U.S. Basel III Deadline Approaches (Uncut) 05-04-2025

U.S. Basel III Deadline Approaches as Central Banks Brace for Gold Reset

Something big is happening right now and most people don’t even realize it. While everyone’s watching the markets and headlines, distractions, the foundation of the global financial system is shifting. A quiet but accelerating move away from paper promises and back to real tangible assets.

But at the center of it all is gold. The one asset that has survived every collapse, every currency failure and every reset. But it’s not just fear driving this, it’s regulation.

Basel III, a set of global banking regulations is set to completely redefine gold’s role inside the global financial system, repositioning it from an investment commodity back to what it’s always been, real money. But make no mistake, this wasn’t an accident. This decision was made at the very top by the people who pulled the strings in preparation for a reset.

So what exactly changes under Basel III? How will it impact gold and the financial system? And most importantly, how can you use this information to prepare before it’s too late? Let’s get into it. Gold has always been real money because unlike currency, which can be printed out of thin air, gold is finite, meaning that it is a true store of value. It’s been that way for thousands of years, which is why when a currency collapses, which inevitably they all do, gold always survives.

Today, gold is up 25% year to date, but it’s not just because individuals are flocking to a safe haven asset. While yes, that is a smart decision to protect your wealth with a true store of value versus a currency like the dollar that is declining in value, the real reason that gold is up so much is because the system itself is shifting. Trillions have been wiped out of U.S. stocks.

The dollar has weakened nearly 9% since the start of the year and bond yields have surged as other countries offload their U.S. debt, not just because of credit risk, but because of a more serious concern, the overall counterparty risk of the U.S. Counterparty risk is risk that comes inherently anytime you have a counterparty with an asset, no matter how safe said asset is, if there’s a counterparty, it is a chance you’re taking, whether that’s investing in a company or even your deposits in your bank account, you are trusting the other party. The same goes for national debt. So any country that’s holding U.S. treasuries is assuming that the United States will make good on their promise, they won’t default on their debt, but counterparty risk can also come in other various forms.

After watching what happened to Russia’s U.S. reserves, frozen and seized after their invasion of Ukraine, many other nations looked around and realized we could be next. We are at the mercy of the United States decision-making and if they no longer want to support our reserves, we could have the rug pulled right out from underneath us. This fear of sanctions combined with the United States inability to manage its debt, in fact, the continual printing and devaluing of the dollar has created a global accelerated push away from dollar denominated assets, meaning that more countries are seeking out hard tangible assets that they can trust.

This is exactly where Basel III comes into play. After the 2008 financial crisis, regulators realized that banks did not have enough hard tangible assets to offset all of their risk-taking, which was a shocker to no one except apparently them. Although you would think that the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements, the Central Bank for Central Banks would have somehow noticed this imbalance and this risk-taking, unless of course they did notice all along and it’s never been about protecting us.

It’s only been about protecting themselves and their system once it was threatened. I don’t know, but once the cracks were too big to ignore, they needed a way to prepare for a new system. This is where they created Basel I, II and now III.

The whole point was to force banks to hold stronger balance sheets with higher quality assets like cash and government bonds, what they considered tier one. See, under the old rules, gold was considered tier three, a riskier asset. I know, I know.

Don’t get me started on the fact that physical gold was considered risky, while cash, which has lost 25% of its purchasing power in the last four years and government bonds, which are at the mercy of the US government and its debt problem were considered safe. I don’t make the rules. Again, it just makes you wonder who are they really working for? Not us.

But back to the rules. So under these old rules, since gold was considered risky, banks had to discount their holdings of it, meaning if a bank held $100 million worth of gold, it only counted as 50 million on the asset side of their balance sheet. So there was really no incentive for banks to hold gold at all.

But Basel III changed that big time because now not only are banks allowed to classify gold as a tier one asset, meaning they can count 100% of its value, but the amount of tier one assets that they have to hold also jumped up from 4% to 6%. But there’s a catch and it’s important. It has to be real allocated physical gold, not paper gold, not futures contracts, not ETFs, allocated gold.

If it’s not allocated in physical, it is still considered a tier three risky asset, which for once actually makes sense and potentially explains a lot of the discrepancies we are seeing in the paper gold market and the shortage and bank runs on gold. See, paper gold can be easily manipulated and it has what? Counterparty risk. Just because gold’s in the title and it’s supposedly backed by a safe asset doesn’t mean that the paper version is safe.

A tough lesson learned from the mortgage-backed security crisis. An asset that was supposedly safe because it was backed by the mortgages of everyday American’s homes, or you have supposedly safe sovereign bonds like Argentina and Greece that got completely wiped out. This is the lesson they don’t want you to know.

True wealth isn’t a promise backed by an asset. True wealth is the asset itself. That’s why we say, if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.

But those in positions of power already understand this, which is why they are moving away from U.S. debt and into physical gold. As we move through the currency life cycle of the dollar, which is unique, and what I mean by that is we are moving towards the end of the dollar’s lifespan. And it’s unique because it is the world reserve currency, meaning that it is at the center of the global monetary system.

But as we move closer to the end of the dollar’s lifespan, this is why we are seeing countries buy record amounts of gold. The last three years in a row, there’s been over 1,000 tons of gold purchased with countries like China, Poland, Turkey, and India all leading the charge, not just because they are looking for a safe haven asset to weather the storm, but because they understand the bigger picture that as the dollar’s time in charge comes to a close, there will be a new world order with gold at the center of it. But that’s a lot to take in, so how close are we? Well, this is where it gets even more interesting because as big as Basel III is internationally and as many countries have adopted it, the United States has not yet adopted these regulations.

In fact, they are slated to start implementing Basel III on July 1st of this year. That’s when U.S. banks, the biggest players in the global system, will be required to treat gold as a tier one asset, no longer a speculative investment, but a tier one asset. But this isn’t just a technical adjustment, it’s a seismic shift.

But it also begs the question, why did the United States drag its feet for six years waiting to implement this change when the rest of the world was so quick to adopt? I’ve seen a lot of theories, but there are two that make the most sense. The first is that the United States is well aware that once this is fully adopted, it speeds up the end of dollar dominance because the illusion that U.S. debt is money will crumble when you have gold and U.S. Treasury side by side competing against each other. But second, maybe they haven’t been putting it off forever, maybe they’ve just been buying time.

For a plan B, we know that U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessett, said that they were going to monetize the asset side of the balance sheet. And most of us would agree at this point that it’s hard to imagine they’re talking about anything other than gold because Basel III isn’t just about saving the banks or helping the banks be more stable, it’s about ushering in the new financial system because the clock is ticking on fiat currencies. As the burden of unsustainable debt continues to weigh on the dollar and as countries accelerate their move away from dollar dominance, we know that the dollar’s days are limited.

I’m not saying it’s going to crash tomorrow that the U.S. is gonna default on their debt next week, but it is unsustainable the path we’re on. And those in power, those at the very top understood this years ago and that’s why they’ve been preparing, quietly getting all of their ducks in a row. That’s why other countries are preparing because they understand that gold will be at the center of this reset.

But the question is, do you see what’s coming? Will you be stuck with paper promises or will you have already protected yourself with physical gold and silver, real money? I know my answer and I could probably guess yours. There are people out there who are content to stick their heads in the sand and hope that nothing changes, that everything works out all right, but that’s not us because we know that hope is not a strategy. But if any of this is concerning to you, I highly encourage you to make sure you have a strategy in place, one that makes sense for you, so that you not only survive on the other side of this reset, but thrive.

And if you don’t have one in place or you want a second opinion, you can always talk to one of our expert analysts by calling us at the number below or clicking the link in the description and setting up a time that works for you or scanning the QR code, whatever works. We try and make it easy for you because we truly believe that everyone out there should have a plan in place now so that you’re prepared for what’s coming. And in the meantime, I so appreciate you being here.

I’m Taylor Kenney with ITM Trading, your trusted source for all things gold, silver, and lifelong wealth protection. Until next time.