Key takeaways


A sudden and unusual COMEX shutdown on Black Friday becomes the episode’s central signal, a massive silver withdrawal request, described as nearly a third of New York inventory, appears, trading freezes, and the request vanishes by Monday, leading Josh to argue that a major actor (which he suspects was China) tested the system or attempted a one-shot pull that was quietly rerouted by banks and government. From there, the metals rally is framed not as a simple inflation hedge, but as a geopolitical resource auction driven by de-globalization, fractured trade routes, and an intensifying scramble for materials critical to energy, AI, and military production. Within this squeeze, Josh contends that JP Morgan sits at the center, controlling the largest physical silver stockpile, “throwing a blanket” over inventory to remove supply, and rapidly flipping positioning using privileged flow information tied to mine financing and offtake agreements. The same logic extends to gold, where asset seizures during the Ukraine war allegedly shocked BRICS nations into prioritizing unseizable reserves, accelerating repatriation, vault construction, and signaling moves like putting gold on warrant. Josh argues the US response reflects industrial policy by necessity, using tariffs as cover, designating strategic minerals, and rebuilding domestic processing capacity through projects like a major Tennessee smelter, while China simultaneously restricts outbound metals, forcing buyers like India into open-market bidding. The result is a structurally tight market where silver grinds higher daily, reinforced by Basel III incentives favoring physical gold on bank balance sheets and unfolding within a broader paradigm shift toward a multipolar, mercantile-banking world where states and institutions quietly accumulate strategic assets and “sound money” becomes a matter of security rather than ideology.

Best quotes

“The ComX was shut down for a piece of Black Friday.”

“Someone had put in a request of withdrawal for so many ounces of silver… almost like a third of the silver that was in New York.”

“My personal take is it was the Chinese… either testing our markets or just wanting a lot of it in one shot.”

“JP Morgan owns and controls the largest stockpile of silver in the world.”

“They threw a blanket over all their inventory and said none of this is for sale and then they went long…”

“China restricts. Now you see why silver’s going up every day. That’s… really this simple.”

“This is not a trade. This is a shift.”

“The US dollar’s cooked.”

“The US Department of War put $2 billion into a smelter… in Tennessee.”

“If you lose the AI race, you’re done.”

“Don’t short the American spirit.”

“Never bet against America, but you still might want to own some other assets.”

Conclusion

This episode argues the silver and gold surge isn’t primarily a retail mania or a tidy “money printing” story, it’s the market pricing a resource conflict where state and bank actors are competing for strategic inputs, tightening physical supply, and using financial infrastructure to control the pace of accumulation. Josh’s central claim is that JP Morgan’s dominance in physical silver, combined with flow visibility and sophisticated hedging tied to mine finance, allows it to “blanket” supply and profit from the squeeze while governments reposition supply chains and processing capacity for a more hostile, less-globalized era. Whether or not every inference is correct, the through-line is clear: metals (and Bitcoin, potentially) are being pulled into a new playbook where security, industrial capacity, and settlement credibility matter more than old narratives, and that’s why the move feels persistent, structural, and bigger than a trade.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro

0:33 - State of the metals complex

23:13 - The great reset and monetary order

28:15 - CrowdHealth & Bitkey

30:05 - China building gold infrastructure

39:50 - Unchained & SLNT

41:23 - Bitcoin and multi asset approach

1:00:31 - The moral dimension

Transcript

(00:00) The Comx was shut down for a piece of \[music\] Black Friday. Someone had put in a request of withdrawal for so many ounces of silver, almost like a third of the \[music\] silver that was in New York. JP Morgan owns and controls the largest stockpile of silver in the world. Well, if you have inside knowledge, could you flip your position in a moment's notice? Here you have JP Morgan through a blanket and says it's not available.

(00:19) US then is pressuring raw material \[music\] coming out of Latin America. China restricts. Now you see why silver's going up every day. My personal take is, >> well, it's been about a year uh since we caught up and you probably do need security guards with guns now because the metals complex has had one hell of a run.

(00:45) Uh silver just this morning went over 100, hit uh hit over $101 at some point. Gold's approaching 5,000. and I had to reach out to you because as I was saying before we hit record, uh I'm convinced that those in the know of what's going on with Metal Flows know the actual story of what's going on cuz it seems pretty big right now. Um so without asking any leading questions, I guess just jump into it.

(01:09) What have you seen? What is going on with the the metals complex as it stands today? Yeah, I would say I mean clearly we could we could talk about all the monetary reasons the you know expansion of debt uh all all those things that are are really taking place and and you know frankly what started really around the time of the Ukraine war I think is it set the stage for what we're seeing here um which is a exit of globalism and trade relationships which are not just broken but who are now in war over resources. Uh and then the resources

(01:49) that are critical to the future related to energy, AI, power, um and military are forefront. And you kind of put all those things in together where people all want the same asset the same time. That's that's what an auction does. If two people want to buy something and they're willing to pay a higher price to get it, that auction goes up.

(02:13) Well, if you're lucky at an art auction or you're on eBay and you're the only one bidding, prices is lower. So, it's a situation, you know, really what's happened um is just you got to it's a geopolitical and so I've been talking about as as it's a metals war. I was right around um actually flying out to to Europe on Sunday.

(02:37) He was here a couple days. I think it was I was coming back. I think I had a I had a hat on. I think some people are like, "Oh man, you're not very professional." I was like, "Man, I'm on a 10-hour flight, like uh you know, coming back from Europe." And I just put a hat on and I started talking about what was happening.

(02:56) And it was the gold moving to the US and and I kind of started to put together the the my a little bit more of my macro thesis of of what what was going to happen. And a lot of it is why I moved my my uh what's now Scottsdale Mint. I move moved from Arizona um over 18 years ago I founded it. I moved it to Wyoming and then I started another company called the Wyoming Reserve which is a tax advantaged foreign trade zone vault vaultting operation.

(03:24) And you know, when you have a macro thesis and you see the chips change, I I love to put put things on the board and you move things around. And I started just talking about what I'm seeing unfold. And you know, really what we've seen, you know, kind of fast forward um a little bit here with with with silver that we'll cover really it it it it is China, it's US banks, it's US government.

(03:50) That's what's driving that's what's driving the numbers right now. But I also think it it started the Ukraine war when assets were seized. So, and I think this is even interesting in the digital sphere because I you know is what is seizable and what is not. And so when when Russia's assets when we're talking balances at at you know the Bank of England, whether that was physical gold, whether that was fiat currency, um whether that was some oligarch's boat like in a different port, you know, the assets were seized.

(04:26) And I really think most of the BRICS nations looked at that and says, "Well, if that could happen to them, that could happen to us." And you know, if we look at the Ukraine war, it's it's clearly a a proxy because there's it's it's just it's just there there's not a lot of movement. It's just there's unfortunately a lot of death and money and money laundering and and stuff.

(04:50) But China's really the one behind it all behind Russia because if if if Russia were to fall, China's now next. And so Trump's tweet was December, right around Christmas of 24. He he hadn't taken office yet. He'd won just won the election. He gave a Oh gosh, sorry. My phone wasn't turned off. He gave a really interesting um tweet out and I don't think it was properly covered.

(05:19) He said to warning to the bricks, don't start a new currency and don't back it. And I think we could all get our heads around, okay, the bricks might want to try try to create a competitor to the dollar. I I think we can all get around that, but I don't I don't think people pay attention to what he meant by back it. It was gold.

(05:41) And so at that time and what that means historically, if you think about it, whoever holds the most gold essentially has made all the rules. This is just throughout history. I mean it's this goes back thousands of years and then after World War II even gold is the settlement layer for the debts of everyone \[snorts\] and that's why bank of England has held all the gold uh over the last you know for decades it's had the most gold in the world and now eve