Star Metro - Florida's "Transactional Gold" Debacle Highlights New Risks in Sound Money Movement

A few clumsy activists and policy makers have sparked the imposition of massive new regulations on the precious metals industry in Florida, shoving precious metals dealers, depositories, and their customers under the state's oppressive and centrally controlled "Money Transmitter" regime. (Jp addresses this particular topic at the 31 minute mark.)

Central Bank Gold Buying Trends:

Jesse Day, VRIC Media: The World Gold Accounts released their Central Bank Gold Reserve survey 2025 last month. Here's what they wrote. In one part of it, it says, similar to findings from previous surveys, central banks continue to hold favorable expectations.

On gold respondents overwhelmingly 95% believe that Global Central Bank gold reserves will increase over the next 12 months. This is despite gold being at near all time highs. What do you make of this aggressive outlook from central banks and how much of a role do you think central bank buying plays in driving the gold?

Jp Cortez, Money Metals: I think it plays a massive role. Debatably the largest role currently. Central bank gold buying is driving this, this up, this increase in price. I think we've seen Jan Nieuwenhuijs, who's a gold analyst for Money Metals Exchange, has provided in-depth research showing that countries all over the world are actively increasing their holdings, which speaks to how central banks are not price sensitive.

These are strategic purchases being made by the central banks that are going to happen regardless of what the market price is on any given day. Now, we have on the eastern side of the world, countries like China that are quietly stockpiling gold at rates that we have not seen in a long time. They are not having to disclose their holdings either, which makes sense.

If you were stockpiling gold, it wouldn't really make sense to have to disclose some of this, and that's why China has not been doing so. But from the perspective of a central bank, this makes complete sense both in countries that are adversaries to the United States and in up-and-coming economies like Poland, like Turkey, to begin to stockpile this metal at accelerated rates.

You're hedging against geopolitical risks. You're hedging against sanctions and trade wars. You're promoting stability. You're hedging or protecting against inflation, against currency devaluation. The reason for this, of course in 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions that followed, all of this has driven countries and central banks into trying to get out from under the thumb of the United States government, which has an outsized power or reach over the global monetary system. Combine that with the debt problem and the inflation problem, and you can understand why countries would be actively seeking exits from the US dollar.

Another point is that President Trump is talking about a new tariff every other week, and it seems like the United States will be doing less global trade. Of course, it only makes sense that these countries would then have less functional need to hold US dollars. So all of these issues are kind of, they're happening at the same time as countries all around the world and even US states. Rediscovering the value of politically neutral inflation free money, which is what gold and silver is and has been for thousands of years.

I think that's kind of the macro outlook, the micro, on an individual level, people are so desperately seeking alternatives to stores of value because the one that the government has provided and mandated upon us is broken.

You hear these stories in Argentina or Zimbabwe of people using gold, physical gold. You hear stories of internet video games, people going online and playing runescape or playing World of Warcraft to gain video game money because that video game money holds value better than the currency being disseminated by that government.

So as to gold and silver, it obviously makes sense that countries and individuals would coalesce back around the greatest monetary asset that the world has seen over the course of thousands of years.

Support for Sound Money Rising Steadily at the State Level

Jesse Day, VRIC Media: Well Jp, you've also been making efforts and scoring wins in terms of restoring gold and silver as constitutional money in the United States with the Sound Money Defense League. Could you update us on the progress you've made recently and some of the legislation that's been passed around the country? A lot of interesting things are happening there, and then I'd just love to get both of your thoughts on how far this could go in terms of gold and silver truly being restored as money in the United States.

Could a new gold standard operate honestly, in a world where governments seem to do nothing but lie to us? We'll tackle that in a moment. But first, Jp, talk about the progress the Sound Money Defense League has been making.

Jp Cortez, Money Metals: It has been an incredible ride for more than a decade now that we've been promoting sound money policies at the state and federal level here in the United States.

This year, 2025, is the greatest sound money year in the history of our organization, and each previous year that has been the case. There has been a continued growth year over year. This year we had more than 32 states in the United States out of 50 that introduced and considered gold and silver legislation.

That's more than 70% of the United States. That's actively looking into ways to reintegrate gold and silver back into the states monetary system. Or to remove the disincentives into individual investors, getting into buying, selling, and using precious metals. So we've worked to eliminate sales tax on purchases of precious metals all across the country.

We've worked to eliminate capital gains tax. When you sell the metal, the state will charge you a tax. We've worked to eliminate that.

In Wyoming, we worked with the state to establish a $10 million physical Wyoming gold reserve stored in the state, held on the state's balance sheet. We've done so many policies like this, so it has been an incredible year for sound money, and we expect this trend to continue because.

Inflation isn't going away and, and these questions about money that haven't been asked or really considered in decades are starting to become dinnertime dinner table conversations about why isn't my money holding its value?

Why is it that just a couple years ago, I was able to buy 40% more groceries than I am today?

Why can I no longer afford a home?

The answer to all of these questions is the Federal Reserve. This is intentional policy and states don't have to sit by and watch as the federal government and the Federal Reserve destroy the currency of our country. So it's been a very exciting time. We expect this trend to continue, and it's the success over the last 12 years in passing all of these projects that have created a lot of momentum.

THE DOWNSIDE: Enthusiastic New Activists Float Ill-Conceived Proposals

Honestly, what we've seen recently is that this has brought in a lot of new helpers, and unfortunately, some of these helpers might not really have a good sense of how to craft sound money legislation.

In Florida, you may have heard there was recently some news. This supposedly great bill was signed into law in Florida. Ron DeSantis came out, said that gold and silver can be used transactionally. But this is an exercise in making sure that you read the bills because not all sound money bills are built equally. This bill that passed in Florida is a disaster.

I've been in this space for more than a decade. I've read literally every single piece of legislation that pertains to this that has been even considered. By any state in the country, and I can tell you this is the most catastrophic thing I've ever seen enacted by a state. This creates an entirely new regulatory structure that brings everyone in the gold and silver business, the storage business or any related industry under the money services, money transmitter laws -- and creates whole new regulation and reporting requirements and all sorts of things.

This is a net negative for sound money. These systems make it easier for the institutions that gold and silver are supposed to protect against and give them an avenue with which to weaponize and, and surveil and, and do more.

So while we have some allies who are maybe a little misguided, on the other hand, for example, I was on an excellent webinar with Catherine Austin Fitts and The Solari Report team just last week, where she was hitting on multiple times the importance of focusing our efforts.

State legislation is so hard, it is incredibly hard to get legislation introduced, much less passed. The legislators that are in place to decide and make decisions based on these issues oftentimes have no background in what they're trying to govern. So it's very important that our message be focused on first principles, on doing things that actually functionally help people readopt their own gold standard.

That's removing taxes, removing friction, removing reporting requirements. Not creating, as Catherine said, the digital system even before you've created the analog one.So while there is so much excitement in this space, we also have to be diligent to making sure that we are supporting and backing legislation that actually promotes sound money, not something that is easily weaponized and ripe for capture by the same people who are surveilling on the current financial system.

Jesse Day, VRIC Media: Very well said, and just quickly and then I'll jump over to Peter Spina here the concept of reintroducing gold and silver as actual transactional currency as they're attempted to do in Florida, but not very well, as you mentioned, do you think such a world could exist within our lifetimes where gold, where we have some sort of sound money architecture that works in the US because obviously.

The forces in government and the people pulling the levers of power behind them would do anything to stop that from happening. Probably including killing a bunch of people, they couldn't care less. So how in that sort of environment where the government is just as dishonest and crooked and corrupt as they come at the federal level and the people behind them who we don't even know about.

How, how is it possible to ever enact some sort of sound, money system within society itself?

Jp Cortez, Money Metals: The good thing is that these systems already exist. While I'm talking about the legislative SNAFU, the fiasco that's happening there in Florida, on the legislative level, these industries and these companies, if you want to use transactional gold, you can already do that without involving the state in a public-private partnership with only a handful of vendors.

So if individuals wanted to readopt their own gold standard and use this today, they are able to do so without getting the state involved at all. And that might be the most important thing. We don't need a top-down monetary system where the government has created these machinations and this great infrastructure to make sure that it works well.

We need bottom up money. We need the government to get the hell out of the way. Rather than imposing some complex and likely fraught-with-errors system. So I think that's the answer.

I personally have not seen any evidence that people even want to use gold and silver transactionally. Gresham's law is a real thing and the companies that are in this space have to contend with that. I am hopeful that someday if the need comes, if the need ever comes to spend your gold and silver, that infrastructure exists. And fortunately it does, but today there is little need or desire or impetus for doing so when the federal government and the state government and vendors are willing to accept devaluing paper notes as payment rather than wanting your actual real money.

Jp Cortez
[email protected]

SOURCE: Money Metals Exchange

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O.Lessard--SMC