Former Sprott CEO: Gold Has Now Replaced Bonds — A New Monetary Order Is Here

Let's be clear, Bitcoin is [music] an international asset. >> We are spending like drunken sailors. >> Bitcoin is the only economic entity where the [music] supply is unaffected by the demand. >> If you want to preserve your wealth, you have to convert that currency into [music] an asset that's scarce, desirable, portable, durable, [music] and maintainable. All right, we got a great episode of Scarce Assets for you this week. We sat down with Peter Groskoff. Enjoyed the conversation with Peter. We had him on the show back in February of this year. Peter has three decades of experience in the precious metal space and served as the CEO of SPAT from 2010 to 2022 and more recently co-founded Argo. And in this conversation, we discussed what has been driving the gold rally this year. Gold's been the best performing asset year to date over 50% moving from a 19 trillion asset class to close to $30 trillion. Quite remarkable what gold has achieved. We discussed why this repricing is happening, where gold and the precious metal space goes for 2026, and then discussed the Wall Street and institutional finance adoption of gold and Bitcoin, and then tied out the conversation discussing more about Argo and the work that they do with uh direct to vault gold ownership and some of the differences between that and tokenized gold and gold ETFs. So, hope you enjoyed this conversation. And Peter has a lot of experience in the precious metal space and I thought he was a great guest on scarce assets. All right, welcome back to Scarce Assets. This week we are joined by Peter Grosskoff. Peter was actually on scarce assets about February of this year. So several months ago and a lot has happened in that time. If anyone's not familiar with Peter's background, I'd encourage you to check out that episode first 5 to 10 minutes or so. We went more in depth on Peter's background. But for those who are already familiar or just kind of want to gloss over, Peter, you uh were the former CEO of SPAT from 2010 to 2022. You have over 35 years of financial service experience and more recently you co-founded with the SPAT family Argo. We're going to discuss Argo more on the back half of the show, but it's a precious metals platform that enables secure and digital access to physical gold. It's quite interesting, particularly now with the gold market and what's happened in 2025. So Peter, thanks for joining us. How are you doing today? >> I'm doing great. Thanks, uh, Jackson. Good to talk to you again. >> Yeah, you as well. It's It's exciting. You know, I I didn't expect I'm not sure if you did, but at the start of this year, I did not expect that gold would be by a wide margin the best performing asset year to date. And actually, Bitcoin is one of the worst performing assets year to date. And when we caught up back in February, you had mentioned at well, at that time, the gold price was approaching $3,000 an ounce. we were sitting at about 2,800 2900 and you had said in February that the sentiment was running hot and you thought that gold could potentially hit $4,000 an ounce in the next couple of years and 8 months later in October of 2025 we hit an all-time high of over $4,300 an ounce. So would love to hear your thoughts just on how this year's progressed. It sounds like um even for someone who's had such an extensive and impressive career in this space and I'm sure you know is quite bullish on the precious metal space even this year sounds like it blew out uh your expectations out of the water. >> It certainly did, Jackson. Um it it happened a little bit quicker than I thought it would and it happened in the backdrop of a healthy market. uh very good equity market particularly on the technology stocks. So it was a bit surprising that gold gained that much attention and that much support in a year where really nothing that much was going wrong. People were worried of course about the the the trade situation in the US. So there were some ups and downs in the markets but um nothing that I would describe as really a crisis mode. And yet gold was gaining significantly in all corners of the market, central banks, institutions, and retail, and was really positioned as a more favorable um call it scarce asset or um anti-debasement asset, if you want to call it that, than than others this year. Um the only notable outperformer to gold was silver and of course related, >> right? Yeah, it is interesting because gold has had that um reputation as an asset class that people go to it in times of fear and crisis. It is a safe haven. It has of course a track record of thousands of years as preserving value um over all sorts of e economies and market conditions. Now I am curious though because to your point we've had a relatively strong economy. We have had some scares around the tariffs earlier this year. some of that had settled out and then you of course there is some still geopolitical tension but all in all I mean it's a fairly strong economy and also asset classes kind of across the board have been hitting all-time highs with the exception of Bitcoin. Uh but I'm curious why you know why has gold had such a a year of outperformance despite it not being a time of crisis? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I would say overall it's more broadly accepted by a lot more investors than it was say 5 10 20 years ago. When I started in the gold sector in the 1980s it was the realm of the speculator or the commodity bull and then it was adopted by hedge funds and currency traders and then slowly by some early moving institutions. That whole time, central banks were actually dumping gold um for the most part. You know, Canada, we sold all our gold at the at the absolute lows. The UK sold their gold, you know, pretty close to the lows. And um it wasn't until probably 2016 that it broadened out again. Of course, along that time, you had the ETF come in. So retail was coming into into gold in a much more um pronounced way and determined way but you know family offices, institutions and central banks didn't really start adding it till the late 201. And so then the question is why? Um and I think it it it's very simple. Lots of people can talk about details on funding and details on debasement and details on inflation, but the bottom line is this is a huge experiment to ramp our debt levels up to levels that um they can never be repaid with with real dollars. They have to be repaid with nominal dollars. And so, how do you get there? It's a big experiment. And for those that have a lot of offense, including central banks who are supporting economies and investors who are, you know, now overweight tech by definition, it has to be because of where the index is. That's a lot of offense. And I think people are just plain and simple adding defense. And so they they took their gold allocations from in some cases nothing to 2% to 5% and in some cases from two and 5% to 20% and those are big numbers and and so multiplied across central banks and and retail and institutions that that's a huge latent buying demand. >> Yeah, thanks Peter. That that's helpful for sure. I do want to get into some of those topics on the portfolio construction side institutional adoption and get your thoughts. I do want to double click on some of the um central bank buying activity though because to your point I was looking at um a chart the other day that showed foreign central bank ownership of gold as a percentage of their total reserve assets >> and it looked like in the period from 1970 to 1990 that most foreign central banks set somewhere between 40 to 60% of gold in as a percentage of their total reserves. And then into the 2010s you see that bottom out around low teens call it 12 13%. >> Right. Yeah. >> But now we are seeing um if you were to if someone were to pull this chart up you would see that gold as a percentage of reserves is climbing rapidly. I think now about 24 25% of central bank reserves. Now are you able to speak to that trend as to you you mentioned the debt and deficit the monetary experiment that we're currently in. Do you have any thoughts as to the past 50 years kind of where we start with the end of the gold standard to gold only becoming about 10% of reserves in central banks and now rapidly climbing to a quarter and it looks like that trend is only going to continue. What are your thoughts on the central bank buying activity and reallocating to gold as a percentage of their total reserves? >> Yeah, there there's a couple of factors involved. I think one of them is that the fiat currency um printing that occurred, the money supply growth was required by growing economies around the world. And um I think that central banks felt very comfortable with a US dominated trade system and swift system and uh reserve currency system. I think central banks felt very comfortable being invested in treasuries and US dollars to a huge component. Of course, they were all running trade uh surpluses with the US. Um so they were recycling their own profits, if you will, back into US dollars. That stopped somewhere between 2010 with the building of China as an independent competitors of the US e and in the world economic system and the use of the US of the swift system to penalize nations that they thought had broken the rules. So all of a sudden, foreign central banks are saying, "Hold on a second here. At any time if we, you know, incur a a penalty by the US, we could lose access to our reserves." And and so they started taking it away um from US dollar-based reserves into into gold. And and gold's a natural replacement. it's the only other asset that's liquid enough to, you know, let's forget about what it actually is. It's liquid enough to satisfy their needs. Um the second part of that equation is that um the the the US and its imposition of the Swift system um could be multiplied as well by those foreign creditor nations saying but the US deficit seems to be exploding. um they can't cover um the principal, they can't cover their own budget deficits, and they can't cover their entitlements. We're actually getting a little worried here that we're holding too much US dollar exposure as a creditor. Uh so again, moving it uh and multiplying that swift system concern to a creditor concern. >> Yeah, that's interesting. Do you think that either one of those two have more of an outsized factor in nation state central bank adoption of gold than the other or are they both kind of running in parallel you know about equal weighted in terms of concerns? >> Well, it really depends on the nation and how close they are to the US. So some may not like for instance Canada despite all the rhetoric is very close to the US. We depend on each other a lot and uh we're in no danger of in my opinion of of violating uh political concerns and being cut off from the Swiss system. But um as a um as a reserve currency, I would hope that our government is looking towards gold again as being a rational diversifier uh for our FX reserves. >> When it comes to holding Bitcoin securely, peace of mind starts with architecture. On-ramp's multi-institution custody distributes control across three independent regulated keyholders in a two of three quorum. No single point of failure, no pulled or omnibus exposure, segregated client titled vaults. You retain full legal ownership while on-ramp coordinates security, compliance and operational workflows behind the scenes. It strength of many delivered through the simplicity of one. 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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. um you know just on the on the topic of the explosiveness of gold this year in particular >> there do you credit that to any one factor um as it relates to at the start of the year having that conversation gold's trading close to $3,000 and you had mentioned you know maybe a couple of years we'll hit $4,000 an ounce um was gold's explosive rally this year to $4,000 an ounce kind of like an out of consent ensus um trade or opinion in in your world or did it just accelerate way quicker than expected? >> Yeah, it's funny. Uh many days when gold was up 50 60 $80 I was asking myself what's the reason for that? I I think it's a coming together, a convergence of a number of reasons that make gold a better portfolio diversifier portfolio asset um for central banks, institutions, retail, and everybody's just kind of coming to the realization that, you know, gold has beaten the pants off of fiat currency almost every year for the last 30 years. Why am I continuing to hold large cash balances in my portfolio when I really need to be protecting myself against unwanted inflation and monetary debasement? So, it's this whole thought, I think, of the debasement uh risk and the debasement trade that has driven these much larger portfolio allocations to to gold. Uh so it's a it's an accumulation of 2030 years of pentup demand and and and and the answer is no. There's been no dramatic event here. >> Yeah. I I mean I was blown I still am blown away by the fact that gold's moved to the degree it has because started the year at about $18 trillion market. You know, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the market cap would be for gold um or any precious metals, at least from my perspective, but we started the year about 18 trillion and we peaked, I think, close to or above 30 trillion. And it's just amazing to me that an asset of that size was able to move over 50% uh year to date. And I certainly have seen a lot of the same of what you just mentioned as it relates to the debasement trade. I I think um it may have been about 2 months ago when gold was soaring into the 4,000s that it might have been JP Morgan released something an analyst note about the debasement trade and gold and bitcoin in particular starting to get a lot more favorability within Wall Street within institutional finance as a legitimate portfolio asset. >> I saw something um earlier this year as well. I believe it was from Morgan Stanley where they were reassessing the 60/40 portfolio which is a topic we discussed in our first conversation where 60% equities 40% bonds the bond component I believe there was a recommendation or at least consideration to potentially allocate 50% of that position so 20% of the total portfolio into gold for a debasement a protection you know protection against the debasement trade and a world where potentially real rates are going to be deeply negative for quite some time. Um it sounds like you're seeing the same in your world as well. >> Yeah. And and those numbers are really big numbers when you have the world's most um kind of u well read and well followed strategists saying well you've got to take your gold component up here from you know 2 to 20. Those are huge numbers and and they're well followed by endowments, pensions, institutions, pension consultants. So, there's just been nothing but positive um reallocation to gold across this the system this year in in really big numbers. >> Yeah. Do you do you think um do you have any thoughts on where that goes in the longer term besides up? You know, I know that gold is really dramatically underallocated um in institutional finance. I remember you going back several years for myself back in 2019 and 2020. I um sat on an alternatives desk and we looked at all sorts of alternative investments. On the public side, it was mostly hedge funds of various investment strategies and on the private side it was private credit, uh private equity, real estate, etc. And I remember during these monthly monthly calls that we would have um that were put on by the investment strategy team mostly for the wealth adviserss to be thinking about portfolio allocations for their clients. Gold was rarely brought up uh during these monthly calls and it was maybe you have a 1% or 2% allocation to gold if you are concerned about X Y or Z or if you're bullish on you know some um you know some development. Again, it was sing low singledigit allocations and it was really only it wasn't a strategic asset allocation. It was just a tactical asset allocation. And so, um, to think that that was five or six years ago and we're at the point now where you have some of the largest financial institutions recommending doubledigit allocations to gold. I just wonder um, is this still the very early stages of that or do you think that we're a little bit further along in terms of gold making its way back into mainstream portfolios? Well, I'll differentiate. I think the advice is now moving to uh as like you said, there's been a 180 degree turn in the advice. The advice used to be keep it out of your portfolio. It's a pet rock. Now, the advice is added in at 10 or 20% of your portfolio. So that that's changed, but the allocations, we're still in the early stages of moving from very low allocations to those higher recommended levels. And let's face it, gold's replacing treasury bonds as a, you know, safe haven asset of choice. >> Yeah. I mean, that's that's a big statement as well, right? The implications of that, I think, are still not widely understood. And I I do think, you know, as it said, the debasement trade, I think a lot of firms are still thinking about this as merely a trade, right? You get into gold at some point and you get back out into dollars. But I think the case that you maybe make, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, is that we're kind of going through some sort of monetary reshuffleling or reordering where gold's not merely a trade. This is really what we're seeing is gold reemerging as the um primary asset within central bank um balance sheets, sovereign nations, and going from criminally or massively uh underallocated gold positions on Wall Street to actually starting to have gold as a core strategic asset allocation because people need to protect themselves, right? At the end of the day, it's about it is about incentives. It's about survival. And if you're massively overallocated to US treasuries as a central bank or you have a lot of bonds in your portfolio as a retail investor, well, one day you wake up and what you thought you had in terms of a retirement as an individual or reserves as a central bank doesn't really purchase you what what you want. >> Yeah. Well, all I can tell you is I've been in it my whole life and it's changed for me. I started as a professional gold trader, if you will, and um I was always basing myself against dollar returns and, you know, thinking about protecting myself from irresponsible uh financial conditions by holding gold as as a hedge and moving in and out of it. And I've come to the personal realization that gold is now a better base to use. Um and that is because um the purchasing power of uh dollars decline every year by some debatable amount. Um which is quoted to us as being two to three but I think which we all feel in our personal portfolios is probably closer to you know 5 to 7 and is also subject to spikes. When we're hurt by inflation, it happens kind of in spurts and and fits. You know, during COVID, all of a sudden, two years, 15% inflation across the board. Well, that never comes back, right? These forecasters, they've sold us this CPI as though it's a predictable kind of thing that we can um handle in our lives. But that's not the way inflation works. And if you take a look at the last 40, 50, 100, 10, 20 years, you would have been way better to be in gold than any currency. So, I've started to see it as kind of the base case. And that for me means it's a lot closer to a 50% allocation. Now, that's not an offense asset for me. That's not a stock. I'm I'm holding large levels of excess liquidity and I'm holding them 50% plus in gold. >> That is um yeah that's an approach that I think many people are are certainly not ready for. Right. Because to your point if you um >> no not and I what I mean by that is um most people are not willing yet to accept the fact that the denominator is broken. >> Right? If you um if you are denominating all of your returns in dollars on paper, maybe you feel rich, especially if you're allocated to equities, not so much if you're allocated to bonds. >> But then you actually go back into the real economy and look to purchase things. I actually was just speaking with a colleague of mine who said his uh his auto insurance premiums went up 100% year-over-year. >> And so to your point, none of this is captured in in CPI, perhaps intentionally. So, you're told that inflation is 2 to 3%. But then you actually experience life, you're you pay uh utility bills or you pay insurance, groceries, a mortgage, and you're looking at a number that's far higher than that. So, my question to you is it sounds like you've been denominating your life, your savings on gold for quite some time now. Do you think that that will ever become um mainstream or at least more widely accepted in the next several years? >> I think that's what we're watching here. You know, whether it's people deciding this for themselves or organizations deciding it for them or or whether it's AI telling us, you know, there's a bit of a problem here, you know, with a currency. You've got to put more into gold now. It's It's not rocket science. The deficit is 37 billion. We're being told CPI is 2 to three and we know it's not. And you know, they've got to print more to handle the annual budget deficits. They've got to print more to handle the min military. They've got to print more to handle entitlements. And they've got to print more to handle interest expense. So money supply growth is is is large and I liquidity support is is required for the markets now and we're in this you know more inflationary environment than we were for the past 40 years. The free lunch of boring from the future for free is over. So you know I think that that you've got to be positioned very differently and I think gold is a big part of that. Yeah, 100% I agree with you. Um, and and speaking on liquidity, you just mentioned that toward the tail end there. Um, so we've actually been, at least in the United States, it hasn't been a very uh loose monetary policy. In fact, it's been we went through the fastest rate hike cycle in 2022 in Fed history. Despite that, gold continued to climb mostly at that point. And I I would perceive for geopolitical reasons with the sanction of the Russia reserves in 22. But we still have had a fairly restrictive monetary policy, especially compared to the past 15 years post financial crisis right in 2008. Um but now it seems that liquidity is turning over. We're recording this on December 2nd. It'll come out on the 3rd tomorrow. And on the 1st, on Monday, the Federal Reserve officially stopped quantitative tightening, which means stopped reducing their balance sheet. >> Um, we have likely more interest rate cuts ahead of us into 2026, perhaps this month of December as well. I'm curious uh what your thoughts are on the broader liquidity conditions in the United States and globally as well. Do you think that um with liquidity turning over that's also going to be supportive of gold and and um as we kind of discussed before we hit record, I'd be curious to hear like what you actually pay attention to on the liquidity side. >> Yeah. So, um I read a uh report by Luke uh Gorman, Forest Through the Trees, who is a liquidity hunting expert, and um you know, he's he's always writing about how more liquidity is required than people think. Um I watch the reverse repo facilities and the tapping of reverse repo and you know how much that's required for the markets, especially the bond markets to function. and efficiently. Um it seems to me that this was needed that the stance couldn't continue towards tightening. Um and then obviously what overlays that entire equation are base rates and and the the system just couldn't afford higher base rates. That's the bottom line. So you needed to see um dollar weakness. You needed to see the dollar stop pressuring other currencies. you needed to see um money flows changing to favor other parts of the world. So that interest rate umbrella needed to come down in the US and settle down compared to the rest of the world. It's all a relative game, of course, but um I'm thinking that uh we need to see more loosening going forward and I think we're going to see some easing and and I think we're going to have to see the Fed increasing its balance sheet going forward for sure. >> Right. And that that sounds supportive of gold. It's certainly something that we pay attention to on the Bitcoin side as well. Here's the conversation no one wants to have. If something happened to you tomorrow, could your family access your Bitcoin? Really think about it. The sephrase hidden in your house, the hardware wallet in the safe, that complex multisig setup. You understand it, but does your spouse? Do your children? 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I mean, the S&P 500, NASDAQ has been has been having a very strong year. And there's a lot of reasons and and theories as to why Bitcoin has lagged. But I am curious um because on our first conversation back in February, you had described Bitcoin and gold as kind of um they're similar types of properties. They're both sound money assets. And so I would like to hear your thoughts just in terms of the divergence between the two. Is there anything that you've been paying attention to as to why um we spoke to why gold has rallied so much. Do you have any thoughts on why Bitcoin has really lagged this year? >> Yeah, I think it has more to do with the life cycle. It's still a relatively uh new asset in the financial world and um it was very quickly adopted by a fairly broad audience. So a lot of people kind of rushed into it and I think now there's turnover now there's people taking profits and and you know you're having to broaden the base further. It also became more of a risk on asset whereas I think this year has been as we explained earlier more of a you know I need to find a way to take some risk off and hedge some risk which benefits gold more than Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a little bit of that NASDAQ growth tech influence to it. And then I'll say there's one more thing that influenced Bitcoin that I think influenced Bitcoin this year and that's the whole sort of Bitcoin balance sheet companies and Bitcoin leverage that occurred in the market. So you had a lot of invention happening very quickly with Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies where people were able to get leveraged bets on very quickly including the biggest one in the Bitcoin corporate sector Micro Strategy. You know they issued a lot of press and a lot of converts to leverage their betting on uh Bitcoin. And unfortunately when that leverage occurs across the market um and then you start to get ups and downs which are normal uh the leverage gets tested very quickly and people get worried very quickly and margin calls get made and they have to dump stakes. So, I think that that unwinding of leverage is healthy and um is still occurring for Bitcoin and it's still chewing through what I think is probably a natural part of its evolution. Um you know, and as its volatility settles down a little bit, it will continue to be adapted by more and more users. It's still, you know, it should be very safe. It should be very secure. It should be a great hedge against money printing and it should be very mobile. So I imagine it's going to attract more users over time. >> Yeah, that that does make sense. Um, you know, on the Bitcoin side as well as we talked about with liquidity conditions, Bitcoin is a very sensitive asset to liquidity. And so what we saw to your point this year is there's a number of factors as to why Bitcoin may have underperformed. One of them being, you know, particularly in October, there was a massive liquidation event across the Bitcoin and crypto space. And I think there's still sentiment um sentiment still a bit dampened from that. But it's interesting because typically Bitcoin follows the four-year cycles and I'm of the opinion that those will no longer apply to Bitcoin going forward. So you know typically we would have seen a big blowoff top of the Bitcoin and the crypto space this quarter and then we would have seen a pretty significant draw down into 2026. But for a number of reasons, including liquidity cycles being aligned for more bullish um you know, let's say better tailwinds for scarce assets into 2026 alongside with the fact that Bitcoin is starting to um make its way into a lot of the plumbing as is gold as well. Right. On the gold side, uh you have we had discussed how a lot of firms are starting to make recommendations to add gold to client portfolios and the same is actually happening with Bitcoin albeit at a slower rate because to your point there's a very limited track record with Bitcoin. It's existed for about 15 16 years. But um just today actually Vanguard which is one of the largest asset managers. I think they have about 10 to 11 trillion of assets under management are finally allowing Bitcoin ETFs on platform. So they've actually so Bitcoin ETFs have been around for almost two years and Vanguard clients have been prohibited from accessing those products up until today. So >> I think I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. It takes a long time for people to adapt new new products. And a lot of people that, you know, couldn't understand the the fact that Bitcoin doesn't have anything backing it except for scarcity didn't really get that. But that's the whole point. It's a trading market. It's a trading market um to to to step aside from regular fiat currency. I mean, what's the what's the scarcity in fiat currency either? It's just a function of how much it's printed. And um so so a lot of people would take a while to get comfortable with the volumes in Bitcoin. And you know to that point I don't think precious metal miners were allowed on many platforms um for decades. You know it they were seen as being too speculative especially if they were under certain dollar values. >> Yeah it's fascinating. It does it does take a while for sure. Um and I didn't realize about that realize that about the miners. So you're talking about portfolios before I want to get into some some of the conversation around Argo. So you had mentioned on a personal basis you're sitting around 50% gold. Um and you kind of view that as >> well. I I lump it all together. Gold, silver, argo, um you know, precious metal miners. Um you know, that's that's my portfolio of choice. >> Got it. So yeah, the broader precious metal space makes up about half of your portfolio. >> Yeah. >> And then so how do you think about um you know the other half if you don't mind me asking like in as it relates to Bitcoin or relates to other equity investments? How do you think about you know protecting and growing um your personal balance sheet? >> Well, believe it or not, I'm still doing my research on Bitcoin. I'm still learning a lot about it. I'm still learning a lot about Ether. And um I would still say I I'm a slow student. So I'm still looking for the buying point on those. I still hold some cash because it is helpful to have cash. It still plums the financial system. And if I need to make an investment tomorrow, I need to be able to draw on on cash reserves as well. So I have some money market funds at a decent percentage. And then I have equities and um you know playing the the market. I think equities that are wellrun that have good businesses and moes around their their franchise uh for instance some of the principal oil and gas equities you know I I I think that those are good inflation protectors as well and they continue to generate dividends and earnings that you know can you can grow with over time >> right >> and and then I have some then I have some real estate because first of all you have to have some real estate plus I have a small amount of investment real estate so I'm I'm kind of a a a real asset investor across the board. >> I like it. Yeah. I mean, that's that seems like a sound strategy and and it's also investing in what you know, right? So, you have 30 over 30 years in the precious metal space. You're an expert there. Um >> Yeah. >> And it makes sense to be overallocated there because that's the industry that you know very well. And I also I also have a good feeling for when it gets too hot when you need to take a step back and take some profits because you do need to do that in in gold and especially uh precious metal uh companies whereas I would have no idea how to invest in Nvidia. Nvidia could be the world's best company. First of all, I don't know their product that well. I'm not that familiar with AI. And secondly, who's to time the sentiment shift when it could come down in its earnings values by 30 40% just because people freak out over something? I'm not the guy who knows and I'm not willing to take a 20 30 40% hit because I got the sentiment. >> Yeah, I get that. I think it's typically prudent to focus on where the domain expertise is, right? So for us at On-Ramp, >> I'll speak for myself. I am like you, how you like overallocated relative to other people for precious metals. I'm very much overallocated to Bitcoin. Um, but that's because I I understand it. I work in the industry and I'm comfortable with um, you know, my risk tolerance is higher. I have a longer um, time horizon as it relates to just how I deploy my capital. >> And I think that's certainly a sound way to approach it. If someone is um if someone's not understanding Bitcoin's investment thesis and and how it works and I were to tell them to have uh 10 20 50% allocation to Bitcoin, it would be a recipe for disaster because they would invest into the asset, they would see, you know, negative sentiment. They would maybe see what happened in October with the liquidations and then all of a sudden, you know, they're buying the top and they're selling the bottom. And that's I think what happens to people when they invest without confidence, without understanding a market. So I I like the way that you approach it personally. >> Well, it all it does depend on on life cycle, how long you have to hold and what's your tolerance for risk and and also you you mentioned before about the Bitcoin cycle being quite short and and it being kind of predictable 3 four year cycle. I think that's probably going to stretch out over time, right? It's going to become much more uh a big cycle asset like gold is. >> Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. I think that the four-year cycles are are over with. We saw those for um we saw three iterations of that. This would be the fourth iteration. And my opinion is that Bitcoin is higher in 2026 for a number of reasons, right? Because there's more access. Uh more people are getting involved uh with the ETF products. Liquidity is turning over. And I think that 2026 is shaping up to be a pretty hot year across the board for asset classes. I'd be surprised to see bare markets and equities um in precious metals and then Bitcoin. Here's what keeps Bitcoiners awake. You're still securing millions of dollars the same way you secured thousands. That hardware wallet in your drawer, your family's entire future depends on you not losing it, forgetting the PIN, or something happening to you. Onramp's multi-institution custody removes that burden. Three independent institutions hold your keys. No single point of failure. No seed phrases to protect. No explaining complex recovery processes to your spouse. And now we're offering flat tier pricing. One predictable monthly fee starting at $250 whether Bitcoin is at 100K or 500K. Plus with On-Reas, you get the same institutional security with tax advantaged growth. This is how smart investors protect generational wealth without the weight on their shoulders. There's strength in many. Learn more at onrampbitcoin.com. And um you know to shift gears a little bit here, we only talked uh briefly about Argo on the first podcast. And I would like to um hear a little bit more today. And and full disclosure, Early Riders, which is the um the venture arm of On-Ramp, did uh participate in the latest round at Argo. And we're excited about that because Early Riders is the first Bitcoin denominated venture fund. Kind of ties back to Peter, what you said about gold denominated investing. We have a Bitcoin denominated vehicle, but we invested in a gold business. Um and so would love to get your thoughts about Argo. um how you're thinking about the market opportunity. Maybe first just you know tell us what it is but then we could talk more about the market opportunity there. >> Okay. Well, Argo is a technology platform that allows investors to access direct to vault gold storage and and and therefore physical gold investment outside of any market. you're getting a gold holding in your name at a vault and you're able to hold that and you're able to trade it uh 24/7 and you're able to access it. Um and I think um it it from my perspective it's the state-of-the-art of where the gold market is going. So we were still maybe in the third fourth inning in the last couple of years cuz the technologies are there to allow us to provide that to investors but the um quantity and the quality of products tokens and direct to vault digital storage is still expanding getting better and Argo is the platform through which individuals and institutions ions and even enterprises. So we have B2B customers at Argo are able to access the direct to vault market. >> That's yeah that's fascinating. So um maybe tell us a little bit more about just why investors whether it's an individual or it's an enterprise why would they want to have direct to vault exposure to gold and not allocate to the asset in another way? Well, and and that's a great question because the gold market is huge and it's very um it's very liquid and um it it can be bought in many different fashions. Um I would say why direct to vault will become the standard going forward is it's um first of all a 247 trading market. So machines will make that market all the time. And secondly, you're holding that gold outside of the financial system. So why do you hold gold in the first place? Well, at least part of the reason is because at some point the financial system can lock up, freeze up, have a crisis, and especially with these levels of debt, you could have some pretty big accidents out there as we saw in 2010. So, why would you hold all your gold in an ETF which could be theoretically could be locked up for a while when you can own it directly under your name at the vault? Uh it it's in my opinion a preferred form of ownership. So, preferred form of liquidity, preferred form of ownership and now the question is how easy is that? So for an institution there might not be a lot of difference between trading an ETF or trading through us and going direct to vault. But for an individual the differences of of dealing with a a commercial bank or an ETF and the annual fees associated with that are huge. So I'll do the math on an ETF. Gold ETF 50 basis points on average. Plus, you're paying your broker a standby fee. Many individuals pay 50 beeps a year just to have a portfolio or the the overall advice you're getting from a broker. So, within the context of a financial portfolio, gold is generally charged 1% per year and then a trading cost which is probably small. And um that's on average how a retail investor would own a a a financially denominated uh gold allocation. We can do that for as low as 12 basis points. So it depends on the size of your purchase, but that's a dramatic difference in annualized cost. >> So you're providing a 10x better product than the gold ETFs at onetenth the cost. I think it's a better product. Um, and I think that the cost is is lower. >> Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. So, um, what does that, you know, what does that typical client look like then? So, you spoke a little bit about the retail investor. I would assume that they're because where I'm coming from at on-ramp is we have a certain type of investor that we work with as well. It's different than the individual who may be purchasing a few thousand dollars of Black Rockck's Bitcoin ETF in their Charles Schwab account. You know, typically our clients on the individual side, which is about 60 to 70% of our business, >> um are allocating more meaningfully to Bitcoin and they understand enough about Bitcoin and may already own some Bitcoin, but they understand enough about it to know that they want to have direct ownership of the asset titled in their name. you know, beneficiaries, insurance, all these things. And so I'm curious if it's the same on your side at Argo as well. Are you typically seeing that your end client is a little bit more educated about gold markets? >> Well, we we're open in in all uh all of the US states now to deal directly with individuals >> and I would say we we've had a real mix of inbound account interest. Um, I think what you said is exactly right. We're more ideally suited to somebody who's doing some pretty serious research and knows the difference between how they hold their gold, where they hold their gold, whether it's insured, whether it's under good custody, because we've developed what we think was the state-of-the-art product, but it's going to change. And there are others tokens for instance getting into the business like tether and we're going to be able to at least aspirationally to get into those other tokens and offer those other tokens if that's where the individuals better suited to to own their gold. Um, so think of us as more of a a a service expertise provider to get access to the gold that you want in storage as opposed to being married to a particular product. But like you said, it's really important where where the gold's stored, that you're bankruptcy remote, that you can access it, that you can trade it, and there's big differences in the products now based on those metrics. >> Gotcha. I didn't realize that. um that you are open for US-based investors as well. So, >> yes, we are. In fact, we're not open in Canada. Um because the OSC still believes that um fractional gold is an investment product. It needs to be delivered in every instance in Canada as a physical bar. And so, we're not quite ready to handle physical bars with people yet. So we need to get to a product that works in Canada. What we do do in Canada is we provide that service for institutions. So institutions will buy and convert their ETFs into physical gold through us. >> Gotcha. Very cool. >> So it's both it's both um B2B and B TOC. >> So is that part of the road map then for individuals to eventually be able to take delivery of go physical gold? Maybe there's a certain threshold to do so, but is that something that you're building toward? >> I think that's the way the product needs to be designed. >> Okay. Yeah. Is is you have to know that if Argo falls down, you have a direct access to the vault. You can order a a truck or a car to pick it up. It it's not that you're going to, it's that you can. And that's the security in the system in the end. >> Right. Yeah. That is very similar to how we had set up our original product, the on-ramp Bitcoin trust. It was um it still exists, but it was meant to be a vehicle to directly compete with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. This is before the ETFs, the Bitcoin ETFs were live. And the whole there's a couple of um you know key benefits to this product, but one of them was that you could invest in dollars and you could redeem in Bitcoin without a taxable event and you could actually take ownership of the Bitcoin tied to your your trust units uh in the product. So, um I I think there's a lot of merit to your point if you want to >> when you're sorry to interrupt, but when you're dealing with real assets, whether it's real estate or Bitcoin or gold, you have to know that you can get a hold of your merchandise. >> 100%. I agree with that. So, you know, before we close out the conversation here, you did mention Tether and it was something that I wanted to pick your brain on as well. um you how do you think about the Tether Gold token just tokens in general compared to uh direct to vault gold products? >> Yeah, so um this is this is important. The infrastructure for direct to vault ownership is going digital and whether or not you tokenize it I think is then the realm of how good is the token company. I think Tether um is obviously one of the bmoths in the sector. We know we know the people there. I think they've done an exceptional job in creating a vaulting infrastructure in Switzerland. Um their product is easy to buy on on crypto exchanges and they're buying a lot of it themselves. So they're making a splash. Um I do think there's going to be a couple of other tokens that will come over time and I think investors will have a choice between them and that'll be more a function of what are you using it for. So tokens are all about usage whereas direct to vault is more your baseline. Tokens will use that direct to vault infrastructure to be able to access the goal when they need to burn destroy on-ramps offramps. So the two are are very much related. But the token then becomes um a realm of what are you going to do with it? Are you going to stake? Are you going to swap? are you going to downscale your risk coming out of uh a more volatile crypto and go into a goldback crypto? Um so all those use cases will become very important and that's what I think Tether's good at obviously and and the the nature of their company. >> Yeah. Yeah. And one of the points you made that I think is worth um emphasizing is the fact that whoever your counterparty is really needs to have secure um the the the precious metals need to be in a secure vault, you know, bankruptcy or remote, etc. And so you pointed out that Tether has um you know, Swiss bank vaults for the gold. And it's really worth anyone in the this is the same with the Bitcoin space. Anyone in the gold and Bitcoin space, you really need to pay attention to how that asset is secured. Yeah. Yeah. You need to know your wallet and you need to know your your holding in the end. Uh can can be physically delivered. And I think the two that have done that in gold tokens are Tether and Pax. Um Pax is also one of our shareholders. They have very legitimate structure, but they have a different usage case for their token. So that's what our organization is attempting to do is to be able to know all the differences, the nuances, and be able to take people and put them in the right product. >> Excellent. Well, Peter, uh, really appreciate your time today. I want to be respectful of your time. We're coming up on the top of the hour here. So, where should people, um, who want to learn more about Argo or, you know, get in touch with you? What's the best way to hand them off? Well, they can just go to our website, argvault.com, and um we're happy to talk to them. We do have bots, uh automated systems, but we also have uh direct to salesperson coverage, so you can get a hold of us there. And you know, I'm um I'm easy to find. I'm at SCP Resource Finance, which is my boutique for handling investors in the sector. And um you can find me there. So happy to answer questions. >> Well, thank you, Peter. Appreciative of your time today. >> Okay. Thanks, Jackson. >> Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. If you found the information valuable, please share the episode with a friend or leave a rating on your favorite podcast app. All the links we discussed in today's show will be in the show notes inside your podcast app. Before we finish, a quick reminder that Onra Media is forformational and entertainment purposes only, and nothing should be construed as investment or legal advice. Regardless of where you are on your Bitcoin journey, we'd love to hear from you. Visit onrampbitcoin.com/cont to schedule a consultation with one of our private client adviserss.