So there's a possibility that the market

is being pumped with fake money,

>> $7 trillion in spending, but only $5

trillion in revenue. Ray, are we already

past the point of no return? That the

fact we have this dynamic means that

some sort of crisis is inevitable.

>> Um, yes, we're we're past the point of

no return.

>> There's two competing theories about the

future of money. The first theory says

the dollar is not going anywhere. It's

going to rule the world because the US

has already figured out a way to keep

the dollar dominant forever. The plan is

called the Clarity Act and the idea is

to rebuild the world's payment system on

digital rails through stable coins

backed by US Treasury debt. What that

means is every corporation will become a

mini central bank. Every consumer in the

world who uses a smartphone will use

digital dollars to buy everything and in

turn that's going to indirectly fund US

government debt. Right? It's the petro

dollar system rebuilt for the internet

and so the demand for dollars will

always be there. The second theory says

actually no that's not going to happen

because the rest of the world already

saw that coming which is also why over

the last decade the world formed the

Bricks Alliance. They've built

alternative payment rails and they

started to move their real reserves out

of dollar denominated paper and into

things like physical gold at a pace that

we've never seen before in modern

history. Both of these things are

happening at the same time right now.

And both of these theories have a lot of

evidence behind them. Everything we're

watching in the world today is a result

of that race to control the idea of

money and the flow of it. And the

outcome of that race is going to

determine what your money will be worth

for the rest of your life. Now, sitting

right in the middle of these theories is

the biggest investment story of our

lifetime. It's the story of AI.

The AI is the biggest

technical thing ever in my lifetime. I

mean it is so profound and therefore its

influence is hard to overstate. So the

value is extremely high. It's the system

using its last shred of credibility to

inflate itself one more time because

that is going to concentrate wealth

upward in the process while the central

planners use it as an opportunity to

exit that system.

>> Are you concerned, Mr. President, about

the latest inflation number which came

out this morning? Could that be a no? I

love the numbers.

>> Every major currency transition in

history ends with a period of

prosperity, right? asset prices going

up, markets make a lot of money for

everyone, and then the party stops,

right? And the evidence of this is a

couple things. The stock market, for

example, if you strip out just 41

companies from the S&P 500 right now,

the other 459 are flat. But the whole

market of 2026 is one trade, AI. But for

some reason, people like Warren Buffett

are sitting on $400 billion in cash,

which is the most he's ever held his

entire career. Consumer sentiment just

hit 44.8 on something called the

University of Michigan index, which is

the lowest level since they started

tracking it in 1952.

And while all of this is happening,

central banks just moved gold above US

Treasury bonds as their number one

reserve asset for the first time in

modern history. But the people who run

these corridors of power are telling us

a completely different story. So in

today's video, I want to show you the

race for the control of money. I want to

show you the dollar's plan to survive

and I want to show you the world's plan

to route around it and what the data is

telling us about which side is winning.

I want to explain what's happening to

the markets and what you might be able

to do about it. So with that said, let's

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

Hope you're doing well. cover the

finance and stay for more interesting

economic theories. So, let me start by

explaining something counterintuitive.

Everything you've ever bought in your

whole life has generally gotten more

expensive over time. Our groceries or

gas, rent, healthcare, and things like

that. And the explanation that we've

been told is something called inflation,

aka too much money trying to buy the

same amount of stuff as measured by what

economists call the CPI or the consumer

price index, which just came in at a

higher level than expected.

>> Some breaking news. as if you needed us

to tell you that inflation is running at

the hottest pace in 3 years. And the

Federal Reserve might just have lost any

wiggle room it has to keep rates right

where they are.

>> Great. Okay. But there's another

explanation to it that I think is really

interesting. It comes from a chart that

looks the last several hundred years.

When you price commodities, which are

things like oil, wheat, copper, food,

energy, if you measure that stuff in

dollars, the price of it goes up

forever, right? That blue line on this

chart has been going up since 1792. So,

we're like, "Yep, life's just getting

more expensive, right?" But it's also

very misleading because when you measure

those exact same things in a different

currency, you get a completely different

understanding of the story. If you price

it all in gold, for example, they've

actually been getting cheaper at 0.8%

per year compounded for over 200 years.

It's the same oil, the same wheat, same

copper. It's actually getting cheaper

every single year in what's called real

terms, but only if you're measuring it

using the right thing. What that means

is inflation is not really about things

getting more expensive. It's about the

thing we use to measure it with getting

smaller. In this case, the dollar is

getting weaker. And it has been getting

weaker our entire lives. Right? Every

war, every recession, every new Fed

chairman, our entire history had a

dollar that bought less and less of the

real world. Now, that system, the dollar

slowly losing value while everything

goes up, only works under one

assumption. The assumption is more more

workers, more borrowers, more taxpayers,

more consumers. Every generation

slightly bigger than the last, making

slightly more, spending slightly more,

borrowing a little more. And the whole

machine is designed to run on human

beings taking part of the economy. The

way our cars run on gasoline, you just

keep adding more people to the engine,

and the system keeps going. And for 230

years, that was the assumption, right?

That was true. There were always more

people in the system than leaving it.

Which is also why this blue line kept

going up, which is why inflation was

always manageable, cuz the system could

always grow its way out of the problem

by adding more humans. But enter AI. It

is the first technology in history that

grows the economy without growing the

need for human beings. you know in terms

of the jobs this is going to take some

period of time but yes uh although it

hasn't been seen in large numbers over

the next several years there will be

some impact on the job market which

means the system we created breaks

because the debt cannot be inflated

away. There will be less people paying

taxes. there will be less people

borrowing money and this measuring

stick, the dollar, will have nothing

left to measure itself against. That is

the paradox at the center of everything

happening right now. And what I also

thought was interesting is that for the

first time in modern history, central

banks just moved gold above US Treasury

bonds as their number one reserve asset.

Except gold is not at an all-time high

anymore, but the stock market is. So at

the heart of this contradiction is that

either AI is so transformative it's

enough to justify the trillions of

dollars being spent on it in which case

the jobs disappear and the tax base that

funds this whole system collapses

or AI is not that transformative in

which case the valuations of these

companies are a fantasy and the market

corrects anyway right there's no version

of reality where both things are true at

the same time. The debt system needs

what AI destroys. And right now, our

retirement account is being used to fund

this game. But while all of this is

happening and everyone is busy looking

at the stock market and AI, there's

something very interesting that happened

in 2021. All right. So, if the macro

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

in 2021, something interesting happened.

Remember, this race is about a race to

control the flow of capital, right? The

control of money. One side of this race

was built on paper. It was built on

things like digital promises, debt

backed tokens, numbers on a computer

screen. That is the dollar. The other

side of that is built on something you

can hold in your hand, something that's

stored value through every empire and

every reset in the 5,000 years of human

history. This is the other side of the

race, which is based on gold. Now, for

decades, the way gold was traded in the

Western financial system was essentially

a threecard monty game. It was kind of a

street hustle, a shell game, if you

will. Now, why it was a hustle is

because when you bought gold through a

bank or a financial institution, most of

the time you weren't actually buying

physical gold. You were buying something

called unallocated gold. That is the

official term for it, which is basically

a promise. A promise that somewhere in

some vault, somewhere out there, there's

some gold with your name on it. Except

there wasn't. What was really happening

was the banks were selling promises of

this gold of way more of these promises

than they had gold to back them up with.

So banks could create essentially

unlimited paper supplies of something

that only exists in limited physical

supply. And the effect of that was the

price of gold was kept artificially

suppressed for decades. Because if you

can create an unlimited supply of

something on paper, the price can never

fully show itself to us, right? How

valuable that thing really is. And the

scale of this fakery was huge. By 2021,

the total value of unallocated gold in

the London market alone was $572

billion. Now, if you add another 63

billion in Comx futures on top of that,

you have roughly 635 billion in paper

gold claims. Okay, now here's what's

mind-blowing. One analyst estimated that

the actual physical gold available to

back those claims after you subtract

central bank gold, ETF gold, and

privately owned bars is probably around

500 tons. Now, 500 tons is about 16

million troy ounces. And at today's gold

price of around $4,360

per ounce, that works out to about 70

billion worth of real physical gold. So

what you have is $70 billion in real

gold sitting underneath 635 billion of

paper promises. That is a ratio of about

9:1. For every $1 of actual gold sitting

at some vault somewhere, there were $9

of paper claims saying that's my gold,

right? That that's a Ponzi scheme at

that point. The whole system was built

on the assumption though that nobody

would ever try to collect all of it at

once. Now, the system also had a

built-in mechanism to keep people from

noticing this. How they did this was

banks discouraged customers from holding

allocated gold, meaning real physical

gold with your name on a specific bar in

a specific vault. They charged you high

fees for it. You had to have insurance.

They made it inconvenient. But

unallocated gold, that's the paper

version, that's always been free to

hold. Not only was it free to hold, but

it came with certain tax advantages,

right? a system deliberately engineered

to keep people in the paper version. And

this is sort of true of all physical

asset equivalents because the moment too

many people ask for their real stuff

back at the same time, it's over. Enter

China, right? For decades, Western

central banks were leasing their gold

into the market to give physical supply

and to keep the price suppressed. One

respected analyst estimated that central

bank gold leasing totaled over 10,000

tons as far back as 2002. That gold was

leased to banks. It was delivered into

markets, but a lot of it flowed east

into Asia, into China, into private

hands, and it never came back. Western

central banks were slowly bleeding their

physical gold reserves into a market

that was pretending those reserves were

still on their books. Which is exactly

why China has been buying so much gold

for the past decade. And they weren't

just buying gold. They were buying the

gold that western institutions have been

selling at artificially suppressed

prices for 50 years. That's why we see

gold moving from west to east, from

unallocated to allocated. Right? That is

how the system worked until 2021. In

2021, the most powerful financial

institution, the BIS, the Bank of

International Settlements, aka the

Central Bank of all central banks, was

like, "Oh, what are you doing, China?

Why are you taking my physical gold

away? I got a paper game going here,

right? Why are you exposing me and my

bros like that?" So what they did was

they changed the rules for how banks had

to account for their gold positions. The

rule change was called Basil 3 net

stable funding ratio. It's a fancy way

of saying banks now have to fund their

gold positions with real money. You can

no longer run the shell game the way

they used to. Why would they do that?

Because thanks to private investors and

central banks in China, the paper shell

game became too expensive, too

regulated, and way too risky to continue

the hustle at the scale, right? It

became super risky because if the price

of gold suddenly went up by a lot and

you're a bank sitting on a huge short

position in gold, meaning you sold a lot

more gold promises than you actually had

gold and the price of it suddenly went

up, you were in serious trouble. So the

BIS changed the rules to make sure

Western banks got their gold positions

on the right side of the trade. If you

follow the logic, why would they do

that? Is because maybe you expected the

price of gold to adjust higher. That is

why gold has been replacing US Treasury

bonds as the world's number one reserve

asset for the first time in history.

That's why central banks bought more

gold in the last 3 years than at any

point since the end of the gold

standard. That is why something called

COMX, the gold futures open interest,

which measures how much paper trading is

happening, just collapsed to its lowest

level in 13 years. Those two things have

never diverged like this in 40 years of

data. And it's because one way or

another, the physical market is going to

be taking over just like the Bank of

International Settlements said it would

in 2021, just like the rule change was

designed to allow them to do so that

they could protect themselves if gold

ever went up. The question is, well,

what does that mean for the price of

gold? And what does China know that we

don't? So, here's what China is doing.

China imported 939 tons of gold in 2025.

To put that in perspective, the whole

world mines about 3 12 thousand tons of

gold per year. And China's been

importing more than a quarter of all the

gold mined on Earth in a single year.

They've been doing this consistently.

The cumulative total of Chinese gold

imports since 2015 has been 14,000 tons.

Right now, where it gets interesting,

though, is that China ran a $1.2

trillion trade surplus with the world in

2025. Meaning China sold $1.2 trillion

worth of stuff more to the world than

what the world bought from China. Right?

That surplus is what everyone is

fighting about. The tariffs, right? All

the trade wars, the accusations of

unfair competition, it all comes back to

this surplus number, right? But here's a

different way of looking at it. China

also imported 939 tons of gold. If you

price that gold at $39,000 an ounce,

China's whole $1.2 trillion trade

surplus disappears. It balances out to

zero. Now, I'm not saying that gold is

going to go to $39,000 an ounce. I'm not

trying to make a price prediction, but

what I am saying is that there is a

mechanism that could allow this to

happen. And the incentive actually

exists on all sides. Cuz think about

what that repricing would actually do.

China's gold loaded consumers would have

vastly more purchasing power, right?

They'll start buying more stuff,

including more Chinese products, more US

products, which reduces the trade

imbalance organically. The US in turn

gets a much weaker dollar, which makes

American manufacturing competitive again

for the first time in decades. The trade

war resolves.

Now, last year, Treasury Secretary Scott

Essence said that the US will not be

repricing gold.

>> We're going to mobilize the asset side

of the balance sheet. And all the gold

bugs said he's going to re he's going to

revalue the gold. I I can say today

we're not revaluing the gold.

>> That was last year, though, and they

could still repric the dollar, which

would basically be more or less the same

thing. Either way, eventually, China

kind of has the last say. In fact, the

president of the Shanghai gold exchange

said this in 2014. He said, "When China

has the right to speak in the global

gold market, pricing will be revealed."

That was 12 years ago. The pricing is

kind of now being revealed. The COMX

data confirms it. Comx, by the way, is

the primary exchange where paper gold

futures are traded in the Western

financial system. and the gold futures

open interest on Comx, which remember is

the total number of outstanding paper

gold contracts, right? That collapsed to

its lowest level in 13 years.

Historically though, when gold prices go

up, paper trading goes up as well cuz

speculators pile in. That's been the

pattern for 40 years. And that pattern

is now breaking because the people who

used to speculate on gold through paper

contracts, they're leaving. And the

people buying the physical gold, the

central banks, the sovereign wealth

funds, the institutions, they are not

leaving. And we can see that in the

reserve data. For the first time in a

long time in modern history, central

banks moved gold above the US Treasury

bonds as their number one reserve asset

around the world. Okay. So what does

that all mean then? And what's going to

happen? Well, if the dollar is

overvalued relative to gold, if the

trade imbalance is not sustainable, if

the paper gold market is going away,

what's going to happen? Luke Groman from

FFTT says there's four possible

outcomes. Path one, the West tries to

control China by force, the way Britain

controlled China 250 years ago through

the opium trade. But China's been

prepared for this, right? Their military

buildup, their domestic ship production,

their gold buying, all of it was

designed to make this path impossible.

So that's off the table. Path number

two, though, the world fights a third

world war over these trade imbalances.

That's what Xi Jinping referred to in

his last meeting with Trump as the

thusidities trap. Path three, the West

just loses economically to China. the

way China lost to Britain 250 years ago.

Europe's actually looking at the

possibility. Uh the UK actually ran a

telegraph recently that had a headline

that said the China shock 2.0 would

destroy Europe as we know it. Right? If

Europe's too slow to adapt, which

historically has been its weakness. So

this becomes their default outcome. Bad

for European industry and bad for the

euro. Path four though, you let gold go

high enough to rebalance this global

trade. The dollar weakens to a level

where American manufacturing becomes

competitive again. China's gold loaded

consumers gain a lot more purchasing

power and they start buying more of the

world's stuff. So the debt imbalance

fixes itself through the repricing of an

asset rather than through a war.

And remember the Western banks who were

basically playing the shell game this

whole time, who were told to get their

positions in order by the BIS in 2021,

they are now protected from this

repricing cuz otherwise they'd be

destroyed by it. So now we have three of

the four paths which are bad. And one of

these paths the BIS already started to

prepare for in 2021 because the US is

not just going to sit back and let this

all happen. There's actually a plan and

it's actually genius. In fact, it is so

genius and so clear it might just be

called the Genius and the Clarity Act.

Let me present to you the other half of

this race. Cuz the US is like, "Okay,

fine. Have your gold, right? We're not

going to repric the gold ourselves, but

in order to keep the world hooked on our

dollars and to continue funding our

debt, we are going to transform every

corporation in the world into a mini

tether-like company. Let me explain.

Remember the problem that the US

government has is foreign central banks

and institutions that used to reliably

buy our debt, our US treasury bonds and

recycle their trade surpluses into US

debt are buying less. China stopped

being a net buyer of treasuries years

ago. Japan is under pressure. The

traditional petrod dollar recycling

mechanism is getting weaker and the US

government still needs to borrow several

trillion dollars a year to fund its

deficit. So the question is who buys the

debt? And the answer the US came up with

is you. Not everyone through every

person on earth who uses a digital

dollar to buy anything. That's what the

Clarity Act is. It creates a legal

framework for what are called payment

stable coins. And remember, a stable

coin is a digital currency that is

pegged to the dollar. Tether is the most

famous example of it. It has over a 100

billion in circulation and it backs

every token with US treasuries. Every

time someone buys Tether, Tether buys a

treasury. So, there's already over a

hundred billion in treasuries being held

by a private stable coin issuer. That's

more than what a lot of countries hold.

Now, the Clarity Act takes that model

and opens it up to every major

corporation in America. JP Morgan can

issue a stable coin, right? Apple can

issue it, Walmart can. Every one of

those stable coins has to be backed by

US Treasury debt. So, every time a

consumer anywhere in the world uses

these corporate digital dollars to buy

anything, they will be indirectly

buying, holding, and funding the US

government. So the demand for dollars

doesn't just survive in this scenario.

It'll get embedded into the

infrastructure of the digital economy at

every level. Right? All over the world.

Simon Dixon calls this the privatization

of the central banking function. Instead

of one Federal Reserve creating dollar

demand, you will have thousands of

corporations each running their own mini

Treasury operations. The network effect

of that would be huge because unlike a

central bank which can diversify away

from holding dollars, a consumer using

Apple Pay or Walmart coin is not going

to get a choice, right? The dollar is

the rails the transaction will run on.

That is why the banks hate the Clarity

Act cuz it challenges their control over

the flow of capital. That's why Jamie

Diamond of JB Morgan Chase is in a

battle with Brian Armstrong from

Coinbase. Coinbase's Brian Armstrong

says that he is sad to hear how JP

Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jaime

Diamond feels about the Clarity Act and

what he told Maria about it. Watch this.

>> This will not be that no one's going to

bow down to this guy, okay? Or that

company and he's the only one and he's

spending hundreds of millions of dollars

in Washington this thing. He said he's

he's representing the whole industry

>> cuz the banks know the moment the

Clarity Act allows for corporations to

pay a yield an interest on the money

that will threaten their source of power

which is our bank deposits. Why would

you keep your money at a bank paying

you.1% interest when you can hold

Walmart coin and get 4%. Right? So that

is the transition that we're going

through. That is the dollar's last stand

to be relevant and powerful in this

world. Now, the reason the world does

not want to get on board with this plan

is cuz the rest of the world can see it

for what it is. The stable coin system

is very smart, but it is not neutral. It

is a system for exporting US monetary

policy and US influence to every corner

of the world's economy, whether other

countries agree with it or not. And

those countries don't really have a

choice because everyone has access to a

smartphone and the internet nowadays.

Just download some app and you'll get

dollars. That's why countries like

China, Russia, the BRICS Alliance, the

Gulf States, they've spent the last

decade building their own infrastructure

to avoid this outcome. That is why

they're putting their money into the

physical world. That's why they're

buying gold. The dollar is the

makebelieve world where anything is

possible. Right? All valuations are

reasonable. Nothing is based on reality.

Gold is the world of the real meant to

represent real world assets, finite

things. The question is which one's

going to win? And the honest answer is

that no one knows. But that is the game

at a very high level. Right? So having

said all that, let me tie it all

together and explain how I think about

all of this. I think what we're seeing

right now is a huge pump of money into

the stock market, maybe as a way of

being exit liquidity for the people that

got into this super early, but also no

one knows how high these stocks could go

and for how long. Will these IPOs mark

the top of the stock market? Maybe.

History shows that is not necessarily

always the case. Just look at how many

IPOs came out between 1995 and the year

2000 before the dot bubble popped. It

went on for years before the market

topped. This could be the case here,

too. But it could also be completely

different this time because we're also

in a race against energy shortages,

which should be coming to the US any

month now. In fact, one of the tech CEOs

or tech companies actually said as much

translation, we got to get these IPOs

out sooner than later because the longer

we wait, who knows what's going to

happen thanks to the straight of her

moves. Will Iran and the US make a deal

before the market crashes? Maybe. No one

knows. Does it matter at this point if

they make a deal or is the damage

already done? Again, nobody knows. So,

there's so many uncertainties and I've

sort of positioned myself in a way to

own some of the stock market. I own

Bitcoin. I have a lot of cash right now

and I I don't necessarily have any real

estate and I don't have any gold or

silver. That's the one thing I'd love to

have right now, but I think the timing

is the most important thing on this one.

It looks like gold is going through a

very important level on the technical

charts and we could see gold go down to

the $3,000 level potentially in the next

year or two or maybe three before we see

a shift from the stock market and into

the commodities via this super cycle

theory. I'm keeping a close eye on it,

but if you're interested in seeing how

I'm preparing and how I invest my money,

those videos live in the premium member

section. You'll also get access to my

main videos earlier. And if that's

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It allows me to make more videos like

this one and take on fewer sponsors.

Thank you for watching this and being a

member. I hope you have a wonderful rest

of your day. Smash the like button. I'd

love to see you back here next week.

I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.