Josh Phair, founder of Scottsdale Mint and CEO of the Wyoming Reserve Opportunity Zone Fund, returns to The Last Trade to break down what he calls the metal wars: a quiet sovereign competition for hard assets that is reshaping how the largest economies settle accounts.

Gold has run from $3,300 to $4,700 per ounce in the nine months since Josh's last appearance, with an intra-period peak of $5,600. The conventional framework leaves the move largely unexplained against a backdrop of dollar strength, equity highs, and disinflationary signals. The monetary framework accounts for it. Central banks are accumulating at the fastest pace in roughly fifty years. China posted its largest monthly silver import in 20 years this past March. Poland is moving to 37% gold-backed reserves. The US's largest net export has shifted to gold flowing to China in exchange for rare earths.

The conversation covers the CLARITY Act's Senate markup and the banking lobby's 100-plus amendments threatening the legislation, the Tether seizure as the programmable-money tell, and Morgan Stanley's quietly-introduced 60/20/20 portfolio framework that allocates 20% to gold.

Josh also walks through Wyoming Reserve's selection over JP Morgan for the state of Wyoming's first physical gold mandate, the company's expansion to over 60,000 square feet of vault space in a foreign trade zone, and Scottsdale Mint's selection by Texas to produce the state's first gold and silver coins.

The central analytical anchor of the episode is the Phair-Sinclair ratio. Originally developed by Jim Sinclair in the 1970s, the ratio measures the gold price required to balance the reserve currency's gold holdings against its foreign debt. Sinclair used it to call gold's 1980 peak at $887.50 and its post-9/11 run to $1,650. The ratio is firing for a third time. The implied level, on the same historical math, is roughly $35,000 per ounce.

For institutional Bitcoin allocators, the parallel is direct. The same sophisticated capital driving sovereign gold accumulation is demanding trust-minimized custody, jurisdictional clarity, and independent verification across the digital asset stack. The incumbents who dismissed Bitcoin are now competing for the same clients holding both assets.

Whoever holds the most gold (and bitcoin) makes the rules.