate. And, and, and for those reasons
• 23:03
  and others, it's also a very stable market.
• 23:06
  The gold price is not like Bitcoin banging around like a
• 23:09
  pinball. It's actually the value of the
• 23:12
  dollar that's moving up and down.
• 23:14
  Yeah, not the value of gold, yeah.
• 23:17
  If you're looking to buy gold, silver or platinum, do yourself
• 23:21
  a favor and check out Pymbek's, the online precious metals
• 23:25
  bullion dealer and sponsor of Ron's Basement.
• 23:29
  I was a happy customer before they offered to support the
• 23:32
  channel. You'll find they have the best
• 23:34
  prices, quality and service. I think Pembex is best and you
• 23:39
  will too. And be sure to tell him that
• 23:42
  you're from Ron's basement. I might ask you one more
• 23:44
  question before we we moved to talking about your company.
• 23:47
  Specifically, what are your thoughts on the digitization of
• 23:51
  gold? I know the World Gold Council
• 23:54
  and the LBMA have a think. It's called Gold 247 project.
• 23:59
  I was talking with Rick Rule just a few days ago.
• 24:01
  He said he thinks possibly in the balance of this decade that
• 24:05
  we could see like a real movement towards the
• 24:08
  digitization of gold being backed by I guess the plan is
• 24:13
  the blockchain. Any any general thoughts on the
• 24:16
  on the IT seems like there's there's things going on right
• 24:20
  now on many different fronts in that regard, but but none of
• 24:24
  them I don't sense in my opinion have really caught on yet.
• 24:29
  Any any thoughts on that? Yeah.
• 24:32
  I mean, I yeah, it's like, where do I begin?
• 24:36
  I know I'm sorry big question and I want to add I want to make
• 24:40
  it even more confusing. Not confusing, but what I the
• 24:42
  other thing I want to throw in there is could it lead to
• 24:46
  massive increase in demand for gold?
• 24:50
  If they are, if it is digitized and is made much more
• 24:53
  functional, then I promise no more questions Keith.
• 24:56
  So the key is functionality, right?
• 24:59
  So I've met a lot of CE OS of a lot of, you know, gold, either
• 25:05
  gold attached to credit cards, gold on the blockchain, gold on
• 25:09
  the app, you know, digital gold in one form or another and not
• 25:13
  broader than just blockchain. And, you know, they're all
• 25:16
  trying to make it possible for people to pay gold.
• 25:19
  You, you know, use gold as, as a means of payment.
• 25:23
  And you know, I, I say to them, look, a, a lot of people would
• 25:28
  be happy to be paid in gold, but most people don't want to payout
• 25:34
  gold. And so the fact that gold is not
• 25:38
  used in payments isn't for, you know, the, the cause, The root
• 25:42
  cause isn't the lack of an app that makes, makes it possible to
• 25:45
  pay gold. Obviously you, you could hand
• 25:47
  gold physically. I mean, it doesn't require, you
• 25:49
  know, for thousands of years, it never required an app.
• 25:52
  And so, you know, the presence of an app in a certain sense is
• 25:57
  a solution looking for a problem.
• 26:01
  And so, so I, I think you know, you have to, you have to get
• 26:06
  the, the horse before the cart and not the cart before the
• 26:09
  horse. It's OK.
• 26:11
  What, under what circumstances would people want to pay out
• 26:15
  their gold? And, and I think, you know,
• 26:17
  getting back to my thesis earlier about interest and, and
• 26:21
  to tie this together today, gold is, it's kind of a dead end.
• 26:26
  It's a capital asset. So you make your money in
• 26:29
  dollars, right? And then you buy some gold, then
• 26:33
  obviously you go through a bit offer spread.
• 26:35
  So if you were to sell the gold, buy the gold and then sell it,
• 26:37
  you lose something. For the most retail people,
• 26:40
  especially if it's physical gold, you're losing a couple
• 26:42
  percentage points of value unless the gold price moves up.
• 26:47
  And you know, if you're doing it online, maybe you're, maybe
• 26:49
  you're only losing 1 percentage point or something.
• 26:51
  But so gold's a capital asset. Why would you spend your capital
• 26:55
  asset? It would be like buying a house
• 26:58
  and then, you know, just laying off, you know, corners and bits
• 27:01
  of it in order to consume it. It doesn't, it doesn't make
• 27:06
  economic sense, people. It's not how people want to use
• 27:08
  it. But if you had a gold income, if
• 27:11
  gold were the income and not dollars, then of course people
• 27:14
  spend their income and, and you know, gold is unique and special
• 27:18
  in a lot of different ways, but you know, but if your income was
• 27:21
  gold, you'd be spending your gold, of course.
• 27:23
  And that's, again, historically, we know that's how people did
• 27:26
  it. So I think you have to get the
• 27:28
  horse before the cart. What's the precondition for
• 27:32
  people to want to spend gold? And that is they have to have
• 27:34
  gold as income in order for people to have gold as income,
• 27:37
  What's the precondition to that? Their employers have to be
• 27:40
  financing their businesses in gold and if they're financing
• 27:44
  their businesses in gold, right? So, so look at the world today
• 27:46
  and what props up the value of the dollar, right?
• 27:49
  And people just say, well, faith and whatever and confidence,
• 27:53
  yes, sort of. But all, every debtor and all
• 27:58
  the producers are in debt up to their eyeballs.
• 28:00
  Most, you know, every farmer, every miner, every trucker,
• 28:02
  every shipper, manufacturer, distributor, they're all in
• 28:05
  debt. If you have $1,000,000 worth of
• 28:08
  debt and let's say the interest rate and, and, and depending on
• 28:12
  when your debt matures and, and when you rolled it over, you're
• 28:15
  probably paying, you know, 8% interest today.
• 28:19
  You need $80,000 a year and profit.
• 28:23
  You don't service debt with gross revenues, you service debt
• 28:26
  with net profit. You need $80,000 in profit just
• 28:29
  to service the debt. So you have to produce whatever
• 28:32
  it is good or service you produce, produce more of it and
• 28:36
  sell more of it, dump it on the market on the bid price in order
• 28:40
  to raise enough revenues that net of all your expenses, you
• 28:44
  have 80, at least $80,000. Otherwise the creditors come and
• 28:47
  take everything. And so they are hungry for
• 28:51
  dollar revenues and anything else revenues isn't good enough
• 28:56
  unless they can just immediately dump whether it's EUR or whether
• 28:59
  it would be gold or or anything else.
• 29:01
  They've got to just dump our Bitcoin.
• 29:03
  For that matter, they've got to dump it and get dollars because
• 29:06
  dollars is what they need for a debt service.
• 29:09
  And their employees also have debts, a truck payment, car
• 29:13
  payment, house payment, student loan payment, which are all
• 29:16
  dollars. If those businesses refinanced
• 29:20
  in gold or recapitalized in gold, they'd be seeking gold
• 29:23
  revenues. So it's the finance that that's
• 29:27
  going to drive the whole thing and which is, you know,
• 29:31
  obviously what Montreal is all about.
• 29:33
  Yeah. Well, tell us, tell us about
• 29:34
  monetary metals in our in our final few minutes here.
• 29:37
  I think from what I understand it's a innovative company and
• 29:43
  you're doing some, you know have some initiatives that are that
• 29:47
  are that are generating a lot of interest out there.
• 29:49
  Yeah. I mean the innovation in a
• 29:51
  certain sense, it's very old. It goes back thousands of years.
• 29:55
  Give me your gold and I'll pay you interest on it.
• 29:57
  So because the interest rate's 3%, give me 100 oz and do the
• 30:00
  yard give me back 103 oz. Pretty simple, you know, thing,
• 30:06
  you know, people, people like to sort of get me in a gotcha and
• 30:09
  say, yeah, you know, they were doing that 2000 years ago.
• 30:10
  Yeah, you're right, They were. And you know, that was, that was
• 30:15
  the origin of of the bank or you know, which comes from Banco,
• 30:18
  which is a bench with, you know, the, the money people were
• 30:21
  counting it out and so on. But you know, of course, a very
• 30:26
  simple idea and a very powerful one, which has two propositions
• 30:30
  because there's two customers, there's the business getting the
• 30:33
  finance and then there's the saver who's, you know, getting a
• 30:37
  return on savings. So for the saver, you know,
• 30:40
  there's a universal human need for savings and getting a return
• 30:44
  on savings. And unlike all the other wars
• 30:48
  that governments have waged, they've waged a war on drugs,
• 30:50
  They've waged a war on poverty, which all these different wars,
• 30:53
  none of which they've succeeded, but they have waged a war, you
• 30:58
  know, the government with a central bank in collusion with
• 31:00
  the commercial banks. They've waged a war on interest
• 31:03
  and largely they've won. And now, you know, they thought
• 31:06
  they'd blip up interest rates. Everybody believed it already in
• 31:09
  the rest of the world, the central banks are reversing and
• 31:12
  they're cutting interest rates again.
• 31:14
  Now the only question with the Fed is when they do to start the
• 31:17
  cuts. But the Fed is talking about it.
• 31:20
  Interest rates are going to slam right back to zero and beyond.
• 31:23
  And even what there is a little bit of interest in the dollar,
• 31:26
  it's not necessarily compensating you for the
• 31:29
  debasement of the dollar that's going on at the same time.
• 31:32
  So they take away X percent, they give you 2%.
• 31:35
  It's, you know, you're falling behind.
• 31:37
  So there's a need for return on savings.
• 31:41
  Your savings can grow and support your retirement.
• 31:44
  And you know, that's what we're doing.
• 31:45
  So, you know, give us your gold. We're paying anywhere between 2
• 31:50
  1/2 and 5% interest depending on, you know, the opportunity
• 31:53
  and but you know, cost 3% and what's 3% in real money?
• 32:00
  But what we're doing is we're, we're financing real businesses
• 32:04
  and we have two programs. We have leasing and this is for
• 32:09
  businesses that have a gold inventory or gold work in
• 32:11
  progress. So this is for jewelry
• 32:14
  manufacturers, jewelry retailers, mints, refiners,
• 32:18
  recyclers, high tech coatings companies, low tech, you know,
• 32:22
  electroplating anywhere where there's gold, there's always a
• 32:26
  certain amount of gold like in the process.
• 32:30
  So what makes the what makes the lease a lease is the metal is
• 32:34
  physically present. We can show up, put it on a
• 32:36
  scale and, you know, prove that it weighs greater than the lease
• 32:38
  amount. It is not on the balance sheet
• 32:42
  of the lessee. It does not belong to them.
• 32:44
  It's not available to their creditors if they should declare
• 32:47
  bankruptcy. The title is owned by the
• 32:49
  investors who own the metal. We have another program which is
• 32:54
  lending. And so we do gold loans to
• 32:58
  companies that don't have gold inventory but have gold income.
• 33:02
  So a mining, a mining company would be a great example of that
• 33:05
  where they pull metal out of the ground.
• 33:07
  We have a silver loan that we're doing for a company called
• 33:11
  Bunker Hill right now that is a mine that produces lead, zinc
• 33:14
  and silver that's paying 12% for accredited investors.
• 33:20
  So this is on balance sheet. There is credit risk unlike in
• 33:23
  the, the interest rates are obviously a lot higher at 12%.
• 33:29
  And what we want to do is continue to scale this and find
• 33:33
  more and more different kinds of businesses that that qualify for
• 33:36
  financing in metal and begin, you know, the process of, of re
• 33:43
  monetizing metal and you know, in a big way.
• 33:45
  But the but the metal has to have a return in order to really
• 33:48
  work as a, as a monetary system. That's been the Warren Buffett
• 33:53
  objection, right? Well, you know, gold is great,
• 33:56
  whatever, but it doesn't produce anything.
• 33:58
  You can't get a return on it. Yeah.
• 34:01
  Well, yeah. With all due respect, Mr.
• 34:02
  Buffett, now you can. Yeah.
• 34:04
  Well, and, and and that's what I think is innovative about what
• 34:08
  you're doing, at least in modern times.
• 34:10
  But like you said, it's been done throughout history.
• 34:15
  So if I give you 100 ounces of gold, you'll on a simplistic
• 34:21
  terms at the end of the year, may you know, I may earn 3
• 34:24
  ounces of gold as my return on my investment.
• 34:29
  I guess you would say that I gave you, but you would take
• 34:31
  that gold and then lease it out or, or in some way get it out
• 34:36
  there into the business community and they would pay
• 34:40
  probably a little more than 3 ounces of, of, of Yeah, right.
• 34:46
  I mean, you're not doing this on a on a charitable basis, I
• 34:48
  imagine. Fortuna Silver Mines is a global
• 34:51
  intermediate gold and silver producer.
• 34:54
  Since 2005, Fortuna's best in class management has delivered
• 34:59
  impressive growth and profits. Fortuna's solid financial
• 35:03
  position and operational expertise allows for performance
• 35:08
  in any precious metals price cycle and provides a foundation
• 35:12
  from which to harvest great profits in more favorable metals
• 35:16
  markets. Investing in Fortuna is an
• 35:19
  investment in quality, long term sustainable production of in
• 35:23
  demand precious and base metals. But it's very, yeah, I mean, it
• 35:28
  makes gold functional again. So thank you for explaining that
• 35:33
  to to myself and to our viewer who's who's watching us.
• 35:36
  And there's no reason why that shouldn't work, right?
• 35:39
  And and like you said, you know, it, it proves Warren Buffett
• 35:42
  wrong in terms of what he's always running around telling us
• 35:46
  that it's, you know, you just buy it and it sits there and you
• 35:48
  can't make any income on it, which is is not necessarily
• 35:51
  true. It, it does something else also,
• 35:54
  which is, you know, I've given a lot of, you know, talks
• 35:58
  economics, you know, type talks globally for, for a lot of years
• 36:02
  now. And you know, you can explain to
• 36:05
  somebody. Look, it's not how many dollars
• 36:08
  your, your gold is worth or for, for that matter, the rest of
• 36:11
  your portfolio. It's how many ounces of gold
• 36:13
  your whole portfolio is worth. So if you're working hard and
• 36:16
  taking risk and, and having headaches and then you end up
• 36:19
  being worth less gold at the end of the year, then you started
• 36:22
  your, you know, your wealth has gone down.
• 36:24
  I, I can say that until I turn blue in the face, right?
• 36:27
  People can entertain that as an intellectual exercise to a
• 36:30
  certain degree, but it doesn't necessarily stick.
• 36:35
  But if, if somebody, if somebody gives monetary metals X number
• 36:38
  of Oz of gold and they get an account statement that says, OK,
• 36:41
  you have this many ounces, but then next month it says that you
• 36:45
  have this many ounces and it's a little bit more month after
• 36:48
  that, it's a little bit more. And suddenly thing, the light
• 36:52
  bulb goes off and they, they get it at a more visceral level.
• 36:58
  It's not an intellectual academic, you know, arcane
• 37:01
  theory kind of exercise. It's like, oh, I'm getting more
• 37:05
  gold. They're paying me gold, you know
• 37:07
  this. This is, yes, more like savings.
• 37:11
  Yes, I, I, I get exactly what you're saying, 'cause I'll sit
• 37:14
  down here in the basement and talk to my viewers and say don't
• 37:17
  think of your silver in terms of dollars, Think of it in terms of
• 37:21
  Oz, right? And then 5 minutes later I'll be
• 37:25
  saying, well, the price of silver is 28 or $29.00.
• 37:28
  And, you know, it's like I grew up in the United States, I think
• 37:31
  in terms of dollars, but really it, it, it, it from an
• 37:36
  intellectual perspective, but also like the real truth, right?
• 37:41
  It's like I'm even me a, a guy that lives gold and silver.
• 37:44
  Like I'm asleep to a certain extent.
• 37:47
  I still think of, you know, when we get done here, I'm going to
• 37:50
  check with the gold price is in dollar and I'm thinking of it in
• 37:53
  dollars when really what we need to think of it in is Oz.
• 37:56
  And that's I, I boy, you gave me a great visual.
• 37:59
  Like if I had an account with your company and you know, I get
• 38:03
  my monthly or quarterly statement and I can see that my
• 38:05
  number of Oz are going up. That's, you know, like you said,
• 38:09
  Ding, Ding. The the the the light bulb goes
• 38:11
  on. Something everybody can,
• 38:13
  something everybody can do. I don't know how many people
• 38:15
  actually do it, but I, I talk about this all the time.
• 38:17
  You know, everybody must keep track of their net worth on some
• 38:20
  spreadsheet somewhere, right? So the bottom of, you know, call
• 38:24
  it a 172 is, you know, the bottom line that says, OK, this
• 38:29
  is my net worth in dollars. Yeah, put right underneath it
• 38:33
  the gold price as of that moment, and then divide the
• 38:37
  dollar net worth by the gold price of that moment.
• 38:40
  And that will give you your net worth in oz and every quarter, I
• 38:43
  mean, don't do this every day because it just gets ridiculous.
• 38:46
  Every quarter, look at your net worth in gold to see if it's
• 38:49
  going up or down. Everybody should be doing this.
• 38:52
  I mean, obviously I want all the open accounts at monetary
• 38:55
  Metals, but regardless of whether you do that or not,
• 38:58
  that's easy to just do this on your own spreadsheet and then
• 39:01
  you see whether you're going up or down.
• 39:02
  If you're not going up, then you're not really gaining
• 39:06
  wealth. You're taking the risks are
• 39:07
  real. You give your money to some
• 39:10
  investment. You may not get it back, but the
• 39:13
  value of that comes back and it's actually worth less gold
• 39:15
  than when you started. You've actually lost wealth for
• 39:18
  all that risk. And that's a very sobering, you
• 39:23
  know, when people start looking at things through that lens.
• 39:26
  I I think I think that's an important insight.
• 39:29
  Yeah. And if and if someone had done
• 39:30
  that exercise, let's say back in October of 2023 and and compared
• 39:38
  because the gold price has gone up so significantly their their
• 39:41
  net worth measured in gold oz compared to today, they
• 39:46
  unfortunately would have seen a a decrease right in their net
• 39:50
  worth measured in in gold ounces.
• 39:53
  That's right. And that's, you know, that
• 39:55
  should be red flag of like, hey, I'm like, yeah.
• 39:58
  And you know, 'cause I, I think at the end of the day, gold is
• 40:04
  an economic constant or the closest thing we got to an
• 40:07
  economic constant. So if you measure things in
• 40:09
  gold, it's it's, it's an accurate barometer of what
• 40:12
  you've got and. You know, and, and I was going
• 40:16
  to say, but unfortunately and, and you say, you know, you'll go
• 40:19
  back to say, well, silver went, silver went down yesterday,
• 40:21
  right, Obviously 5% or something at one point actually recovered
• 40:25
  a bit. You know, the whole of our
• 40:27
  education system, the whole of our financial regulation,
• 40:31
  everything is designed to train. And you know, it's it's sort of
• 40:35
  brainwashing to train everybody to think in dollars and wants
• 40:38
  the dollar value of something. So if I say to you, I have
• 40:41
  $100,000 worth of gold, you have no problem visualizing everybody
• 40:45
  watching this. OK, Yeah, I get that right.
• 40:47
  If I said I have 100 ounces of gold worth of dollars, and now
• 40:52
  wait a minute, I've got to puzzle that out.
• 40:54
  What does that mean? If you go to Google Images and
• 40:59
  you type in money, I want to see pictures of money.
• 41:02
  You'll see page after page after page after page of various
• 41:05
  different ways of paper with green ink on it.
• 41:09
  Whether it's somebody grabbing a fistful of, of of cash, whether
• 41:14
  it's the printing presses that's rolling off, whether it's stacks
• 41:16
  or pallets of dollar bills or cartoon characters or whatever.
• 41:19
  You're not going to see a gold coin anywhere on that search.
• 41:24
  And boy, have they brainwashed us.
• 41:25
  At least in the other places in the world, not so.
• 41:29
  They have a much clearer picture of what they mean by money.
• 41:31
  But in the US, you know, where the West, really, it's
• 41:36
  brainwashing is, is complete. I, I agree with you 100%.
• 41:41
  And one thing I've learned is the last thing you want to do is
• 41:45
  to try to convince your friends or family that they've been
• 41:48
  brainwashed because they, they don't, they don't like that.
• 41:52
  I figure and I what I what I tell people is because the
• 41:55
  people that watch my channel know that most people are
• 41:58
  brainwashing me 99% and, and even I'll admit I am still like
• 42:02
  the example I gave earlier to a small extent struggle with it.
• 42:08
  But let them come to you know, they'll, they'll find out
• 42:10
  eventually. You know, I figure I say let
• 42:12
  them come to you. So Keith, thank you.
• 42:16
  You really are one of the smartest guys in the room.
• 42:18
  That's what people told me about you, and this has been a great
• 42:21
  conversation. If people want to learn more
• 42:24
  about monetary metals, I'll put a link to the company's website
• 42:27
  in the description below. Is there anything that I forgot
• 42:32
  to ask you or any other information that you need to
• 42:35
  share with my audience? If they want to follow me on
• 42:37
  Twitter, I'm at Real Keith Weiner.
• 42:40
  OK, the real Keith Weiner, right?
• 42:43
  We know that, but just at real Keith Weiner.
• 42:45
  OK, got it. Got it.
• 42:47
  All right. Well, thank you.
• 42:48
  I'll look for, I'm going to, I'm going to bug you in a few months
• 42:50
  and have you back in the basement.
• 42:52
  So this has been a very stimulating conversation for me.
• 42:57
  You know, you, you, you kind of turned on a few new light bulbs
• 43:01
  in my head and there's very few up there that are left.
• 43:04
  So I appreciate your, your time and your and your interest.
• 43:07
  Thanks for having me, Ron.