Economists Uncut

Why Central Banks Are Buying Gold Like Crazy (Uncut) 03-12-2025

Why Central Banks Are Buying Gold Like Crazy | Levi Gunter

Gold is nearing $3,000. It’s been hovering around the $2,800 to $2,900 range for quite some time. When will it reach $3,000? What happens after it surpasses $3,000? And what’s been driving up the price? We’ll talk about this.

 

We’ll talk about precious metals overall. We’ll talk about the recent market volatility in light of trade war escalations with our next guest, Levi Gunter, growth manager for OneGold at AppMex. Welcome back to the show, Levi.

 

Good to see you. Likewise. Yeah, I really appreciate you having me on, David.

 

I admire the channel. You do great content here. So yeah, just excited to be here.

 

I appreciate it. People can check out our last interview from seven months ago where you were calling for higher gold prices. You’ve been correct on that call.

 

So congratulations. And a lot of the rationale that you’ve highlighted, including high geopolitical risks, have played out well. So I’ll link in the description down below our last interview.

 

Levi, a lot to go over today. A lot’s happening in the marketplace. Gold reaching $3,000.

 

I’m just going to pull up my screen here so the audience can see what exactly I am referring to. This is the run up in the gold price over the last couple of months, as you can see, just a parabolic move upwards. We spoke middle of 2024 when gold was reaching its then all-time highs.

 

It’s climbed another $500 or so since we last spoke. And if you just zoom out over the course of gold’s history, there’s been pretty much very few times like this when gold has moved up 100% in the span of less than 18 months. So it was at $1,200 a couple of years ago, and then it’s up 50% in just the last 12 months.

 

And it’s interesting because usually when gold moves up, a lot of people associate that with a lot of market volatility, a lot of fear in the marketplace. There’s some of that. We can talk about that.

 

But if you look at 2024, for example, the stock markets were up too in 2024. So let’s just reevaluate or evaluate what happened up until now. What’s been driving this gold rally up until basically now? Yeah, yeah.

 

To your point, gold has been in the headlines an awful lot lately. And there are good reasons behind that. I mean, obviously, like you mentioned a moment ago, last year was phenomenal for gold.

 

It was, I believe, its best year since 2010. I think gold gained about 26% last year. And so far this year, we’re on a pretty similar trajectory.

 

I think gold, as we speak, is up about 10% on the year. It’s already hit a new all-time high measured in USD on about 11 different occasions. And there are obviously a variety of reasons driving that.

 

And I think if you were to just kind of take a cursory look at the headlines right now, what you’ll read is something to the effect of gold’s recent uptick is largely due to safe haven inflows from investors who are concerned about tariffs, the potential economic impact of tariffs and multi-front trade war, all of this. And to some degree, that is certainly true. But it would almost lead one to believe that there’s this massive influx of new retail investors to the gold space.

 

And that’s really not necessarily the case right now, at least from our perspective. And I can kind of get into some of the dealer stats later if you’d like, but I think there’s actually more of a stronger undercurrent right now for gold, which is central bank buying. And I’m sure your audience is well aware that central banks have a nice appetite for gold.

 

They have for a while now, but over the past three years, central banks have collectively bought more than a thousand metric tons each year, which is a record. And more recently, in quarter four of last year, central banks bought over 330 metric tons of gold. And that was a 54% jump year over year, compared to fourth quarter of the year prior.

 

So I think that’s kind of been the really kind of stronger undercurrent right now for gold at the moment. Again, a lot of factors play into that, but that’s kind of the one that I’ve highlighted. Well, this is a report from the World Gold Council dated earlier this year, January 2025.

 

And it says central banks stay bullish on bullion in January. So this is dated two months ago, but I guess some of the trends still apply. Central banks reported 18 tons of net purchases at the start of 2025.

 

Emerging market banks remain at the forefront of net buying with Uzbekistan, China and Kazakhstan, the top three buyers. Poland and India also continue to accumulate gold reserves. So here you can see a chart showing net gold reserves by month and date.

 

Here we are. Not the highest month in terms of net purchases by central banks, but showing the trend is positive. So to your point about central banks buying gold, why are they buying gold right now? Yeah, there are a lot of reasons there.

 

And I think a lot of it stems from 2022 when the West froze a lot of Russian assets. And a lot of central banks, a lot of governments saw that and are like, well, I don’t want that to happen to me. So they’re sort of in some ways protecting their balance sheets from things like that.

 

But then there’s also what central banks say. And the World Gold Council actually does a really good job. They poll central banks on a regular basis and ask them why they’re buying gold.

 

And there are three reasons that tend to top the list. And number one, they tend to be buying gold as due to inflationary risks. So that’s number one.

 

Number two tends to be gold’s performance during times of crisis. And then number three, as I kind of alluded to a moment ago, it’s sort of a negatively correlated asset to certain currencies. So it’s kind of a portfolio diversifier for them in that case.

 

So those tend to be the top three reasons why. And you do see a lot of action from some of these emerging markets now as well, like you mentioned a moment ago. But that’s kind of been the overall trend.

 

And those tend to be the kind of the top three reasons on the yearly basis, at least since about 2022. Do you believe central banks are price sensitive, meaning they buy when prices are, in their opinion, relatively undervalued, or they think that prices are going higher, or do they just buy strategically when they need to? I think there are some elements of price sensitivity, but I don’t really think that is a main driver there. So I thought that would have been the case last year.

 

I believe China actually paused their gold buying spree for a few months, and then they recently picked back up right around the time gold was near an all-time high. So that’s just one example, but I don’t really think price sensitivity is playing into it. I think it’s kind of more of those other reasons that I mentioned a moment ago.

 

Going back to what we talked about with the trade war. So escalating trade wars, China is now retaliating. Just the other day, they implemented tariffs on Canada, 25% tariffs on certain agricultural products, and China is one of the largest agricultural partners of Canada.

 

So that is a big deal. Anyway, escalations going on. How much of geopolitical tensions are priced into gold right now? Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there.

 

Geopolitical drivers have probably been the primary driver of ever since February of 2022. And so you have conflict as a thing there that really contributes to gold’s rise and gold demand, and of course tariffs right now. And what that means is a lot of folks are identifying that as time to get into metal right now, because the ramifications of that are kind of unknown.

 

If you look at the US, we source about 80% of our silver overseas, and most of that actually comes from Mexico. So I think consumers are looking at things like that and saying, hey, now may be the time to get into precious metals because they don’t really know the long-term impact of these tariffs. I think a lot of folks, at least here in the US, are aware that, yeah, the president does like to use tariffs as sort of a cudgel to get his way on certain things, whether it be border security or onshoring jobs or what have you, but you don’t know the duration of tariffs.

 

So I think that is driving a lot of uncertainty right now and ultimately higher prices as well. Okay. Well, how high do you think prices can get? I’m hearing a divergence of opinions.

 

On the one hand, this bull rally is just a continuation of a longer-term trend. On the other hand, from a technical perspective, $3,000 or nearly $3,000 is quite overbought. Where do you stand? Yeah.

 

Stiff resistance at $3,000, right? And if I’m looking at the rest of the year, and I’ll caveat this by saying like, yes, I’m a gold dealer, but it’s not my job to be bullish on gold, right? And I try to just take an objective look at the facts and draw a pretty conservative analysis from there. I think the last time I was on your show, you asked me something similar, and I think I said gold would have an 18% rise last year, and of course it outperformed that. So all that being said is- One of the more conservative bullion dealers or people in the marketplace that I’ve talked to, but you’ve been correct, and I appreciate that.

 

So anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

 

And I just try to look at the facts, right? And the reality is there are a lot of potential catalysts for gold right now, almost too many to focus on each one individually. But if I’m looking ahead at the year, obviously you have continued geopolitical risk. You have about a 75% chance, according to CME FedWatch tool, maybe two rate cuts this year.

 

Certainly central bank buying is going to be a factor. And then inflation, I think, is going to continue to be supportive of gold. You don’t hear that as much as it relates to the price of gold.

 

But I’m really looking at two things there at this moment. I’m looking at central bank buying, as we mentioned a moment ago. They’ve identified inflation as one reason they’re going to continue buying gold.

 

They’ve also indicated that they’re going to keep buying gold through 2025. And that’s important because central bank demand accounts for about 30% of gold’s overall demand. So I think that’s going to continue to support gold throughout this year.

 

But then in addition to that, I think inflation is another thing that we’re not talking about as much. I think that we could be in a similar scenario to where we were maybe in the 70s, not to the same extent. But I think largely the public sentiment in 1970 was that the Fed had largely tamped down inflation.

 

And what we saw was sort of a second wave of inflation from about 1975 to about 1980. And what gold did during that time period is it went to about $150 an ounce to $850 an ounce, which is about a 460% jump, which is not what I’m calling for here. But I am saying that you’ve got central banks saying that, yes, inflation is a continued concern.

 

You hear that echoed even in the Fed after some of these CPI numbers come in right at expectations are a little bit hotter than expected. So, yeah, I think that the Fed’s taking a little bit more of a hawkish stance. So all these things led me to believe that inflation could be a little bit more of a risk this year and all the other factors as well.

 

So geopolitical risks. If I’m looking forward and again, just all the facts, I wouldn’t be surprised to see gold at or near $3,200 an ounce at the end of the year, which would be about a 22% rise or so. So $3,200, we’ll look out for that.

 

Going back to my screen now, Levi, I have here the 10-year breaking inflation rate, which is a good proxy for inflation expectations. You brought up inflation earlier just now. If you take a look at my screen now, for the most part, gold has been tracking inflation expectations.

 

There’s been a period in 2024 in the summer when the inflation expectations dropped dramatically, but gold kept going up. Maybe the gold market just ignored short-term inflation expectation volatility. But for the most part, they’ve moved in the same direction.

 

Now, inflation expectations have fallen ever since the end of February, partly in light of recession fears. Recession fears are all over the news now. And in fact, the Atlanta Fed GDP Now tracker, let’s just pull that up.

 

Atlanta Fed GDP Now, that was actually in negative territory last time I checked. It should still be negative territory. He had negative 2.4. Huge decline from its previous positive 2% just two readings ago, three readings ago.

 

So Levi, what is going on? Is gold tracking inflation right now or is gold tracking recession fears, you think? More. That’s an interesting question. And I think to the degree it tracks inflation is more, maybe more long term, right? Because the way it plays out is, you know, if the Fed is concerned about inflation, they’re less likely to cut rates, right, which near term would have an adverse effect on the price of gold.

 

So I could see something like that this year where, yeah, we’re forecasted for a couple rate cuts, we may not get those, which would likely be, you know, bearish for gold, but then long term, you know, I’m guessing that sustained inflation would support gold. So the graph there or the chart there may be a little like, it depends on how you look at it long term or near term. I’m more so referencing like long term effects of inflation on the price of gold.

 

Okay. But Levi, what is your personal take on recession fears? Just judging by the customers that you deal with, your associates that you work with, perhaps, you know, client remarks, are you seeing slowdowns in local businesses, small businesses? Are you seeing people start worrying about inflation or recession rather more so than last year? What has your experience been like? Yeah, you know, you’ve got anecdotal data, which, you know, there are always whispers of that. And so that one’s kind of hard to speak to.

 

But as far as what the data says, I think that a lot of people are concerned about a recession. But interestingly enough, you know, on our end, we’re noticing a lot of customers who are actually liquidating metal, right? So to kind of get into those stats a little bit, and I don’t know how that plays into their inflation outlook or the price of gold, but I’m thinking that, you know, why are they liquidating metal while central banks are actually buying metal and they tend to coincide in the reasons that they typically invest? So if I look at last year alone, there was about a 60% increase in buyback revenue at ATMEX. So again, this is customers actually liquidating metal.

 

And to put that into further context, if I take buyback revenue as a percentage of sales revenue, that number was about 14% in 2023. That jumped to about 28% last year. And right now we’re at about a 34% rate.

 

And if you look at the ETFs, there’s a similar trend there. I think the three months preceding February for the GLB and the SLB, there were net outflows. And I think February numbers were a little bit mixed.

 

So to me, if I’m seeing that data, a lot of profit taking and customers taking a little bit of metal off of the table while spot prices at or near all-time highs, are those customers actually concerned about a recession? It seems like maybe not, right? It seems like they’re more so concerned with taking a little bit of profit and not actually, you know, continuing to hedge their bets as far as inflation is concerned. I know that was a really long-winded answer, but that’s just kind of what the story that the data tells me at the moment. In your experience, how has gold typically responded to recession fears and actual recession or just economic slowdowns in general? Yeah.

 

So unlike silver, it’s not an industrial metal. So, you know, a lot of times you have kind of an initial sell-off for gold and silver when there’s a recession or even a fear of a recession at that point. So I’m thinking back to, you know, when COVID first came, you had that initial recession.

 

Silver rather dipped to like $11 an ounce and they both plummeted. But then long-term, you know, there were a lot of safe haven inflows. So I think initially both sell off when a recession kicks off and that, if anything, creates a buying opportunity.

 

And if anything, it may take silver a little bit longer to recover because it does have such an industrial base for its demand, but that tends to be the trend as far as what I’ve noticed. Well, let’s talk about silver now. So here on my screen is gold overlaid with silver and over the course of the last 12 months, so one year gold’s up 32%, silver’s up 30% or 31%.

 

So they’ve both moved pretty much in tandem. Now, I know a lot of silver bulls would be disappointed at the fact that silver hasn’t outperformed gold, even though 30% over 12 months is actually a very good number for any asset class, right? But they’ve been moving in the same direction. There have been periods before, Levi, when gold and silver do not, have not moved in the same direction.

 

That doesn’t seem to be the case now. Is silver just tracking gold at this point or does silver follow another narrative for 2025? Yeah, really, really good question. And again, a lot to unpack there.

 

I think right now it’s tracking gold largely. And I think for, why that is, is I don’t really think the other shoe has fallen in terms of silver’s physical demand. So as I mentioned earlier, about 50% of silver’s total demand or even more than that is for industrial use.

 

In fact, last year alone, I think 20% of overall silver demand was for solar panels alone. And so if I’m looking at that and you’re looking at the fact that silver has had basically a demand that’s outstripped its physical supply over the last four years, at some point that physical supply and demand deficit has to translate to the price. That’s my view.

 

Just to put that into context, we may produce a billion ounces of silver every year, but the cumulative deficit right now is three quarters of that. So it’s actually 750 million ounces of silver. So it’s actually significant.

 

And right now, silver is tracking more of like a monetary metal. And eventually in my view, I’m looking at that supply and demand dynamic and wondering when that kind of other shoe will fall and when it will eventually outperform gold. I don’t know, but that’s kind of my thought on it.

 

It has two drivers. And right now it’s acting a little bit more like a monetary metal. For the investors watching out there, if they were to not so much choose but decide why they were to buy gold and or silver, would the rationale be different? Yeah.

 

I mean, right now it’s similar. I think if I’m just looking at what our customers say, they often buy both. We do sell a little bit more gold than silver, but they typically buy both for the same reason.

 

But there’s a caveat there because silver may have a higher ceiling due to its industrial use, but there’s also a little more volatility that comes with that. So generally I think people are buying both and kind of looking for maybe a little bit more excitement on the silver front. But that’s kind of what I at least hear from customers, if that makes sense.

 

Speaking of the retail audience, what are they interested in right now? More gold, more silver, coins, bars, all of the above, none? Yeah. So there are kind of two different stories there. On one gold, we sell vaulted products.

 

It’s pretty straightforward. It’s investment-grade, wholesale metal, and your choice of secure vault around the world. So they’re really just choosing the type of metal and where they want to hold the metal.

 

At that point, we’re about 55-45 in favor of gold sales, so tend to favor a little bit more gold. I think at Atmex, it may be closer to 60-40, so they do tend to sell more gold than silver. But if you’re looking at the actual products, like the retail products that Atmex ships out, investors tend to favor bullion coins, like silver and gold, American Eagles.

 

And why that is, I’m not entirely sure. I think there’s just a lot of liquidity there. They tend to recognize those products, or dealers do when you sell them back.

 

But yeah, we tend to sell a little bit more gold. And then if you look at physical products, gold, silver, eagles, maple leaves, Krugerrands, those tend to be kind of the more popular products. And that has been the case the past few years and continues to be now.

 

Are we seeing premiums widen or not so much? Really, so the premiums, again, kind of two different scenarios. One, gold. We source metal in a variety of vaults around the world.

 

Our premiums are pretty steady. So right now, you’re paying about 30 basis points over spot for gold and about 1-2% for silver. That doesn’t change too much because of the nature of the product that’s there.

 

With Atmex, it’s a little bit different because as I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of inventory coming in. And so right now, given that, I would say inventory or premiums probably on the whole have dropped, especially on the buy side. Used to, you could command a little bit of a premium when you sold back something like a gold American Eagle to a dealer.

 

And right now, it’s not necessarily the case. So if there has been a change on the premium front, I would say it’s more so on the buyback side because most dealers have plenty of inventory to satisfy their demand. And as a result, you’re just not getting as much of a premium for really any product that you sell back right now.

 

Let’s talk about what’s next for silver then. So do you see tremendous upside for silver as well? I do see upside there. I’m, again, pretty conservative there because we’re on the fifth year now in terms of the shortfall, the physical shortfall.

 

So kind of like what I said earlier, when does that other shoe fall? I don’t know. It seems inevitable. So if not when, or when not if.

 

So I do think that silver will track gold more closely throughout the rest of this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see silver at about $38 by the end of the year. I think that’s about a 27% gain if you take it from its point where it started at in January.

 

So that’s kind of where I’m at with silver right now. Levi, tell us about OneGold and some of its updates here. So you’re a vaulted gold dealer.

 

Tell us about your services. Tell us about your products and what we can expect to learn from OneGold. Yeah, yeah.

 

So OneGold, it was launched by, as you know, Atmex and another company called Sprott about six years ago. And the intent behind OneGold was to kind of give users a more modern interface, something that gives you the best of both worlds between an ETF and sort of the traditional means of owning precious metals. So to that end, it’s really, it’s a pretty simple to use platform.

 

You just create an account like you would on your traditional brokerage or download the app. And then from there, you just buy metal and you could store it here in the US, in Canada, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom. And just know that the metal is fully insured.

 

We use a firm called Lloyd’s of London. It’s audited all of these things. But really what we’re hearing from customers is about 70% of our customers at OneGold actually own physical metal.

 

And they’re really using OneGold as kind of a supplement to that due to the premium consideration there, liquidity. It’s really easy to sell products on OneGold. And you can also take physical possession as well.

 

And we do have some other features like the bullion card, which is a credit card that allows you to earn gold and silver back as rewards, as opposed to cash back, limit orders, auto invest, these kinds of things. So that’s kind of like 30,000 foot view of OneGold and kind of the intent behind why it was launched. Do you see more volume during bear markets or bull markets? I would guess bull markets, but then people may also be selling during bear markets.

 

Yeah. You would think that, yeah, it’s interesting. So with the price of gold where it is, you would think that kind of price sensitivity would set in.

 

And initially you do see that, but as gold breaks through certain barriers, it’s funny, it just kind of reinvigorates buying. So February was certainly a good month and sales have picked up while spot prices increase. So that’s kind of the trend right now, oddly enough.

 

And we do tend to see more volumes or welcoming new investors in the market while gold remains in the headlines. Yeah. And in terms of new products that you’re launching, are you thinking of integrating with digital assets? I know some companies out there are looking into digital gold, tokenized gold, anything like that in the horizon for you? Yeah.

 

Near term, we’re really looking to serve our customer base in the best way that we can. So honestly, the way that we do that is we talk to them and we say, hey, what do you like about the platform? What do you not like about it? And that’s really helped drive kind of our developmental roadmap. And so for that reason, we offer products in a variety of regions now.

 

You can now redeem directly on Atmex.com. So if you want to take physical delivery, you can actually redeem for anything that Atmex offers. So those types of things have all been kind of driven by customers. And what they’re really looking for right now is a nice solution to IRAs.

 

So I’m sure you’ve heard IRA commercials all the time. And that’s kind of one thing we’re looking to kind of lean into for one goal going forward, amongst other things. But that’s kind of the thing that I would call out at the moment.

 

For someone looking into getting into gold today, can you describe the differences in the investment philosophy? I’m not going to say which one is better or best because that’s a personal preference. But the differences in philosophy between physical gold mining stocks, mining gold stocks, that is, or ETFs, gold ETFs, why should we look into physical versus any of the other products I’ve listed? Yeah, really, really good question there. And I think that they all kind of suit a different purpose.

 

So if you’re looking at mining stocks, for example, that one, you may be a little bullish on the price of gold, but maybe you’re willing to take a little bit more risk. It does require more due diligence. You need to really understand the structure of the company that you’re investing in, the management team, and really kind of dig deep into stuff like that.

 

And I know Rick Rule is great at that. But that’s kind of one that’s interesting. It gives you maybe a little more upside, but a lot more volatility, and it requires a lot more due diligence.

 

ETFs is an interesting one. So if you’re speculating in the market and want to flip metal quickly, that may be a good solution. But if you’re holding long term, what we hear from our customers is they’re a little bit uncomfortable with some of the risks that come with gold ETFs in that you actually do not have title to the metal.

 

You don’t always know where it’s held. You have to read the prospectus, and a lot of times it’s held with a subcustodian or a subcustodian of a subcustodian even. So it gets a little complex there.

 

And often you cannot take physical possession out of an ETF. So that’s what we hear from our customers. And so if you want to actually have title and own the metal, a vaulted solution like OneGold, there are other solutions like OneGold out there.

 

I would explore all of them if I’m hearing this. So certainly do your due diligence. Or if you just want it sent to you immediately, a lot of companies out there like Atmex, you call them or you order online and they’ll mail the product to you.

 

So it really just kind of depends on what you want to achieve. There are a variety of platforms out there to suit really all of that. And I think a common question that I get is how much gold we should allocate to one’s portfolio.

 

Is there a rule or kind of a philosophy that you follow? Yeah, I have my own personal philosophy, and I wouldn’t really want to extend that to others because it almost sounds like I’m giving investment advice, which I’m not. I think the common thing I hear is folks putting anywhere from 10% to 20% even of their investable portfolio into gold. Again, I have my own thoughts about that, but I’d probably stop short of saying here’s what you should do because I wouldn’t want to give financial advice.

 

Okay, so 15%, 20%. That’s what you do personally? Yeah, I’m closer to that. Yeah, yeah.

 

Some misconceptions about gold investing that you’ve heard a lot. Can we address those? Yeah. Let’s see here.

 

What comes to mind first? I think that the thing that comes to mind offhand is if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. And I think that was kind of coined in the era when ETFs were first launched for precious metals. And there is some truth to that.

 

If you’re buying ETF, you don’t own it. But if you buy on a platform, again, not a sales pitch, but similar to one goal where you actually have title to the metal, you don’t have to take physical possession and still own it, right? And the metal is still audited in many cases. In our case, it is insured.

 

So I think that’s one kind of common misconception. Another thing that I think people don’t really take consideration enough is kind of your total cost, right? You look at, I want to buy gold, here’s a reputable dealer, and then go from there, boom. One thing that I would certainly ask, if I’m new to this space, tell people to evaluate is premiums, all right? Look at the cost that you’re paying above the current spot price, and then look at liquidity.

 

Are you going to be able to sell that product? And if so, what kind of premiums should you expect? That should kind of inform your overall decision. And again, the premium conversation, I think, is one that’s largely neglected, especially if you’re newer to the space. Yeah.

 

I mean, generally speaking, I know the answer to the next question is supply and demand, but what drives premiums just on a more micro level? How are premiums determined from one bullion dealer to another? Because I know they’re different across the industry. Yeah. Like you said, supply and demand is a factor.

 

It really depends on how you want to do business. A lot of dealers out there like to do business on a higher margin, lower volume type play, where they’re going to charge you higher premiums. And so in that scenario, premiums are dictated off of by the dealer rather than supply and demand.

 

Whether it’s, if you look at Atmax or OneGold, for example, they’re reliant on a lot of volume and not necessarily margin due to higher premiums. So premiums are changing on Atmax. It’s due to demand.

 

They’re having to pay more in the secondary market to actually source product, things like that. So that tends to drive premiums from our perspective is really acquisition costs and overall demand. Okay.

 

And what about the argument that holding physical gold is expensive because you have to pay a storage fee? That’s not something we have to deal with, at least not directly when we buy an ETF, for example. Yeah, a really good point there. So with most ETFs, you’re going to pay what’s called a management fee.

 

And that varies depending on which ETF you buy through. It’s on average around 40 basis points. And so what we do, we actually charge a storage fee at OneGold.

 

It’s 12 basis points, so 0.12%. And so for example, if you had $100,000 in the vault of gold for a year, that would cost you $120 a year or $30 every quarter. And really the only reason we charge that is we have to pay our storage partners for the physical space that accounts for it, things like audits and insurance as well. So that’s kind of why there’s a storage fee.

 

And then again, you can compare that to like a management fee on an ETF, which is depending on where you go, could be higher, could be lower, but they’re typically in the ballpark. Okay. And I mean, again, how does a storage fee number get determined usually? Yeah, for us, it’s just based off of our hard costs.

 

So we have to pay a third party to actually store the metal. We’ve got to pay somebody to come in and audit it. And then we have to pay an ongoing fee to insure the metal.

 

So it’s really just based off of those variables. If I want to take delivery of my gold with one gold, how does that process work? Yeah. So we have a process where Atmex would actually fulfill that for you.

 

So for example, if you own 20 ounces of gold in Canada, you probably own 20 ounces of like a kilo bar. And so we don’t really have a way of fulfilling that. So the Royal Canadian Mint won’t just ship that to you.

 

Instead, you would actually convert your vaulted gold to anything that Atmex offers. So you actually get a better product selection that way. And you could pick between any of the, I think, 30,000 different products that they have online.

 

But yeah, that’s kind of how the flow would work from the one gold customer perspective. Okay. And I know some customers may be interested in knowing, how do we know that the gold is actually there if they don’t have the ability to audit that themselves? Yeah.

 

Good question. So we’re as transparent as we can be there. So anytime you’re dealing with a platform like this, there’s always going to be an element of trust, right? And luckily, like given the names behind one gold, you’ve kind of checked that box.

 

But to your point, how else do I know the metal is there? Well, we say it’s audited. Okay. That’s nice.

 

But then what we also do is we take a report that we get from each of our storage partners every month. We actually just post that online so you can see really how much metal is held by location at any point on the website. Okay.

 

Perfect. Great. Well, that was a good summary of not just one gold, but also the current gold market conditions.

 

Where can we learn more from you, Levi? Yeah. Well, feel free to check us out on onegold.com. That’s O-N-E-G-O-L-D.com or download it in the app store. Okay.

 

We’ll put the link down below. So make sure to follow Levi there. And again, great call last time.

 

And I’m looking forward to you being right again this year in 2025. We’ll catch up again soon. Yeah.

 

Thanks. And thank you for watching. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

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