It’s time to get real about gold.

First, some quick stats on how you, the MetalMark customer, has done by trading some of your dollars for gold. These are from when we launched at the end of 2024, assuming you were along for the ride.

Gold is up 96%

Gold, and thus our Aurum gold bills, are up over 96%. For every $1 spent, you now have $1.97 in value.

Beat S&P500 by 4.7X

Gold outpaced the S&P500 by over 4.7 times – all during the AI boom. That’s a 76% performance gap in gold’s favor.

Dollar is down 3.6%

The dollar lost around 3.6% of its value due to inflation & debasement. That’s a bit hot, or 34% higher than the FED’s target.

As measured in gold...

That’s incredible performance for what used to be a “boring” asset, sustained over the past two years. Congratulations are in order for everyone with gold and other precious metals: it’s been a great ride.

If you need a visual, this helps paint the dramatic picture of reality we’re now & still living through:

This chart is not normal, and that assertion is not in dispute by any serious person. Though, the reason why this chart is abnormal will vary based on who you ask.

For those in the precious metals and sound money camps, this chart reflects an inevitability

For those in the precious metals and sound money camps, this chart reflects an inevitability. Long have they preached the gospel against fiat and in support of precious metals. Long have others giggled at their paltry returns compared to the latest SaaS craze. Long have they told you that human history is on their side, and some form of reckoning is inevitable. Their position was never fringe; it was modest, honest, and rooted in truth.

Why? One core concept: fiat currency. The value of gold in the chart is, after all, denominated in US dollars, and US dollars are the world’s most predominant fiat currency. But so what? In the modern economic world, the most common form of currency is fiat currency. Why would the most popular thing somehow be bad?

In a word: inflation. If you’ve been buying things for a few years, you’ve noticed the prices on just about everything tend to rise over time. Your parents and grandparents reminisce about “back in the day” when a dollar got you a gallon of milk and a quarter got you a hamburger. Looking back in this way, you can see almost everything rise dramatically in price over time.

That’s not some mysterious force of nature at play, nor is it some bizarre byproduct of the complex, interconnected nature of supply chains. Prices on goods & services were always the original “number go up” technology, because those goods & services are denominated in fiat, and fiat currencies are intentionally designed and managed to lose a precise amount of value over time.

The Federal Reserve and similar institutions in other countries deploy policy levers to try and maintain the rise in prices across the board to around 2% annually. At the same time, they can create any amount of the currency they want. When you create more of a thing, you reduce its scarcity by increasing the supply. By increasing the supply, you reduce the value. This is currency debasement, or the intentional devaluing through money printing.

The “number go up” on dollar-denominated things is because dollar “value go down” over time.

By having a currency that weakens over time, savvy holders of that currency have a huge motivation to either spend it or buy other kinds of assets that may go up in value over time. If you hold it, after all, it will continually lose value. The incentive to spend this devaluing currency increases the velocity of the currency and stimulates economic activity. That’s really good for the government, it can be good for you if you’re wise in investing, and it’s bad for people who don’t participate in things like the stock market, harder assets, or interest and dividend-bearing investments.

Fiat currencies are not backed by gold or other harder assets. They are backed by the faith (and fear) of a government and their military might. These “feelings” on a currency can wildly change overnight, something we’re seeing right now play out with the currencies of Venezuela and Iran. Because of poor fiscal policy and geopolitical tensions, their currencies fast-tracked the inevitable fiat currency lifecycle right down to the inevitable zero value conclusion.

The gold bugs of the world, the sound money advocates, the precious metal aficionados – they’re currently experiencing a multi-year victory lap of “I told you so.” It’s not some brief rally where they’re stoked for a sudden atypical 7% jump; this is a generational validation of the sound money hypothesis lasting for years. It would seem their instincts were spot-on.

So what’s behind this sustained gold rush? Of course, it’s highly complex, there’s plenty of opinions, and there’s no one smoking gun. But there’s consensus on a few main drivers, and by understanding those, we can make slightly better guesses about what may be in gold’s future.

Weaponization of the Dollar

The US dollar is supposed to be the world’s reserve currency. We encourage and, in some cases, force deals and assets to be denominated in dollars with our global trading partners. This is very true for things like oil, and the US dollar is often called the “petrodollar.”

But for decades, the US has been able to perform various sanctions, seizures, and freezing of dollar-denominated assets. Other countries, some with their own large economies, saw this for what it was, which is a country politicizing their currency to advance their own goals. A “world reserve” currency that’s politically weaponized is a much riskier asset to trust in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment and world order.

US Debt at All-Time-High

America #1! The United States debt has been beating its own record for a while, and we’re smashing the record yet again. Servicing this debt (or paying interest on it) is becoming a literal trillion-dollar annual nightmare, and there really are not many levers at play to help reduce this to a manageable level that inspires continued confidence.

One lever is to “inflate away” the debt: if you ramp up the debasement of the dollar, you reduce this debt service burden, and the debt becomes a problem that can be reduced more easily over time. This would be like if you had a $1MM mortgage with $10k payments due every month, so you devalued the currency such that the payment is more like $5k in “today’s” dollars.

Geopolitical Derisking

Conflict and periods of uncertainty generally drive riskier investments into more stable ones, and conflict and uncertainty are on display in spades. All of this coming from the country issuing the world’s reserve currency with an ever-expanding mountain of debt and interest, with active military campaigns in multiple nations, with real fears over the historical weaponization of the currency and reality of debasement being the likely way out.

Gold, by contrast, (as the sound money folks will eagerly tell you) has been the most long-standing and widely-adopted store of value in human history. The very nature of money is always in flux, but there has been an anchor for thousands of years, and it seems the value proposition is being validated and reinforced.

And the Future...?

Tapping into our inner Zoltar, if these conditions are what’s driving this sustained rally, then barring a complete reversal of these conditions, this trend will likely continue.

It would indeed seem like we’re in the golden age of… gold. Well done, true believers in sound money. You were right.

Aurums are Gold.

Aurums are flexible gold bills that fit in your wallet and are the most trusted form of real, physical, gold cash. They’re fractionalized 24-karat gold, completely assayable, and contain modern fiat currency anti-counterfeiting measures.

Aurums are Secure.

The patent-protected Aurum contains a myriad of proprietary security features found in the most trusted and widely-circulated fiat currencies on the planet. Aurums have never been counterfeited.

With the price of gold today, there’s never before been this size of opportunity for fraud, counterfeits, forgeries, and fakes. As the price of gold continues to increase, the amount of bad actors will increase.

Aurums are Private.

Cash, be it fiat or gold, is a physical transfer of value from one part to another. No middleman, bank teller, or financial or government institution is required. Once it’s handed over, the translation is complete.

It’s not the easiest way to pay for something in this digital world, but we feel the optionalist is important. Sometimes the simplest solution isn’t the one that requires the internet, your bank, and the government to enable.

Aurums are Real Gold.

Every Aurum we made is a certified 24-karat gold product. It has the amount of gold it says it has, you can independently verify it, and our reputation rests on this being true.

Aurums are Recoverable Gold.

These gold bills can be assayed, or melted by a jeweler, to remove the durable protective layer and return the gold in a usable form.

Aurums are Exchangeable.

We’ll buy back your Aurums for market value, which includes the premium. That means you can buy a bill, wait for a while, and if the price of gold goes up, you can choose to sell it back to us for dollars.

As of today, 100% of bills purchased by our customers have increased in value. We’re not sure why’d you want to convert gold back to depreciating dollars, but it’s an option.