Nobody Was Ready For Gold & Silver To Do This! (Uncut) 02-02-2025

Nobody Was Ready For Gold & Silver To Do This! (With Mint Owner & Central Bank Supplier Josh Phair)

Hey everyone, welcome to bald guy money. I am bald guy. And on Friday, we got confirmation that as of February 1st.

So yesterday, the United States will implement tariffs of 25% on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% on goods coming from China. Now there are of course many consequences to these tariffs and not all of them are necessarily bad for the United States. But one major market reaction we’ve seen as a response is a massive gold and silver importation effort by dealers, mints, banks, and the COMEX to get precious metals into the United States before the tariffs become official, draining a lot of gold and silver out of the global market, specifically the LBMA, which stands for the London Bullion Market Association, which has acted as an official global hub for precious metals since 1987.

But has origins going all the way back to the 1800s. Now, I know many of you have heard about what’s going on, but I also know that not everyone fully understands why these tariffs have such a massive impact on the precious metals market. But as you can see here, and this is just one layer to the story, and I posted this on X back on January 26th, the largest silver miner and producer in the world is Mexico.

In fact, they produce 6.3 times more silver in Mexico than in the United States. And with a 25% tariff on things coming out of Mexico into the United States, that silver just got 25% more expensive to import, at least for now. And although you might be thinking this could become a problem for industry in need of silver, and maybe an inconvenience for silver stackers who will be chasing less supply of cheap American silver with the same amount of US dollars, which will drive prices up and potentially premiums up as well.

The real problem is for banks who have large short positions on metals, so banks that are betting against metal prices because the cost of covering those shorts or buying back the silver once they want to close the bet against it could potentially increase by 25%. And this not only applies to silver, it also applies to gold as a result of these tariffs. And this is really one of the major factors that has been driving a shift of gold and silver stocks.

So inventories out of places like London and into the United States, creating what some are calling with the stock market looking poised to roll over a perfect storm for precious metals prices to significantly increase over the next two to four years. Now, this is an extremely complicated topic. It has multiple layers to it, and no YouTuber out there is qualified or fully informed to talk about all of the things that are happening, especially behind the scenes.

When it comes to this gold and silver drain, the supply crunches that we’re seeing and the impact that tariffs are going to have on future gold and silver prices. So instead of trying to connect the dots to create a picture of what’s going on for you all, I went straight to the source this week and I met with Josh Fair, who is the founder and CEO of the Scottsdale Mint. We sat down together in Berlin, Germany at the World Money Fair and discussed if there really is a gold and silver shortage on the market right now, or if this is just more of the same nonsense about shortages that we’ve been hearing for years now.

We discussed if shortages are disproportionately impacting one precious metal over the other. Then we talked about commercial banks and the impact this is having on their short positions with the cost of borrowing metals rising right now. And we finished the discussion on the topic of the market top for metals.

And I asked Josh if he thinks we are closer to the market bottom today or if we are closer to the top. Now, just before we dive into the discussion, if you’re taking action and staying on a purchase schedule as prices move up, please remember to go to www.summitmetals.com. They have everything you need from incredible prices on 1 tenth ounce Krugerrands, as you can see here for less than $305 per piece, as well as a promo price on the popular 2 ounce Scottsdale Mint stackers. And while you’re there, remember that first-time customers still get 5 ounces of silver at spot by using code NEWCUSTOMER.

And I will leave the links to those great deals from Summit Metals in the video description below. But without any further ado, here is my conversation with Josh Fair of the Scottsdale Mint. Hey, everybody.

Welcome to Bald Guy Money. And I’ve got a really special guest today. This is Josh Fair.

He’s the founder and CEO of Scottsdale Mint. And this is a guy who’s not only really in the know about what’s going on in the precious metals business and community, but he’s a guy who’s really in tune with finance and mining. And, you know, we’re really seeing prices in gold and silver take off, Josh, right now.

And I think we’re seeing a lot of news that people are worried about the supply being crunched. People are talking about shortages at the LBMA and so on. I want to ask you, are people making too much of this? Because, you know, in the precious metals community, we’ve been hearing about shortages.

They’re going to run out for years and years now. But is this the real deal? Is this really happening? I think, if anything, we’re maybe under paying attention. The market’s just now, I think, waking up to what’s happening.

It’s not so much a shortage of metal, but is it in the right form with the right brand in the right location? And right now, metal is moving all over the world to where it’s treated best. This has been going on with the BRICS countries that have been pulling insane amount of gold, essentially out of a lot of the banks, quietly, out of London. That’s been going to China, in particular, and a few other countries.

And those central bank buying are at record levels. We have been underreporting that as a media. And now, with the tariff risk now facing precious metals, we’ve never seen this amount of metal move this fast out of certain jurisdictions and into the U.S. Okay, so we’re hearing about gold shortages at the LBMA.

Their delivery time being extended now from usually just a couple days to now four to eight weeks. Is this problem disproportionately hitting gold? Or is this a problem we’re seeing with silver as well? And is that maybe not yet fully reflected in the spot price? Yeah, both. So it’s not really reflected in the spot price at all.

Really, this is purely in what’s called the EFP, exchange for physical premium. So that’s where that’s essentially going from a paper contract into the raw material. So this is at the bank level.

So we closed out Friday, just yesterday, over a dollar premium, extra over the paper price, for you to get a COMEX deliverable brand. So what’s happening is the banks are buying that raw material all over the world, and they’re getting it to the states as fast as possible before the tariffs may or may not come. Are we talking commercial banks or central banks? We’re talking commercial banks at this level.

Got to remember, though, those commercial banks are the ones feeding the central banks. So there’s not many players in the world. I’d say there’s less than 10, at least in North America, that are heavy or active in both North America and London market traditionally.

After World War II, Bank of England was really set up as the gold. That’s where all the gold was settled. That’s where it was at.

And obviously, London is not with the EU. After Brexit, it kind of split from that center. There’s not as a lot of industry in the UK that’s consuming precious metals.

It’s almost as if, and I think there’s going to be a new term called repatriation. Is repatriation happening? And the answer is yes. Germany asked for its gold back a number of years ago, and it’s been going pretty slow.

China is pulling metal into there. Again, jurisdictional, it looks like we’re bifurcating the world. You’ve got the BRICS nations, and you’ve got the others.

It’s a global arms race to get that physical gold and silver. And right now, the U.S. is starting to kick some pretty high gear here, where it really started in December. Just incredible amounts of metal was flown on airplanes.

And you’ve got to remember, gold is quite heavy. Just think on a passenger plane, you could put about four tons of gold that’s flown. A lot of people have no idea how much gold is flown on just regular flights.

But during Christmas season, those planes are full. So you’re competing with cargo and passengers for weight. So this started into the Christmas season, and just the amount of gold that’s coming into the United States really on the daily right now.

And then Trump just announced tariffs, and we’re about to find out more. At least on Canada and Mexico. And that was confirmed yesterday from what I saw.

I saw an immediate spike in the DXY index, so the U.S. dollar index. But we really didn’t see much of a softening in the prices of precious metals. The gains that both gold and silver had put in for the week still held up.

It was a positive week for both metals. Gold’s an all-time high. So it’s probably, again, I don’t know where we’re going to be short term.

But, yeah, I think this could be going a lot higher. Because, again, as markets are clamoring for the right metal in the right locations, and it’s not just in precious metals right now. This is impacting industries all over the place.

It’s just that precious metals are so, the value is so high and so big. It’s starting to get attention. But this has been really underreported until just recently, like the last week or two.

Why do you think that is? People don’t see this. And the retail market’s asleep. Consumers do not know what’s going on.

If anything, they’ve been selling their gold and silver really worldwide, but thinking, hey, it’s kind of high, let me liquidate it. I’m going to buy it back at a lower price, right? And the opposite is true. So a lot of this metal is being sucked out of the, I call it the retail consumer’s hands, and it’s going to the banks.

And the banks are then melting down a lot of that consumer retail product, turning it into an LBMA or COMEX deliverable brand, and they’re putting it on in the exchange or covering some of their shorts as well. Do you think this is being accelerated by a loss of faith in fiat currencies as a reserve since obviously not only the 2008 financial crisis, when we saw central banks become net buyers again in 2010, I think they lost faith in the U.S. dollar’s ability to be properly managed, but also since COVID, when the money supply around the world for basically all fiat currencies exploded at record paces. Yeah, there’s no doubt.

I’d say faith in government has probably never been lower. So everything’s being stressed. It may have been completely broken a long time ago.

I think not only do we see the monetary supply expand after COVID, but we also saw some really big impact of what happened with the Ukraine war. So when central banks and other nations start to seize assets of other countries, whether that was right or wrong, the other countries start paying attention. So I think what’s happening is the BRICS nations are really looking at it going, well, if we can get kicked out of SWIFT and we can’t use the banking system or we can have our assets seized in other – we’ve never seen this in the modern history.

They’re trying to create a competitor to the U.S. dollar. And this is why now Trump is really pushing back quite hard. He tweeted before Christmas warning the BRICS, don’t back a new currency.

He didn’t say with what, but I can tell you what it is. It’s gold. He said something again just this week on X. So I think there’s a big deal.

So this – actually, this repatriation, this is going to be a new term that you’re going to hear about. Why is the metal – is the U.S. government even maybe involved in this? And this is – I’m going to throw that out there. This is not being discussed a lot.

We just put out a report on ScottsdaleMint.com on our website that’s kind of talking about this. Is the United States government itself possibly involved in bringing some of its gold that it might have had in Europe? I think you’re quite aware. Obviously, the U.S. is swinging politically to a much more conservative, more traditional.

The U.K. is not, right? Definitely not. And so there’s kind of a trend within Europe. Who’s going to kind of follow the path of the United States? I had a friend joke, can you make the U.K. the 51st state before Canada? I chuckled.

But the reality is I think there’s going to be kind of a battle between economic powers, and you’re either going to be part of Team USA and call it the reorganization of finance. It’s going to be quite interesting here going forward. For my viewers, definitely check out the Scottsdale Mint website.

Remember that all Scottsdale Mint products are also available at SummitMetals.com, which is fantastic. Summit Metals has a great relationship with Scottsdale Mint. But for the people who are looking at this and watching this video and saying, okay, prices are a bit high, does that mean I should remain on a buying schedule? I would like to ask you what you think the impact of these tariffs, which again Trump has confirmed.

I mean, today is Saturday. It’s early morning. We’re here at the World Money Fair in Germany, so it’s not quite sunrise yet in the U.S. But once the sun rises, those tariffs are in place.

What tangible impacts is that going to have on the prices of precious metals for the regular people who are watching this video right now? Yeah, I’d say the value of metal could overnight go up a lot. So I don’t really view it as a negative for price. If anything, it’s going to cause the metal prices to go up.

In the event there’s an exemption for precious metals with the Mexico-Canada, things might ease. And so in that case, maybe metals kind of ease back a little bit. But if there is no exemption for silver in particular, but also gold coming out of Mexico and Canada, this is going to be very impactful.

Because Mexico is the largest miner of silver in the world. In the world. The biggest producer, the biggest importer of silver to the United States.

U.S. imports roughly 80%, 82% of its silver consumption every year from foreign countries. So if I can just stop you there, does that mean with a 25% tariff that we could expect the market price of what silver is selling for to go up 25%? Well, what’s going to happen in the short term, the United States importers, and my company included, is going to try to buy metal that’s not. So we’re talking incredible dislocation.

So instead of importing from Mexico, people are going to be going all over the world. And that’s why you’re seeing the supplies in the U.K. dwindle. Because right now there is no tariff threat in the immediate.

But we’re hearing talks about universal tariffs, meaning all countries. So what would that look like? Even major producers like KGHM out of Poland would be the subject. Could be all of them, yeah.

And my company uses a lot of their silver. So yeah, I would say almost like when you show up at a gas pump in the U.S. and in other places, it’s usually all in. Like your tax is all in.

Especially Europe, your prices, taxes are included. Even on clothing when you’re at a store, yeah. Whereas the U.S. kind of breaks it down.

And so it’s possible that we may get just a new kind of pricing mechanism that, especially let’s say in the United States, silver and gold might be just, let’s call it tariff-inclusive. So this would say it’s going to be a pressure of prices going higher, definitely, in the short term and long term. Okay, so then looking at the situation, would you say right now in the metals market, for people who are really a little bit gun-shy and they’re saying, yeah, you know, prices are high, again, I don’t want to buy, do you think we’re closer to the bottom of the metals market when it comes to fiat pricing or do you think we’re closer to the top right now considering the big moves we’ve made up over the last year? Yeah, obviously silver and gold did move up pretty nicely in 24.

So I don’t know, I wouldn’t look at it as so much are we closer to the top or the bottom. It’s like, where are we going? If you’re not in and you’re not, you don’t have your bags packed to the level that you want, we’re about to enter a new phase in the market. This should be an incredible drive, driving force here through this decade.

You know, they’re talking about, you know, you hear terms about great reset. What does that mean? I think we can all kind of agree that it’s at least, there’s a monetary need of some sort of reorder, some sort of reconfiguration and is gold going to be part of that? Is silver going to be part of that? We just saw Russia put out their draft finance review budget for 2025 and they’re talking about adding silver to their balance sheets. Again, very few people are talking about this.

There’s not enough silver in the world for central banks to say, hey, let’s put 1% in. It would suck it all up. So here we are faced with, I call it the tech movement.

AI is going to consume an incredible amount of silver. Silver Institute just put out a report this week. We’re going to run another deficit.

And so that means there’s less new, freshly mined silver being consumed, sorry, being produced than we’re consuming. So that means stock drawdowns. And so this has nothing, there’s no, assume no investor hoarding or going into it.

This could get pretty rowdy if investors actually step back in. Retail’s been dead. It’s probably been, and I mean by dead, it went boom, right? Investors clamored for the metal after the COVID drop in 2020 and they’ve been piling in, you know, 21, 22, 23.

And then we’ve seen it kind of cool off in 24. So I don’t think we’ve really seen the fireworks show yet. Well, guys, listen, if you’re interested in what Josh has to say, follow him on X. He is on X now since two weeks, right? Two weeks ago, I even got a shout out on the Alex Jones show.

Last night I had no idea. So this is kind of, yeah, kind of interesting. So follow him on X and obviously check out the Scottsdale Mint products also available at Summit Metals.

Josh, thank you so much for sitting down with me, man. Absolutely. Thank you.

Cheers, brother.