For [music] the first time, the world's

central banks, the people who manage the

savings of entire nations, are holding

more gold than US [music] Treasuries.

Gold quietly passed American government

debt to become [music] the single

biggest asset in the world's reserves.

But this is not really a story about

gold, and it is not a promise that gold

is the future.

It is something entirely different. For

600 years, the world's money has worked

like a crown. It passes from one king to

the next. And the strange thing about

this moment is that the crown looks

ready to change [music]

hands. But when you go looking for who's

next in line, the throne is empty. There

is no crown prince. Here is what almost

no investor is pricing in. Everyone you

talk to has [music] an answer for what

might replace the dollar. They'll tell

you China, or the Euro, or some BRICS

thing, maybe Bitcoin. But almost nobody

has actually checked their work. And

when you do, when you actually run the

numbers on every candidate, you find

something the whole market is unprepared

[music] for. There is no heir.

Look, empires end, [music] reserve

currencies end, and the dollar will

eventually lose its place at the center

of the world. And anybody who tells you

the current arrangement is permanent

hasn't read much history. So, this is

not alarmist, it's just the cycle

turning.

But every other time the cycle turned,

there was a successor already standing

in the wings.

And this time the wings are empty. And

that one fact changes everything about

how this plays out. Let's start with how

this has always worked. For 600 years,

the crown has always had an heir. Right

recent history. Portugal handed off to

Spain, Spain to the Dutch, the Dutch to

France, France to Britain, and Britain

to the United States.

>> [music]

>> Roughly a century each. And every single

time, you could see the successor

standing by the side. By the time

London's reign was ending, America was

already the largest economy on Earth and

the world's biggest creditor. The crown

never leaps to a stranger. It went to

the next strongest power in the room,

the one who already controlled the trade

routes and the resources that mattered.

The understudy was already in costume.

So, today I want to go hunting for that

air, but before we do, I want to talk

about the one idea that makes sense of

everything else that's going to follow.

Okay, so here it is. Every currency on

Earth, the dollar, the euro, the yuan,

is a story that we've agreed to believe.

A dollar is worth a dollar only because

we all agree it is and because we trust

the government not to print too much of

it. Money has always been a story. So,

the real question is never which money

has real value because none of them do.

The question is whose story are you

trusting and what does that storyteller

want you to believe?

And there is exactly one thing on the

whole list that no storyteller can

rewrite. If you're at a dinner party and

you say something like the dollar is

finished, inevitably somebody may finish

your sentence for you. They'll say,

"China. China is next." It's like a

reflex, right? The world's factory, the

biggest exporter, the second largest

economy. Of course, of course China is

next after the United States.

But I'm suspicious of any answer the

whole room reaches too fast. So, here

are three reasons why I believe that's

wrong. First, you cannot be the world's

banker while the doors [music] of your

bank are locked. A reserve currency has

to be something [music]

the whole world can hold freely. They

can buy it, they can sell it, they can

move it across borders at 3:00 in the

morning without asking [music]

permission.

After decades as the the number one

exporter, of Yuan is less than 2% of

global reserves and about 3% of

cross-border payments. The dollar is

around 58% for comparison. Now, that's

not a gap, that's a canyon. But, [music]

the canyon is there on purpose. An

ordinary Chinese citizen can legally

move only about $50,000 [music]

out of the country every year. Beijing

sets the Yuan's price every morning and

lets it drift by maybe 2%. Because if

the money could leave freely, savers

could pull it all out at once and crash

the system. And that's the control that

China will never give up.

And here's the twist. China doesn't even

seem to want the job of the reserve

currency. Back in 2009, [music]

the head of its central bank said the

world leaned too hard on one country's

money. And his fix wasn't "Use ours

instead." [music] It was that the world

should run on a neutral money belonging

to no nation. He had the perfect moment

to pitch the Yuan. The world was

beginning to distrust the dollar, but he

didn't. He said no country should hold

that power, including his own. Now,

look,

I don't believe most of what politicians

say, but it is important to pay

attention to that because China is known

for dictating long-term strategy and

then holding the line on that. Now,

there's a Cornell economist named Eswar

Prasad who put it plainly in his book

called Gaining Currency: The Rise of the

Renminbi. He said as long as China keeps

its money walled off, the Yuan can win a

slice of the trade but never become the

money that the world saves in. It needs

to move freely in order for that to

occur.

Number two,

to be the world's banker, you have to

send your money out into the world.

China was built to pull it in.

In 1960, an economist named Robert

Triffin spotted the trap. If the world

runs on your money, you have to supply

it to the world, which means running

deficits permanently. America's done it

for 80 years. Those trade deficits that

everybody complains about at every

election, that's actually the rent the

US pays to keep the crown.

China is the opposite. In 2025, it ran a

current account surplus of 735 billion

dollars, the largest any nation has ever

run. To take the throne, it would have

to flip that on its head and dismantle

the exact machine that made it strong.

China seems to have looked at that

bargain and said politely, "No, thank

you."

And number three, China is aging before

it's finished climbing. When America

took the crown in 1944, it was young, it

was growing, it was the largest creditor

that the world had ever seen.

China's population peaked in 2022 and

it's now shrinking. It's working-age

population has been falling since 2015

and by 2050, the UN expects roughly 40%

of the country to be over 60 years old.

That's a society growing old before it's

finished growing rich. Every previous

heir made its leap while it was still

young, getting richer and opening its

doors. China is the reverse on all

three. It may be the first workshop in

history to grow old and stay locked up

before it ever became the bank. And if

you set China aside, the bench of heirs

gets pretty thin in a hurry.

Let's look at the euro. After the

dollar, it is the most widely held

reserve currency on Earth, about 21%.

So, it earns a serious look, but it has

a flaw the dollar doesn't. It's a

currency without a country. 20 nations

share it and each still borrows on its

own. There's no single euro bond for the

world to buy. You have to pick one

country's debt over another's. The world

wants one big safe place to park its

savings and the euro offers 20 smaller

ones. Now, we watched it nearly tear

itself apart during the debt crisis from

2009 to 2012 when tiny Greece almost

brought the whole system down. 25 years

in, its share of reserve currency has

hardly moved. Now, the yen and the

British pound come next at about 6% and

5% of reserves, respectively. But,

neither is a contender. They're just

warnings. Japan owes more than twice

everything it produces in a year, the

heaviest debt load in the developed

world. To survive the interest bill, its

central bank pins rates down by force

and has bought up nearly half of its own

government debt to do it. The yen has

been sliding for years and a shrinking,

aging population, and that's not a

country reaching for the crown, all

right? It's one showing the rest of us

what the end of the road looks like, not

the beginning. And the pound, quite

frankly, it's the same story in a

smaller size. But, what about a BRICS

currency? I hear this one a lot. Maybe

it's the the one I get asked about the

most, but history is blunt here.

Monetary unions without political union

don't ever survive. The Latin Monetary

Union tied France, Belgium, Italy, and

Switzerland together from 1865 to the

1920s. And the Scandinavian Union,

founded in 1873, was gone by 1924. And

these countries that made up those

unions, they were neighbors, they shared

borders, and they shared culture, and

they still came apart at the first real

shock. When you look at BRICS, what do

you see? You see India and China. They

have soldiers killing each other as

recently as 2020 in the Galwan Valley.

They're open rivals. India has said

flatly they don't want a common

currency. No shared central bank, no

shared treasury, no shared culture, no

shared law. A common currency is a

marriage. You You got to trust your

partner with your savings for life.

BRICS is not a marriage. It's a

networking event with a photo op. And

look, leverage for sure from a trade

standpoint, not a reserve currency, very

different things. Now, there's another

that a lot of you are bullish on and for

good reason, and I'm talking about

stablecoins. You're not wrong to be

bullish on stablecoins. They may be the

most important monetary innovation in a

generation.

So, let me explain it real quick. A

stablecoin is a digital token meant to

always be worth $1. Now, a private

company holds one real dollar or a

dollar equivalent in US Treasuries

behind each stablecoin it issues. So, it

moves like crypto, but it's stable like

a dollar. You can send money anywhere in

seconds, as easy as sending a text

message, with no bank in the middle.

>> [music]

>> And that's a real advantage. But, here's

the thing. The company that issues that

stablecoin can also freeze it on its own

or on government order. And the dollars

behind it still sit inside the US

financial system, where they can be

frozen, too.

>> [music]

>> So, a stablecoin doesn't free you from a

dependence on America and their monetary

policy, it adds a second party to trust

on top [music] of it. It's still a

dollar. Now, a faster, smarter dollar

that may stretch the dollar's lifespan,

but it does not replace it. So, once

you've actually checked the work, you

end up where I keep ending up and kept

resisting, quite frankly, because it

sounds

a bit stranger than it is. What if we've

been asking the wrong question this

whole time? Every answer history ever

handed us was a country, a flag, a

capital city with a mint. That's where

the currency would go.

So, we go looking for the next flag and

we come up empty and we conclude that

nothing can replace the dollar. But, the

rule, honestly, was never it has to be a

nation. The rule was it has to be

something the whole world trusts to

settle its debts. And there is exactly

one asset that belongs to no government,

carries no one's promise, can't be

printed by a rival or frozen by an

enemy, and it's been accepted everywhere

on Earth for longer than any of those

flags have existed. So, many of you know

where I'm going with this. I'm talking

about gold, but this is not uh gold bug

sermon, because gold is not the answer,

okay? Let me explain. At the end of

2008, gold was about 9% of global

reserves, a single-digit afterthought,

sort of on par with where the yen or the

sterling are today.

By 2024, that number had jumped to 16%,

and by the end of 2025, roughly 27%, now

passing US Treasuries as the single

largest holding in the world's central

banks. Now, I know the reflex. The

second anybody says gold, half the room

rolls their eyes at the gold bug and

tunes out. Now, that that is not me, but

I get it, and here's why. Gold is

useless. You can't eat it. It pays no

interest. It is a soft metal that sits

in a vault and does nothing. Its entire

value rests on back to that, one shared

belief.

But, if we're going to be consistent, we

have to run that same test on everything

else, right? The dollar, as mentioned,

is also just a belief. So are the euro,

the yen, the yuan. You can't eat any of

them, either. The only difference is

that gold is the one belief on that list

that an author cannot spontaneously

print more of or confiscate. And this

isn't just my opinion. In 2022, the US

and its allies froze over 300 billion

dollars of Russia's foreign reserves in

response to the invasion of Ukraine. And

that afternoon, every finance minister

on Earth learned the same lesson. An

asset held inside someone else's system

is not really your asset. And that's why

that same year, central banks bought

more gold than in any year since 1950

and they have not stopped.

Even Washington is saying the quiet part

out loud. The US Treasury Secretary

Scott percent recently stated, we are at

a unique moment geopolitically. There is

a very good chance we're going to have

some kind of grand global economic

reordering. Something on the equivalent

of a new Bretton Woods or the Treaty of

Versailles over the next four years. He

said this in 2024. The man in charge of

the dollar is openly talking about

rebuilding the system and the central

banks are voting

with their vaults. So, let's jump into

some of this arithmetic. The supply of

gold is essentially fixed. Nobody can

print it. It takes a lot of time and

energy to mine. Meanwhile, the biggest,

least price sensitive buyers on the

planet, being central banks, are buying

it at a record pace. Fixed supply, huge

demand. There's only one direction the

price can go and it's gone that way.

Look at the tape. Gold has more than

doubled since 2022 from about $1,800 an

ounce to more than 4,000 today.

That is not a metal suddenly becoming

more useful, by the way. That is trust

draining out of the system in real time.

That's what the gold price truly

reflects. So, let me be clear about what

gold is and what gold isn't. I am not

here to crown a new king. That is the

gold bug sermon and it misreads the

whole thing. Gold is not the heir who

finally steps out of the wings. Gold is

what the world reaches for when it looks

at the wings and finds them empty.

And the first thing an empty stage tells

you is the it's the opposite of doom. A

king with no rival does not get

overthrown next Tuesday because there is

no successor ready and no country

willing to do the job, the dollar will

hold its place far longer than the

loudest pundits will claim. And And

that's why I'm not ringing alarm bells.

The dollar won't fall off a cliff. I do

believe it's going to die by inches, but

that's a slow death, right? Now, gold

will never be the world's everyday money

because it's slow, and the world needs

money that moves fast. Gold isn't the

next act, but I do believe it is the

intermission. Now, what comes after

anybody's guess, most likely a hybrid.

Trade priced in several currencies at

once, debt settled in part by a neutral

asset, maybe gold that no government

controls. You can already see the shape

of it, right? Central banks hold

dollars, euros, and gold side by side.

China's own banker called for a neutral

money back in 2009, and with the

Shanghai Gold Exchange, they are

offering the world an option to buy in

yuan and settle in gold, and maybe

that's the future. The first Bretton

Woods was a hybrid, too. Currencies

anchored to gold.

But, that's a direction, not a

destination. And all those ideas are

just speculation. Nobody is rewriting

the system tomorrow. And that's what the

gold price really tells us. Central

banks don't trust the rules of the

current game being played any longer.

So, they've stepped off the field until

the new rules become clear. Stepping off

the field in money speak is gold. So,

the rising price of gold isn't really a

story about gold. It's like a

thermometer, and the temperature is

climbing. The number going up isn't gold

getting more useful, it's trust leaking

out of the system.

And as long as that price keeps

climbing, the world has not yet agreed

on what comes next. That's the gauge to

watch, not because gold is the

destination, because it tells you how

far we are still from finding one. So,

for the last 600 years, since the rise

of the Portuguese Empire and what we

might be able to call the first sort of

world reserve currency,

the question was always the same, which

country would come next? And the strange

thing that we have to sit with today is

that the honest answer might be none.

There's no crown prince, maybe not for a

long time.

So, what happens next is uncertain. When

you're uncertain what's around the

corner, you want to hedge your bets. And

that's why central banks all over the

world are hedging theirs.

I think the dollar has a long run ahead

of it, but not a positive one. Not one

you want to sit on and ride. It's going

to go the wrong direction. It will die a

slow death because there's no natural

successor.

Central banks have picked up on this.

They believe that story to be true even

if they don't know what comes next. When

you don't trust the existing system, but

you're not sure where you're going next,

gold is the asset you want to sit on,

and that's why central banks are sitting

on it in numbers we haven't seen for

nearly a century.

But, as always, honest question, what am

I missing? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoy my content, my name is Jay

Martin, and this is the Jay Martin Show.

I publish here every Saturday, and I

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