Gold, Silver & Sound Money Legislation Is Surging (Uncut) 02-04-2025
Gold, Silver & Sound Money Legislation Is Surging—More States Are Opting In | Jp Cortez
Kitco News special coverage of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by Snowline Gold. Everyone, welcome back to Kitco News. I’m Jeremy Safford.
We are here at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference 2025. Now, a lot of excitement in this room. And part of that is because it’s been a heck of a year for gold.
We’re sitting around twenty seven hundred dollars an ounce on the spot side, still at a nice little upside from this year. You might know our next guest. We’ve been talking sound money policy this entire last year.
Twenty twenty four. It seems like there’s more momentum on that front, including New Jersey passing the removal of sales tax on gold and silver just this month of January. J.P. Cortez, of course, joining us now.
He’s the executive director of the Sound Money Defense League. Hey, man. How are you? Good to see you, Jeremy.
Good to see you as always. What a year it’s been like a lot. So much to talk about.
Obviously, gold as the price has been running, but legislatively, we’ve seen a ton of action in that space. Yeah, not to mention a little bit of momentum, hopefully on the silver front, too. OK, let’s talk about the state legislation, because, you know, Trump is in there today.
We’re not going to air the day of the inauguration, but the viewers should know there’s still some unknowns. But legislative sessions around the U.S. are ramping up in the new year. And I want you to remind listeners kind of the state of play.
What’s taking place last year? Where are we at this year with sound money? So last year was the most legislatively successful year of the Sound Money Defense League’s entire existence. This is year 11 of our doing this. And this past year, we had more than 65 pieces of legislation introduced across more than 27 states in the United States.
What that says is that more than 50, 55 percent of the entire country is actively considering legislation to remonetize gold and silver, to incentivize the use and purchase and state investment in gold and silver. So moving into this upcoming year, we have more momentum than we’ve ever had. Seven states in this past year actually enacted legislation like the one you mentioned earlier in New Jersey.
That was just one of seven states that actively passed legislation like this. So coming into 2025, we have all the momentum on our side. We’re incredibly excited.
And it’s shaping up to be as busy, if not busier, a year. Yeah, no, it’s fascinating. And as I mentioned, there’s still a lot kind of unknown.
And of course, we have Treasury Secretary Scott Basin in there. And he said that the U.S. dollar will remain the reserve currency for the sake of the U.S. economy. And this is being a little bit of news.
Obviously, there’s been a little bit of dabbling of the strategic Bitcoin reserve, too. Talk to me about what the Trump presidency means for sound money. I think that what we’re seeing here is generally a revolution in sound money and in money in general.
Right. We are conceptualizing money in ways that we haven’t before. For a long time, the federal government has had a monopoly on money.
And now we’re starting to wonder, wait, is that necessarily the best option for us? Why shouldn’t money be provided as a good like any other good? Why does it necessarily have to be tied with any given nation? And so states are actively passing more and more of this legislation. But obviously, there are things on the federal level that can be done. And so we actually already have the blueprint, fortunately, for Trump to come in and tell him, hey, if you want to make sound money happen, he’s obviously spoken favorably before about gold.
He’s talked about how great it would be if America could tie its money back to gold. So he has a sound money bone in his body, at least. And what we could tell him to do, the most impactful things he can do on the federal level, one, capital gains, federal capital gains on gold and silver has to go.
This is the biggest impediment keeping people from using gold and silver as money. So the removal of this capital gains is something that Donald Trump himself could do because this was IRS. The IRS did this not statutorily, but by IRS rule, the IRS decided that gold and silver are collectibles subject to a discriminatorily high 28 percent capital gains rate.
So Trump could come in and remove this capital gains entirely. Not just that, though, there’s also questions like you mentioned. America’s money is losing confidence.
People are losing confidence around the world in the dollar. And one of the ways that America could strengthen its public confidence would be to audit America’s gold. America’s gold hasn’t been audited credibly in several decades.
The last time that was during the Eisenhower administration, where they did a dog and pony show made for Hollywood movie. They brought some legislators in, they showed them some gold bars, but there was not a single assay done. There was not a matching of serial numbers.
And if that gold is indeed there, who owns it? Is it is it encumbered in any way? Is it swapped or leased? The IMF own it, China, any other of these countries. So there are so many questions surrounding America’s gold reserves that could be answered. And if it is true that the gold is there and that America is in sole possession of it, that could strengthen America’s reserves and America’s comp and the confidence in America as a country and an economy.
If if I guess the big question, of course, we’ve been talking this year about Cynthia Loomis, the senator from Wyoming, introducing a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Trump’s policy on the sound money, you know, side of things, understanding that the US dollar needs to be a strategic part of the economy, obviously, for reserve reasons. And then you have that other side, you know, let’s get the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Where are we going to land with this? It is worth noting today during his inauguration speech, it was not mentioned Bitcoin at all, which means that maybe it won’t happen and come to fruition as quickly as possible, as some anticipated. But what are your thoughts here? There’s so many creative ideas going around. And I think that’s one of my favorite parts about all of this.
It’s such an exciting time to be in this space where we have innovation and creativity like we haven’t before. Of course, Senator Loomis and several states have introduced legislation that would allow for a Bitcoin reserve. These are states that are actively trying to de-dollarize, right? There’s a lot of talk recently about de-dollarization, and typically that’s in the context of BRICS countries.
But if you look closer, you’ll see that that’s not necessarily the case. It’s not just countries with an adversarial relationship to the United States. It’s also generally other countries that in some cases are allies.
But American states themselves, the United States is made up of 50 states, several of which are actively pursuing legislation to establish a Bitcoin reserve, but also a gold and silver reserve. For example, last year, Utah passed legislation that enabled a $180 million purchase of gold for the state, held on the state’s balance sheet. And that’s just one of a dozen this year already that have introduced legislation of almost a dozen, I should say, that have introduced legislation that would establish a gold reserve, be it as a percentage of the state fund, or in some cases, it’s just an outright amount.
The state will purchase $10 million worth of gold, for example. So more and more, you know, individuals, obviously, but states and countries are looking around and saying, wait, we are very heavily invested in dollars. We need to de-dollarize.
And to be sure, that’s not the fault of a Russian oligarch, or oligarchs across the world, or even your grocery store CEO. All of these cuts that have come to the United States and have ruined its credibility in the eyes of many, the confidence in the eyes of many, was the fault of America’s own perversion of its own money, using it as a weapon, a cudgel, which to hurt their enemies and to help their friends. So many people, institutions are seeking alternatives.
Bitcoin and gold and silver, obviously, being main ones. And we’re seeing more and more, I think, people are starting to reimagine what money could be. For a long time, we’ve looked at the dollar, and this is just what it is, this printable liability is what it is.
But what if there’s value in scarcity? And that hasn’t really been the mindset behind money for a long time, especially not in this debt-fueled society, where the printers keep going brr, you know? So more and more, Jeremy, I think what we’re seeing is a reintroduction of sound money, be that in the form of gold and silver or Bitcoin. But more importantly, it’s the mindset and the psychology of people that are moving away from the dollar in ways that they haven’t in the past. Yeah, huge psychology.
And, you know, we talked about that East-West divide. It almost felt like the inflows and the Western investor was coming back to the gold market, at least towards the end of 2024, hopefully the first quarter of this year. What’s the roadmap for Trump under $36.3 trillion in debt and not wanting the economy to go down? Well, that’s a big part of it.
And frankly, if he doesn’t want the economy to go down, someone should tell him that his tariffs are inflationary, and that’s going to hurt the economy further. But what is his plan? They’ve got, you know, I’m sure you’ve heard this agency, Doge, whose goal it is to shrink the size of government. I find it very American that we’re establishing government agencies so as to address the overflow or the too many government agencies we already have.
The question as to whether or not they will be effective or even can be effective, I don’t believe that there’s a path for them there. I think that there’s no political will to change the things that need to be changed in order to address America’s debt problem. That being largely entitlement spending and military spending, defense spending.
I don’t think there’s any real will in Congress to change those things. And I think that Trump is a human being that likes to be liked. The malinvestment, the liquidation of all of this funny money that has to take place will be painful.
I’m not sure Trump will be the one to actually take that on. You know, in 2016, he said some great things, but coming out, he grew the size of government. Spending continued to grow.
So I’m not necessarily hopeful that the answer is Trump or any politician, really. But importantly, avenues are being opened for people to readopt their own gold standard. They can adopt sound money in a way that personally affects their lives and their savings and that of their family and those around them.
And we’re removing the disincentives and the regulations and all of the brush and briar standing in the way from people being able to do that. Yeah, a lot of momentum last year. You continue to talk about the success on the state level and federally.
But I’m curious. I mean, there’s no crystal ball here, and we’re not sure if some of the policy is going to be enacted. But for 2025, what are you anticipating on the sound money front? I mean, people are waking up.
Absolutely. There’s no doubt about that. It’s undeniable.
I think what I’m anticipating is continued growth. You know, like I mentioned, we’ve been doing this for 11 years now. And towards the beginning, we would run around.
We would draft a piece of legislation. And I’m running state to state, begging state legislators, hey, please consider this legislation to benefit the gold and silver investors in your state or even to benefit your own state, your ability to protect your reserves, the state’s accounts. And there was very little excitement.
There was very little energy. There was very little desire to introduce and carry this legislation. And we’re seeing that that’s not the case anymore.
Already by my count as of this morning, there are 41 pieces of legislation introduced across 19 states. Like you said earlier, we’re just ramping up. We haven’t even reached legislative sessions in full swing yet.
So we’re expecting many more. We’re expecting the sales tax on this issue on gold and silver to become extinct is the goal, right? At this point, 45 states have ended this tax, including New Jersey that went into effect at the beginning of this year, 2025. So only five remain that still charge purchases of precious metals.
Of the five, we are expecting legislation in four of the five of them. So the goal here is to eliminate all of these barriers in the way of people being able to save and states themselves to enabling state treasurers to invest in state funds in physical gold and silver, encouraging them to, for example, establish bullion depositories or a bolster pension funds in physical gold. So more and more states began with the rudimentary things, right? The sales tax, for example, is probably the most simple issue.
But as states have won on that issue and more and more of them have, they’re seeking for more sophisticated and more complex and things they can do to further sound money causes in their state. So what I’m hopeful for is if they’re not just basic wins anymore, they’re not their simple tax wins. And to be sure, those are important because they directly affect the investors.
But now we’re talking about states purchasing millions of dollars. We’re talking about protecting state funds. So it’s an incredible time to be in this space.
I think we’re going to see more states de-dollarizing following in the steps of BRICS and other countries and continuing to stockpile gold, because I think that states are realizing that there’s a crash coming. Something bad is coming. And sound money has a 5,000-year track record of being good in times like that.
Before I let you go here, we got to talk about the de-dollarization trend. You just talked about BRICS. Obviously, some of these nations are seeking to establish their own currency.
We’re watching central bank buys. I think it was 1,100 tons last year. Huge amounts of gold.
I heard you talk about this during your workshop earlier that the trend is a lot larger than BRICS. We have Trump coming in and there hasn’t been a lot of eyeballs on the BRICS nation since that. Talk to me a little bit and elaborate on what you meant.
I think the idea that countries or that individuals are trying to de-dollarize does not have to be limited to countries that have, like I mentioned before, an adversarial relationship. It’s not enemies. It’s not countries that feel or have been slighted by the United States by being kicked out of SWIFT or by sanctions being imposed.
It’s states too. Of course, individuals we know are adopting their own gold standard. They’re buying precious metals.
There’s a lot of talk about the retail investor in the east hoping that comes further west and that retail picks up. Central banks all over the world are stockpiling gold because they know that they’re largely holding dollar-denominated assets, liabilities on their balance sheets. So this idea that you have to be an enemy of the United States to look past the U.S. dollar is simply not true, and that’s borne out by countries themselves, not just BRICS nations, but countries themselves stockpiling gold in rates that we haven’t seen in a long time, but also states.
The almost dozen states this year that are actively trying to buy millions of dollars of gold to making sure that their state treasurers and their state financiers have this tool available to them in their toolkits. The bigger issue is that in many cases, most states have a very strict list of rules of what they’re allowed to invest in. And if you’re not a permissible investment and if you’re not on that list, states will not buy that asset.
Gold and silver, in many cases, are not listed as permissible assets, permissible investments. So going around changing, states are actively wanting to give their treasurers and their investors that power because gold and silver obviously are an important part of a portfolio, reduce drawdowns and volatility. Returns were obviously great as well this year coming off of 27% return over the year.
So it’s an important tool to have. And we should be empowering states and governments and individuals, of course, to be investing in them and saving in those tools. From a state level here, because we’re not sure on the federal side, okay, it was just New Jersey this past month, you know, excluding taxes from gold and silver on that front.
Who’s next? What state? What are you looking at? I know you’re lobbying. Who’s next? So on the sales tax side, there are many, many real candidates here. Maine is one that we worked very hard in this past year, or excuse me, two years ago and actually missed it by one vote, unfortunately.
Because of shady backroom political dealings, we lost by one vote. So we’re expecting this year we have support. We’re expecting to get that passed.
Kentucky is another one that has a constitutional battle brewing right now where the state has passed legislation saying that the state will no longer charge sales tax on precious metals purchases. And the governor has said, I don’t care what the legislature says, and has enforced his Department of Revenue to continue collecting the tax with risk of legal action, penalty of legal action for dealers who do not comply. So there’s an entire legal battle brewing in Kentucky.
And of course, there are so many states that are generally good on this issue and are passing legislation year over year. Wyoming is a great mess down money state. Tennessee recently has passed a lot of legislation.
Alabama has passed a lot of legislation. So we’re hopeful. And one of the interesting things to me is this does not fall along red and blue divides.
It’s not a question of, oh, well, conservative states like sound money and blue states don’t. Like you mentioned, New Jersey is no tax haven, right? This is one of the highest rates of taxation in the country. And they’re saying, their legislators unanimously are saying, wait, we shouldn’t be taxing purchases of money.
So it’s inflation affects everyone. And so states, red or blue, populace or very little population, they’re all wanting this tool and more readily available to them and to investors. So I’m very excited.
So between Tennessee, Alabama, I’m hopeful in Hawaii, we’ll get in the Aloha state, we’ll get something done. So there’s so many potential options. Like I mentioned, we’re in almost 20 states already.
So any of them could be the next one. Keep the good fight up, my friend. JP Cortez, of course, joining us.
He’s the executive director of Sound Money Defense League. I’m Jeremy Sappin. For all of us here at Kitco News, we’re going to be here at VRIC 2025 all week long.
Some great guests and great content coming up. Hit the like button. We’ll see you next time.
Kitco News special coverage of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by Snowline Gold.