Gold is Becoming “Monetary Infrastructure”

“Gold loves to make its way through guards, and breaks through barriers of stone more easily than the lightning’s bolt.”

— Horace

April 21, 2025 — Why is gold marching steadily higher while everything else is trading chaotically? An X thread from @mcm_ct_usa offers a useful— and for gold bugs, very exciting —explanation. Here’s a condensed version:

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Gold is quietly being re-monetized—and most people don’t see it. Here’s what’s happening, why it matters, and why it’s not priced in. This is for anyone who understands markets, but not the monetary architecture behind them.

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Most people think gold is just an inflation hedge. They’re missing something bigger: Gold is becoming Tier 1 collateral again. And that changes everything.

Historically, gold was money. It backed empires, settled international trade, and stabilized systems. Until 1971—when the U.S. closed the gold window. That decision turned gold into a commodity. But not for long.

Even after 1971, central banks kept gold. They never sold it off like other assets. Why? Because gold wasn’t dead. It was just sleeping—outside the system, waiting for recognition. That moment is now.

Enter Basel III. In 2023, global regulators began reclassifying physical gold as a Tier 1 asset—equal to cash or sovereign bonds. This is not a theory. This is regulatory policy.

Bank of England — July 2024

Federal Reserve — March 2025

ECB — April 2025

Basel III full implementation — June 30, 2025

Gold is being hardwired into global banking.

Gold as a Tier 1 Asset Means More Demand from Banks.

Why does this matter? Because it changes who can hold gold, how they use it, and what it’s worth to the system. Gold is now usable collateral for banks. They can borrow, lend, and settle with it.

That turns gold into active liquidity. Not just a store of value.

We’re talking about a return to gold as balance sheet capital—fully counted, fully trusted.

This isn’t about inflation anymore. It’s about structure. Gold is rising not because people are scared…but because banks are buying—quietly, systematically, under new rules.

Gold ≠ crypto. Crypto is outside the system. Gold is being brought back into the system. Approved. Custodied. Trusted. Global. It’s the opposite trajectory.

Most people still think in price terms. But Basel III is about utility. Gold is becoming useful again—for banks, nations, and institutions. Utility leads price. Always.

Now ask yourself: Why is gold hitting ATHs without retail FOMO? Without Fed pivoting? Without crisis? Because this isn’t a reaction. It’s a transition.

So what actually changes?

Banks can now use gold as Tier 1 capital.
Gold becomes accepted as interbank collateral.
Those who custody gold now hold system-grade liquidity.

That creates a two-tiered gold market:

Paper gold = derivatives, ETFs, futures.
Real gold = vaulted, allocated, physically settled. Only one gets Tier 1 status.

We are now watching the re-rating of gold. It’s not about a price spike. It’s about gold being re-weighted—against other assets, against debt, against global risk.

Gold is still historically cheap in relative terms with most other assets ridiculously overvalued. It’s at ATHs in nominal dollars, but discounted versus equities, real estate, and other assets bloated by fiat expansion.

As gold becomes Tier 1 collateral, its monetary premium will rise. It won’t just be a trade. It will be a reference point.

The smart money isn’t trading gold. They’re positioning around it—vaulting it, settling it, insuring it. Basel III gives them a reason to do it system-wide.

And now it’s not just central banks accumulating. It’s commercial banks, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. Not speculation. Structural demand.

If you hold gold now—physical, allocated, auditable—you’re not hedging. You’re front-running the collateral shift that the world will recognize after it’s complete & it’s too late… in my opinion, this is related to Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030. The idea is to make people poor in real terms.

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This isn’t just a gold rally. This is the reintroduction of gold back into the most significant monetary infrastructure role it’s ever had. It will not happen twice in our lifetime.

Gold isn’t becoming Tier 1 because of price. It’s rising in price because it’s becoming Tier 1.

Gold is no longer just a store of value. It’s becoming a tool of liquidity—inside the global system. If you understand, you know what happens next.

Gold isn’t a trade. It’s infrastructure. You need to know what’s coming.

This shift to gold as Tier 1 isn’t happening in a vacuum. It aligns with broader global financial restructuring under frameworks like Agenda 2030 and Agenda 21. You may not see the connection yet. But the dots are real—and they’re deliberate.

Agenda 2030 is marketed as sustainable development. But behind the buzzwords, it quietly introduces a model of centralized liquidity + decentralized poverty. You don’t own your home. You don’t own your energy. And soon—if you’re not careful—you don’t own your value.

Gold (and silver) are being structurally elevated while attention is focused on digital distractions. Crypto will remain volatile. Fiat will inflate. But real collateral— $GOLD —will be restricted, vaulted, and eventually out of reach. Unless you front-run that now.

John Rubino

“Gold loves to make its way through guards, and breaks through barriers of stone more easily than the lightning’s bolt.”

— Horace

Turn Your Images On

Most people think gold is just an inflation hedge. They’re missing something bigger: Gold is becoming Tier 1 collateral again. And that changes everything.

Enter Basel III. In 2023, global regulators began reclassifying physical gold as a Tier 1 asset—equal to cash or sovereign bonds. This is not a theory. This is regulatory policy.

Bank of England — July 2024

Federal Reserve — March 2025

ECB — April 2025

Basel III full implementation — June 30, 2025

Gold is being hardwired into global banking.

Gold as a Tier 1 Asset Means More Demand from Banks.

Why does this matter? Because it changes who can hold gold, how they use it, and what it’s worth to the system. Gold is now usable collateral for banks. They can borrow, lend, and settle with it.

That turns gold into active liquidity. Not just a store of value.

We’re talking about a return to gold as balance sheet capital—fully counted, fully trusted.

This isn’t about inflation anymore. It’s about structure. Gold is rising not because people are scared…but because banks are buying—quietly, systematically, under new rules.

Gold ≠ crypto. Crypto is outside the system. Gold is being brought back into the system. Approved. Custodied. Trusted. Global. It’s the opposite trajectory.

Most people still think in price terms. But Basel III is about utility. Gold is becoming useful again—for banks, nations, and institutions. Utility leads price. Always.

Now ask yourself: Why is gold hitting ATHs without retail FOMO? Without Fed pivoting? Without crisis? Because this isn’t a reaction. It’s a transition.

So what actually changes?

Banks can now use gold as Tier 1 capital.
Gold becomes accepted as interbank collateral.
Those who custody gold now hold system-grade liquidity.

That creates a two-tiered gold market:

Paper gold = derivatives, ETFs, futures.
Real gold = vaulted, allocated, physically settled. Only one gets Tier 1 status.

We are now watching the re-rating of gold. It’s not about a price spike. It’s about gold being re-weighted—against other assets, against debt, against global risk.

As gold becomes Tier 1 collateral, its monetary premium will rise. It won’t just be a trade. It will be a reference point.

The smart money isn’t trading gold. They’re positioning around it—vaulting it, settling it, insuring it. Basel III gives them a reason to do it system-wide.

And now it’s not just central banks accumulating. It’s commercial banks, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. Not speculation. Structural demand.

Turn Your Images On

This isn’t just a gold rally. This is the reintroduction of gold back into the most significant monetary infrastructure role it’s ever had. It will not happen twice in our lifetime.

Gold isn’t becoming Tier 1 because of price. It’s rising in price because it’s becoming Tier 1.

Gold is no longer just a store of value. It’s becoming a tool of liquidity—inside the global system. If you understand, you know what happens next.

Gold isn’t a trade. It’s infrastructure. You need to know what’s coming.

John Rubino

For 30 years, Japan was the land where interest rates went to die.

The Bank of Japan used yield-curve control to keep long-term rates sedated. Traders joked that shorting Japanese bonds was the “widow-maker trade.”

Not anymore.

On November 20, 2025, everything changed. Quietly, but decisively.

The Bank of Japan finally pulled the plug on decades of easy money. Negative rates were removed. Yield-curve control was abandoned. The policy rate was lifted to a 17-year high.

Suddenly, global markets had to reprice something they had ignored for years.

What happens when the world’s largest creditor nation stops exporting cheap capital and starts pulling it back home?

The answer came fast. Bond yields in Europe and the United States began climbing. The Japanese yen strengthened sharply. Wall Street faltered.

The rate cut narrative is calcifying into gospel: the Fed must cut to save the consumer.

Bankrate reports that 59% of Americans cannot cover a $1,000 emergency without debt or selling something. And yet stocks are roaring, liquidity junkies are celebrating, and the top 10% now account for half of all consumer spending.

Here’s the plot twist: before 2020, consumer confidence faithfully tracked equity markets. After 2020, that relationship broke. As one analyst put it, “The poor don’t hate stocks going up. They just don’t feel it anymore.”

So when the Fed cuts rates in one of the hottest stock markets in history, who exactly benefits? Not the 59%. Not the middle. Certainly not anyone renting and watching shelter inflation devour their paycheck.

Only the late-stage dot-com fever dreams did better in recent memory — back when analysts were valuing companies by the number of mammals breathing inside the office.

For the moment, stocks appear unsinkable, unslappable, and perhaps uninsurable. But this is what generational technology shifts do: they take a kernel of genuine innovation and inflate a decade of growth into a 36-month highlight reel. We’ve seen this movie. It premiered in 1999 and closed with adults crying into their PalmPilots.

And just as the internet continued reshaping the world long after Pets.com curled up and died, AI will keep marching on whether or not today’s multiples survive a stiff breeze. The technology is real. The valuations, however, will eventually need to stop hyperventilating and sit down with a glass of water.

Wheelbarrows are not chickens. A chicken is a biological production unit. A wheelbarrow is a capital good. A wheelbarrow doesn’t produce work. But it CAN be a productivity multiplier.

And that’s how we have to think of all those GPUs the hyperscalers are spending money on. If their thesis is right, trillion in AI and data center spending now, will translate into a massive burst in productivity and new technologies in the next two decades. That is the only justification for the current valuations/multiples at which these stocks trade now.

The American poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “So much depends, upon a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.”

Today the wheelbarrow is Nvidia Green. And so much of the stock market depends on that wheelbarrow being a big enough productivity multiplier to offset $340 trillion in debt.