So, the battle for what is money and who

controls it just got really interesting.

At the start of the year, some investors

apparently made a bet that gold could be

worth as much as $20,000 per ounce by

the end of the year. Now, today, gold is

worth closer to $4,000. But what's

interesting is that on June 24th, one of

China's biggest banks, the Industrial

Commercial Bank of China or the ICBC,

announced that they were shutting down

their paper gold trading for their

retail investors. What does that mean?

That means on July 24th, if you're a

Chinese citizen who wants to trade gold

through their bank, your access will get

switched off. Now, the ICBC is not the

only bank doing this. It was also their

postal savings bank of China that did it

first, then Pingan Bank, then China

Guangfa Bank announced it in June. So

some of their biggest financial

institutions one after another are now

pulling the plug on retail trading.

Right? The question is why is China

doing this? The official story that

they're telling us is that they are

protecting citizens from the volatility,

right? The extreme up and down movements

of gold. They're doing this because back

in January 29th, spot gold hit an

all-time high over $55,000 per ounce,

but then it crashed. As I'm making this

video, gold is trading at around $4,000

per ounce. That's a drop of about 28%

from the peak. So, of course, to protect

people, China's banks have increased

what's called the margin requirement to

140%. Which is a record high for the

industry. A margin requirement, by the

way, is the amount of collateral someone

needs to borrow money. And by increasing

that percentage, like they just did, it

means you need to have a lot more money

to borrow less money. China is now

demanding more collateral than what the

investment is even worth. Okay, so the

official reason is gold is volatile,

retail traders are getting hurt, and big

government has to step in to protect

them. Now, the unofficial story though

is probably what's actually happening,

which is the battle for real money and

what that money should be worth. Right?

Think about what China is really

shutting down. They are getting rid of

margin trading. They're getting rid of

the leveraged deferred contracts, the

paper gold. Basically, the easiest way

to understand it is they are getting rid

of the speculation, the gambling. But

physical gold, that's all good. They

could still buy and sell that. They're

not stopping people from owning gold.

They are stopping people from trading

the paper claims against gold. Okay. So,

why is China doing that? The theory says

it's because the real price of gold

should be way higher than it actually

is. But the reason that it's not is

because it's being manipulated and

suppressed by the paper markets. and it

has been for decades. So, in order to

have what's called real price discovery,

in other words, in order to figure out

what something is really worth, you need

to first shut down people's ability to

gamble on the price of it. Now, if this

were true, we'd probably see China as a

nation start to buy a lot more gold than

usual. And that's exactly what they've

been doing. In May of this year, they

bought 163 tons of gold, the most since

March 2024. And that's not just true of

China. That is true of all central banks

around the world, which have been buying

way more gold. In fact, as much as 15

times more than they've been telling us.

It makes sense, right? Which is also why

the Chinese government is launching a

brand new gold clearing and settlement

system. It's a system that's designed to

make China, not London or New York, but

China as the place where the price of

gold actually gets set. Now, once you

put all of this together, central banks

and nations secretly buying gold and

taking steps to get rid of the paper

markets and building the settlement hub

there, it all starts to make a lot more

sense. So today, let's speculate on what

could be really happening and why

China's doing this right now and what it

all means for our investments and the

dollar. So with that said, let's get

into it. Hi, my name is Andre Jick. Hope

you're doing well. Come for the finance

and stay for the battle of money and

gold. So to understand why China

shutting down their paper gold market is

such a big deal, you have to first

understand what paper gold is and how it

works. And the easiest way I can explain

it is like this. Let's say I've got this

sick Pokemon card called the ancient

Miu, right? It's a physical card that is

sitting in my safe. It's real. I can

hold it. There's only one of it. Now

imagine then I write up a little paper

certificate that says this entitles you

to one of these muse. And then I sell it

to you, right? You're happy because

you've got a claim on my card, but maybe

you don't actually want to custody the

card because someone might steal it and

you're afraid. So, you just hold the

certificate. It's easier. It also trades

like the real thing. But you never come

to collect it from me. So, here's the

problem. Once I realize you're never

actually going to show up and ask for

your card, what stops me from writing a

second certificate and then selling it

to someone else and then a third and a

fourth and a tenth. Right now there's 10

people who think they own this Mew, but

there's still only one card. I've sold

10 claims on it, though. On paper, the

supply will show that there's 10 MUS. In

reality, nothing's changed, right?

There's still one card in existence. So,

what's it really worth? Well, if the

market is pricing my card based on the

evidence it has, which is all that paper

floating around, the price should be

onetenth of what it should be worth.

Because as far as the market can tell,

these muses are everywhere, right? Why

would the price go up when there's so

much of them available? That's paper

supply. Now, the second everybody walks

in at the same time and says, "You know

what, Andre? Actually, I want my card

now." The whole system would fall apart

because nine out of 10 people would find

out that their paper certificate is

worth nothing. That is the overly

simplified version of paper gold. Now,

in the big western markets like London

and Comx in New York, most gold that

trades every day is never physically

delivered. They're what are called

contracts. They are claims. People buy

and sell these pieces of paper that

represent claims on the gold. And the

majority of people never intend to take

a single physical bar, right? Same as

the MU example. And just like my card

scheme, that means they can also write

way more claims than there are actual

pieces of metal sitting in their vaults.

Now, estimates for how much paper gold

there is varies cuz no one knows how

much gold there really is in the world

or how much paper there is. But the

point is there is dramatically more

paper than there is physical real gold.

What that means then is that the price

of gold today is probably lower than

where it should be. That's how you

suppress the price of an asset. Now,

hold on. Where's my proof? Like, I can't

just say we think there's more paper

gold there. Trust me, bros. If what I'm

saying is true, how would we know?

There's a couple ways that we might know

that that could be true. First, there

would be a disconnect between the price

of the physical thing and the paper

thing. Think about it like this. If the

world was 100% honest and this Miu only

had one paper claim on it worth $100,

the card and the claim would trade

perfectly one to one because the world

knows all the details. But the moment it

becomes a casino where no one knows how

many muse there are and how many paper

claims there are, then what you'd see is

a natural price divergence of these

assets. People might want to pay more

for the physical thing than the paper

thing. They'd be like, I don't know if I

trust this system, so I'll happily pay a

little premium for the real thing. Now,

the tighter the spread between the real

and not real, the more honest the market

thinks the game is, the bigger the

spread between the two, the more the

market thinks something funny might be

going on. Makes sense, right? That's one

way that we might know. Okay, then. So

then the question is, have we ever had

price divergences between the real and

the paper thing? And it turns out that

we have. In the silver markets, for

example, the peak hit in January. It was

temporary, but it was something like a

40% price differences between the

physical and the paper markets. Now, the

spread today is much smaller, but it's

still not nothing. There is still a

premium for physical silver. Now the

spread in gold is much much smaller

which means in theory maybe all is fair.

But is it really? China wants to know

how real is this casino. Let's go and

find out what the price should really be

by getting rid of paper speculation.

This is one way to tell that something

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And now, let's get back to it. Okay, so

the second way to tell the casino might

not be telling us the truth is how

investors start to behave. Cuz think

about it. If you knew the paper was

maybe fake and you knew the real price

should be higher, what would you

actually do? You'd do two things. You'd

sell the paper and you'd buy the

physical thing, right? You'd get out of

the certificate market and you'd start

buying a lot more of the real thing. So

the question is, is anybody actually

doing that? And the answer is yes, they

are. In fact, the people doing this are

the most sophisticated money markets on

the whole planet. It's the people that

print the paper currencies. It's the

central banks. They have been buying

physical gold at the fastest pace in

recorded history. In the first quarter

of this year alone, central banks bought

a net 244 tons of gold. That is the

strongest first quarter ever recorded.

And it's also not a onetime thing.

They've now bought over 200 tons in 10

of the last 11 quarters. And the crazy

part is that a big chunk of that buying

was never officially reported, which is

kind of interesting. According to the

World Gold Council, they say their

number includes an estimate of

undisclosed purchases, which means gold

these banks are buying but not telling

anyone about it. Now, this shadow

accumulation has allegedly been

happening since 2022. the official

numbers that banks are reporting, that's

just the minimum, right? The real number

is probably way bigger, maybe as much as

10 times bigger, especially for China.

Now, that behavior, that's the first

half of it. They'd buy more of the real

thing. But it's also what they're

selling to buy it. What are they

selling? That would be US treasuries,

the bond market. Because for 50 years,

the strategy for all central banks was

doing the opposite of this. Central

banks took your extra dollars and they

parked them in US treasuries. They

basically lent the money back to America

to earn a little bit of interest. That

was the safe thing to do and everybody

did it. Any country that didn't do it in

fact and tried to route around the

dollar got a lot more freedom in their

country. Right? But now we're seeing a

reversal of that strategy. Foreign

central banks have essentially quit

growing their pile of treasuries over a

decade ago. And lately, some of the

biggest holders have actually been

selling US treasuries. China has dumped

hundreds of billions of dollars of US

debt and rotate it into gold. Now,

they're not dumping all of it at once.

That would not be smart because they

want to extract as many dollars as they

can. If they sold all of it at once,

they'd crash the value of their own bond

holdings. So they have to do it slowly

and strategically. That's true for all

the other countries holding on Treasury

bonds as well. But what they're selling

basically is the paper promise of

supposedly the most powerful government

on Earth. And they're doing that to buy

gold that pays them zero interest. And

on paper that sounds kind of crazy cuz

why would anyone trade an asset that

pays you for an asset that doesn't? You

would only do that if you no longer

trusted the promise of that paper. What

was the promise? The promise was give us

your paper, park your money into our

assets, we'll be honest, we'll protect

you, we'll trade with you, and your life

will be awesome. Right? But after the

Iran conflict exposed the US and after

decades and decades of the forever war

model, which was funded by money that

could be printed to infinity, giving the

US unchecked power, the world sort of

had enough. The world does not want

dollars. It wants real money. They want

what economists call multipolarity,

where it's not just one nation that

rules the world, but many nations that

contribute. Now, if this theory was

true, how would we know that it might be

true? What would be the evidence? Well,

first, we'd see those US treasuries

being sold off over a long period of

time. And we have been seeing that. We

would also be seeing investors selling

paper gold. And we have been seeing that

money has flowed out of US gold ETFs.

We'd also see gold as an asset surpass

treasuries as the reserve asset for

central banks. We are seeing that gold

now represents a bigger share than US

treasuries. Gold demand in China also

hit a record 207 tons which breaks a

record that stood for over a decade. So

combine all this together. How do we

know the casino might not be telling us

the truth? We might see things like the

prices diverging between paper and the

physical markets. We'd see the world

selling the paper claims. And we'd see

the US export gold. And we are. Gold is

going east. And that's because gold is

the number one export out of the US for

several months in a row now. Central

banks worldwide are dumping the dollar's

paper and hoarding the real thing and

hiding how much. Right? The question is,

is that the evidence of an honest

market? This theory says no, it isn't.

This is not what a healthy, honest

market looks like. All right, but

there's another piece of evidence that

shows us this theory could be true. And

it's because China told us way back in

2014. Remember when the head of the

Shanghai Gold Exchange stood up and gave

a speech at what's called the LBMA, the

London Bullion Market Association, which

by the way is the Western Paper Gold

Pricing System. So while he was there,

he looked at the gold establishment and

he said, "Shanghai gold will change the

current situation of consumption in the

east priced in the west." And then he

said, "When China has the right to speak

in the international gold market, gold's

price will be revealed." So basically

he's saying once China has a seat at the

table, which they obviously now do,

that's when the world will finally get

to see the reality of the price. And

that was 12 years ago. In 2026, all of

this is sort of clicking into place. So

then the question is, well, what is

China actually doing? What are they

building? And what they're building is

their own version of a casino where they

get to say the house can't cheat. That

is why they're shutting down retail

paper gold trading. That is why the

ICBC, Construction Bank, and the rest of

them, that is why they all take effect

on the same day on July 24th. This is

not a coincidence because in that same

time window, China's also turning on the

other half of their plan, their brand

new gold settlement system run out of

Hong Kong and working together with the

Shanghai Gold Exchange. Here's how it's

going to work. Shanghai is the vault and

the price. It's an exchange built on

physical delivery. So when metal trades

over there, right, real metal actually

will have to move, which means the price

will have to show real supply and

demand, not a mountain of paper claims

that people are using to bet against on

what the price of gold will be tomorrow.

Right? That's real price discovery that

we talked about. But because of China's

capital controls, the foreign nations

can't easily get in. That's where Hong

Kong comes in. Hong Kong is going to be

their front door where Shanghai sets the

price based on real discovery and Hong

Kong lets the world trade on it. So you

put them together and what you now have

is a parallel financial system that's

going to be the alternative to the

system in London and New York that's

going to be sitting outside the dollar.

Now, how do we know how big of a deal

this is going to be? What we know is

that Hong Kong is growing its physical

vault capacity from around 200 tons to

over 2,000 tons. They're doing a 10x

increase. Obviously, you would not need

a vault that big for a paper casino. But

if you want to settle in real gold,

obviously you'd want as big of a vault

as you can build. And the reason why

China wants to do all this is because

they understand that if you control the

price of the most trusted money on Earth

and you settle it in your currency, the

yuan, then you've given your currency

what's called an anchor. Not an official

gold standard, but something that ties

to it, something that manages people's

expectation of stability. They know the

world doesn't fully trust the yuan on

its own yet cuz it's controlled by the

Chinese government. It's not freely

traded, but the world trusts gold. So if

every major commodity deal can be priced

in yuan and settled against real gold

sitting in the Shanghai vault or

somewhere close to their trading nation

partners, then the countries that were

nervous about holding the yuan will have

a reason to hold it cuz behind it sits

that anchor, the thing that nobody can

print that they can then use to fund the

forever war model. Right? That is how

China challenges the dollar without

actually going to war with the US. That

is China's move. Which leaves the

obvious question, right? What is the US

going to do about it? The theory says

that the US will try to recreate a

similar idea with goldbacked Treasury

bonds. Now, here's a fact that sounds

made up, but it's actually completely

real. The US government owns something

like 8,000 tons of gold, allegedly. We

don't know if this is what's called

unencumbered gold or if it's still

there, but that's what the official

numbers say. Could be a lot less, could

be a lot more, but on the government's

books, that gold is not valued at the

market price. It is valued at a price

set by law back in 1973 and was never

updated since. That price is $42 per

ounce. Gold is obviously trading around

$4,000 per ounce. So officially on

paper, the United States values all of

its gold at about 11 billion. In

reality, at today's prices, that gold

would be worth closer to a trillion.

It's a trillion dollar gap. It's

basically hidden by an accounting rule

from the Nixon era. So how the US could

fight this is with just the stroke of a

pen. the US could just revalue that gold

and update the official price from $42

to something closer to the market price.

Now, the moment the US does that, more

than a trillion dollar in value would

appear on the Treasury's books. That's

money the government could use without

creating or issuing a a new bond. In

fact, the Federal Reserve has actually

published research on this idea. The

Treasury secretaries talked about

monetizing the asset side of America's

balance sheet.

>> Within the next 12 months, we are going

to uh monetize the asset side of the US

balance sheet for the American people.

We are going to uh put the assets to

work. There's also a proposal floating

around from an economist named Judy

Shelton for a 50-year Treasury bond that

you could redeem in either dollars or

physical gold. Now, what that would do

is it would make the US Treasury bond

partially backed by gold. Again, the

exact same trick that China is doing

with the yuan. So, that is the West's

answer to the east. If China is going to

anchor the yuan to gold, then the

counter is, okay, fine, we'll just do

the same for the dollar, right? And that

is also why some people out there

believe, and this is big speculation

here, but that this re-evaluation could

happen sometime in July, maybe July 4th,

right, America's 250th birthday, where

the US revalues its gold and launches

that goldbacked bond as kind of a

monetary declaration of independence.

Think if on July 4th, 2026,

which is going to be the uh 250th

anniversary of our nation's founding,

Treasury offered for the first time

since 1971

when President Nixon closed the gold

window and ended any kind of gold

convertability for the dollar. You would

be establishing a link between the US

dollar and gold.

Now, do I think that it's going to

happen on that exact day or happen at

all? I don't know. I have no idea. But

what I do know is that the Fed is

looking into this. The Treasury

Secretary has talked about this. The

gold bond proposal is a real idea. And

even if the revaluation is nonsense, if

it doesn't happen with the repricing of

gold, it might still happen anyway. But

not on the gold side, but on the

devaluation of the dollar side, right?

Gold does not have to go up for this to

happen. The dollar just has to go down a

lot, and that would be the same thing.

Luckily, we have a Fed chairman who's

going to show us that inflation is not

as bad as we think. Having said that

though, as a disclosure, I personally do

not hold any gold at all. I'm waiting

for a safer entry price. And when that

happens, I'll let you know in the

premium member section where you'll also

get access to my main videos earlier.

And if that is valuable, the link is

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I'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Sh.