Speaker 1This is the Commodity Culture Podcast, where we interview prominent investors, fund managers, analysts, and company CEOs to give you an edge when it comes to investing in the commodity space. Ian Everard, great to have you back on Commodity Culture. I'd love to start with your thoughts on the silver market right now, because I recently had Michael Oliver and David Hunter on the show. They both pointed to a $1,000 silver price. Now, just to be clear, Michael said it wouldn't shock him. He didn't call for it. But he said within a year, and he believes silver is going much higher than $300 in that time frame. David Hunter, a bit of a different forecast. He sees silver going to $200 this cycle, a global bust, followed by silver eventually going to $1,000 an ounce in the early 2030s. I'd love to get your thoughts. Both of those forecasts, and just your overall thoughts on the silver market as we sit here today, potentially heading back towards $70.
Speaker 2Okay, that's a lot to chew on. Now, I like Michael Oliver. I think his way of studying the momentum instead of the traditional chartists is interesting and quite often correct. But isn't the big question, what relevance does it have to a stacker? I guess. It has relevance. If you're thinking of buying, it's good to think, oh, wow, my $70 silver is going to go to $1,000. But I think it's the wrong question for a stacker is, do you believe the current system is stable, controllable, and is just going to carry on chugging along, allowing us to do what we did yesterday, last week? Now, if you think that, then yes, these forecast predictions are important. Because you're presuming that you can buy silver tomorrow, or next week, or next month, if it hasn't gone to $200 or $1,000. But that's a big presumption. Because I think I mentioned several times before on the program, I am convinced we're heading for full financial control and financial repression with a fully digital system. We're getting more and more mention of tokenization. And the Clarity Act about everything getting tokenized. Even I saw an article today about some company pushing tokenized assets into a fund. Well, what does that mean? It means that everything is recorded and linked to the dollar. And everything is then in an account. If we go fully digital, and I'm convinced we're going to, you won't have a choice how you can spend what's in your account. So sort of circling back to these forecasts for the silver price, I think it's the wrong question. The question is, will I be able to buy it tomorrow, next week, next month? Will I be able to use what is in my digital account how I want to, where, and when I want to? So, I mean, I have to give respect to Michael Oliver and David Hunter. You know what I mean? They're a million times more known than I am. But I think they're asking the wrong question.
Speaker 1You mentioned tokenization. I'd love to dive a little bit deeper into that. Because we've also heard talks that there's potential consideration of tokenizing the whole stock market and putting it on a 24-7, or at least one of the exchanges, like either the NASDAQ or one of those exchanges, and allowing 24-7 trading of tokenized securities. This seems like a disastrous idea. And this whole push for tokenization of assets seems like a disastrous idea overall. Where is this all headed? Because you alluded to control, capital controls, both of how we spend our own money, perhaps capital controls in terms of stopping money from leaving the country. Where do you see this all headed, ultimately?
Speaker 2So, we have a choice. We really are at a crossroads. We can either, well, we're going to carry on debasing. And that's the route. That is inflation, the abnormal increase in the monetary supply. I think the figures were for July. Nearly half a trillion deficit in one month. Ah, so this administration gets the record, I think. I mean, maybe we did more in COVID. So, we can carry on debasing. We have to carry on debasing or the system will collapse. So, how can you delay the collapse? Well, you can control the velocity. Because that is, gives the outworking, that's the reckoning, that's the accounting when people try and spend all this extra currency. It's a simple big picture, but the details can be quite complicated. I mean, you've got this bizarre way of measuring money in the United States, M1, M2, and M3. M3, the Federal Reserve stopped reporting in 2006. So, 20 years ago, they decided we shouldn't know what the broadest measure of money, currency, is. Well, there's a reason. There's a reason, isn't there? They're making more than they're owning up to. So, there's even more currency that's being created, one, in the U.S., and two, in the Euro dollar, i.e. dollars created outside of the U.S. So, this is why we have to go to a fully controlled system to delay the collapse by controlling velocity. Because number one, when we go fully digital, they can control how much currency goes into the new system. And then, when it's in the new system, they can control how, when, and if it can be used. What that will do, that will destroy economic, it will destroy GDP, because what small business will invest and, you know, to get a gain in the future, if the system is telling them, you won't have free, well, how to use that gain. You might make it, and it's digitally in your account, but you can't say, "Do you know what? I want to retire. I want to go to Puerto Rico, or I want to move to Spain. I'm out." And you won't be able to transfer it. So, who is going to invest effort and time and energy, so this new system, the time, the fuse will be lit as soon as it comes in, an even faster approach to the catastrophic collapse that I'm, I'm convinced that is how the system ends.
Speaker 1Well, I think one of the signs that we're getting into the danger zone is Scott Besant announcing yesterday that they would be doubling treasury buybacks. This is essentially looking like Bank of Japan-style yield curve control. Gold, silver, and the miners went ballistic in the aftermath, some of the miners going up 10% or more, gold and silver themselves rising considerably on the news. What are your thoughts on this announcement, and what are the precious metals markets sniffing out based on what Scott Besant has proposed here?
Speaker 2So gold and silver, historically. We always have, and in my understanding, and studying and opinion, always will give a thorough accounting of the currency debasement. They haven't done it yet. So this is, this is a step, isn't it, to, to purchase long-dated, so 10, 20, 30 year debt and issue shorter term durations. So obviously the demand isn't out there for long term, so, I mean, we had it, didn't we? It was, it called TARP, Temporary Asset Repurchase Program to, to, to bail out the banks who are holding notes that the principal was underwater because as rates rise, the value of debt issued at a lower interest rate has a lower principal value. So it's a bailout of the banking system. It's going to be the first of many. It's interesting. They seem to change the name each time. I mean, you go back three, four years. I think we had about 12 different three or four letter acronyms to describe, just to try and disguise what was going on. You know, we've got the issue now, haven't we, with the AI system demanding trillions of dollars, I think 0.7 trillion, 0.8 trillion has been spent this year in the US and you've now got some of the, I can't remember the company, but one of the technology companies said, we need a hundred times the current. Computing power. So then suddenly want to spend a hundred trillion. So now you've got AI competing, you know, trying to tap, uh, foreign investment funds, family offices, you've got Google, I think they've just raised some cash in Australia. There seems to be a desperate clamor and the cost of money, i.e. what people are prepared to give out their, their, their, their capital. What return they want is rising worldwide for whatever the purpose. So yeah, it's symptomatic, symptomatic of a panic that you can't just sell any date us debt. Now the market is getting picky and it wants shorter and shorter duration.
Speaker 1Yeah. And even before this announcement, we saw gold and silver start to break out, um, because post war in Iran kicking off, of course. We know after all-time highs things corrected considerably, but we've seen the metals basically drop and be in a sideways consolidation for the duration of the war. And we're now seeing the metals break out. Obviously, Besson's announcement helped push them, but they were kind of already on that trajectory. Do you think the next leg could now be fully underway in this precious metals bull market? And if so, could this be one of the last chances to buy gold and silver at discount?
Speaker 2I think it could be one of the last chances to buy particularly silver. It's so key and it's such a finite market. So going back to the war, is it a war? It's on, it's off. Memorandums of understanding, complied with, not complied with. A threat of total destruction of Iran as a civilization. Now in that whole world, we've got Pakistan. Is it Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi with a pact with a NATO equivalent like pact of mutual, you know, Pakistan nuclear weapons. They've just managed to last year, 12 day war of India. India looks like backed off. They had some of their fighter jets shot down by Pakistan. This is complex picture. So I'm trying not to pour too much information out so we can get some. So, traditionally, outbreak of war, quite often metals will fall. And then when people realize this is a permanent situation, then it's a flight to safety. You know, because particularly gold can be a fear and agreed trade. I think it could become both. Now silver, which is obviously, we started our company focusing on the silver. It's just such a tiny market. And please forgive me if you're fed up of people saying it's such a tiny market. Even the most optimistic estimates of above ground refined silver that could enter the market from the CPM group is 10 billion ounces. Well, multiply that by $70. That's point $7 trillion. So that's less than two months of the current US deficit burn rate. It's less than six months of our interest bill. Just compare the current valuation of silver to financial assets, whether it's interest or it's debt, whether it's deficit, whatever it is, whether it's the value of SpaceX. Just compare it to anything. It is irrationally undervalued. So when demand does increase, it won't be a matter of, okay, it's time to buy silver. There won't be any to buy. The big fish would have got in there first. The family offices. There won't be any to buy silver. The family offices. The family offices. hidden in wherever that secret military base is, you know. We've probably got it scattered around. We've probably got too much gold. But the arrogance to say, yeah, we can just look, yeah, it's all there. It's just ridiculous. Ram Paul, if you ever get to see this, you should be ashamed of that. That's just a joke. The truth is we've probably got more gold than we should have, and we'd have to explain where and when we stole it. That's probably the real, you know, all the wars we've been involved in. Well, started or been dragged into or whatever. The gold has disappeared. And who's had the means, motive, and opportunity? That's just, you know, we have. So we've probably got way more, but we probably haven't got anywhere near as much as China, you know. And, again, I mentioned unforced errors. Why is the United States one of its largest, if not our largest, export gold? $13 billion of gold in July. I think it was. Why don't we just type some funny money and buy gold? Why are we exporting it? It looks like, ah! It's like, we can get gold for free as a nation. Well, by stealing from all existing dollars. But looking at it cynically, when we steal from dollars by debasing, we debase all the dollars outside of the U.S. that at any point in time we can cut off from being able to be used in the U.S., do we still have the exorbitant privilege as a nation of being able to rob the rest of the world and default on the debt by not allowing this funny money to be used in the U.S.? I think we've gone a little bit off track there, but definitely China has huge stockpiles of silver. I think Russia has huge stockpiles of silver. My clients have huge stockpiles of silver. David Bateman in Utah has billions. Billions of dollars of silver. People have woken up and are making their position.
Speaker 1Now, what do you say to the counter-argument around the Fort Knox debacle, people like Brent Johnson, who I think is a very smart guy, but in this case I disagree with him. He said, well, hey guys, what's up? Why do you trust China and Russia, or let's talk about China specifically here because that's the one that people usually point to. Why do you think China has all this gold even though they're not officially auditing their reserves and showing us, yet you won't trust that the United States has the gold? What's going on? I mean, to me, this seems a little ridiculous on its face because Rand Paul went in there and said, it's all good. So the burden of proof is kind of on him. So I don't, I don't get this argument, but what, what, what are your thoughts there? Should we trust that China has as much gold as they say they do? Speculation is it's more, what do you make of that argument?
Speaker 2So the answer to that is history. He who has the gold makes the rules. That's what it will come down to. He literally, he who has the gold will make the rules. You, you can carry on this fear Ponzi scheme worldwide and until you can't tell it till it explodes and it will explode, um, China knows this. China considers centuries, if not millennia of history, it remembers the opium wars where the West stole silver from China by getting them addicted to opioids, stole the silver back that they'd earn honestly by making goods. And at the moment it's, it's. History is repeating in that China is a highly successful manufacturer. I mean, it was at 30% of all goods manufactured in the world are manufactured in China, 30%. And that's probably only going to increase as they increase robotics and they use AI to increase, you know, they're going to need less and less labor and be making more and more products. They're they've got, they've run the race to scale. This is where you can be on. You know, I mean, you have one city, they will make a city of a million people. All they make is toilets. You have another city of two million people. All they make is four sets. That's it. So you've got that concentration of specialization where you can reduce the cost time and motion gets is, is, is refined to the most efficient you can ever get. So even you could move to a country, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, and have cheaper labor, they can't get that efficiency. Of scale. So China has got a stranglehold on manufacturing because of that, they need silver, they do not want to run out of silver. So that's why they have stockpiled probably a decade's worth of silver for their manufacturing, because it won't matter what the price of silver is. If they're the only country that have got it, they'll set the price of the goods because nobody else they're competitors. We've got all the sunk costs, the factories, the labor, the export, the product. The intellectual property, that will all be useless if they haven't got silver to make their products. So, so China could go from 30% to 60% over and almost overnight if they're in a position to control silver, because they have the largest reserves. So when the rest of the world is panicking and you get retail people panicking into silver, buying up silver, China will be laughing because they know that's less silver, but the West will have to manufacture goods. And what, what we're going to do open up a silver mine in 15 years time, you know, so they understand these things is they have whole teams studying every aspect of everything, you know, that I am sure they have the luxury of a command economy where the, the Z can say, do this and it gets done. There's no constraint here. It's, will it make me money in next week or will it make me money in three months time? If it doesn't, I'm not doing it, you know, it's like, so we've become lazy and greedy and China has just been plugging away. And all I have to do is just keep watching us make unforced errors. I mean, getting dragged into a forever war, stirring up that whole religious, the Muslim, the sunny thing that, you know, what if we provoke the Muslim world to unite? Now they've got nuclear bombs. What if I just, just say, hang on. Guys, you know, we could sacrifice your side of our religion and, you know, but, oh, by the way, we've been lied to, uh, the U S couldn't protect our bases. They couldn't, you know, they're going to send the last Patriot missile to Israel to protect Israel. You know, I mean, heck, I'll probably get a call from APAC if this, if AI is monitoring this, you know, but you know, come and visit me guys. We'll have a sensible discussion. And if you want to talk Bible, we'll talk old Testament, you know, but anyway, China is China is in control. I'm sure it has huge stockpiles of silver. Um, and that will be the metal that will be really, really, really key in who wins the, um, economic race or the economic, uh, war really, because, you know, we are in full on commodity wars.
Speaker 1Yes. And great thoughts. And I mean, on the China being a manufacturer and dominating that industry, they're making really good products these days too. Things have changed. There's change. There's no, it's no longer these. Of course, of course they still make flimsy cheap products in these factories. Those exist, but their cars, some of the best electric cars out there. I mean, I've got a Xiaomi phone. It's amazing. Air purifiers, all of these different types of products, home products, home appliances are actually pretty high quality. So they've upped their game at this point. I want to ask you about Renium at this point in time, because this is a very, uh, you talk about silver being a small market. Renium is a market that. Most people aren't even aware exists right now. Why don't you walk us through the latest data in that market? And for those who aren't familiar, maybe lay out why it's such a critical metal and the opportunity in that metal.
Speaker 2Yeah, sure. So Renium, um, 75 on a periodic table sits between tungsten and osmium. So it's a transition metal. It has all the properties and in some ways superior properties to the so-called precious metals. Uh, the big difference. There's only 50 tons is produced, a fresh Renium a year, and it's a by-product of a by-product. So that's where it is really nice. There are no Renium mines. It's found at such low concentrations that probably never will be any Renium mines. Um, it should never really have found any mass industrial uses because the supply is so constrained, but it has, it's essential for making jet turbine blades and combustion chambers. That's where 75, 80% Renium goes to. the modern jet engine. And not just recently, for 40 years. And for nearly 40 years, the industry has been seeking an alternative. It cannot find one. It leans down and it finds the efficiency engine drops, so it increases back up. And now we have such a surge in aviation. Just Boeing has nearly 7,000 airframe backlog on its order books. The average civilian airframe needs 50 kilograms. Times 7,000, that's 350 tons Boeing needs alone against a fresh production of 50 tons a year. Yes, there's recycling when you retire a jet engine. Yeah, you can extract that renium out. But there's a lag, because when you build an engine, that renium is in that engine for 10 years before the engine gets refurbished, stripped down and rebuilt. So we are entering a crunch where some planes will not get built because there isn't any renium. that's going to going to happen um at the moment it's trading around 7 000 a kilo i'm predicting 70 000 a kilo and even then i don't think the price will really slow down moving because it will be a bidding war between who can raise enough currency to purchase it that that will be you know and whether the u.s will be able to use its military might to force chile to to send all the renium here maybe because that's where half of the renium comes from is from chile so now we have a supply risk i mean chile is known for earthquakes one earthquake we lose half of the world's fresh so now we're down to 25 tons a year against boeing needing 350 tons the market is absolutely incredible um the dynamics study it i've challenged people prove me wrong i've been saying this since september 2024 nobody has proven me wrong my suppliers producers refiners users i even challenged rolls rice at a conference i met the team from rolls rice and i challenged them i told them you go back to crew you go back to england tell your bosses to start stockpiling renium because if you don't you won't be building engines um they didn't laugh at me and what did i find out two weeks later rolls rice started stockpiling um it's a tiny world there's about nine to twelve people pretty well controlled over 90 percent of the world's renium supply um so if you get into that world and you talk to these players you you you can find out that the whole picture um it's also fascinating this is a piece in its pure wrought form you see it's pretty flexible it's malleable but it has a hardness i think 55 on the mohs scale um it will shine up to a beautiful blue i don't know if the light will catch it here this has just been rolled so we are actually in the process of making i think the world's first arenium and crystalline osmium watch face so when it gets introduced as a luxury metal now it's going to get bid up to the price of gold so that could be the ceiling also interestingly medically it's been around as a medical alloy since 2019 the first fdic approval boston scientific and you can look at article up have just spent 1.5 billion dollars buying the rights to a molybdenum rhenium based heart valve one and a half billion dollars for one medical use because as a medical alloy it doesn't break it doesn't wear out it has no nickel in it so another 20 percent of the population who has nickel allergies can can use it so the medical use is just about to take off and that has no price ceiling because a heart valve might use a gram so that might use seven dollars of rhenium at the current price but you're talking a hundred thousand dollar operation or 150 or saving somebody's life because these valves can be made smaller and more durable because of the properties of the rhenium based alloy um so yeah i am really excited full disclosure we took a large position as soon as i found out in september 2023 we've been increasing our position so absolutely full disclosure i don't even buy an ice cream cone now because i will save that five bucks and i'll buy five bucks more rhenium it's like this is this is the one slice of cake you get in your lifetime like warren buffett once said once in a lifetime you get offered a slice of cake you take it you know so it is an absolutely exciting market it's a privilege to be involved in it we've made a lot of people very rich or
Speaker 1yeah and arc silver gold osmium one of the few uh dealers that actually sells physical rhenium why do you tell us about that and just give us an overview of arc sgo and um the type of services and products that you offer so
Speaker 2yeah we are still and hopefully as long as the government allow your full silver dealer both buying selling advising we will give our best opinion and advice you know to what product you should buy or what product you should buy and what product you should swap into just talking to an elderly gentleman this morning who's scared that his heirs will have no idea what to do with his silver and they will sell it off too cheap um so we can help we can help advise maybe even educate your heirs because some people are coming to me we i want to sell i want to turn it to dollars because my children are stupid my nephews and nieces are stupid they'll just take it to a pawn shop and sell it for half its value i want to turn it into silver and i want to sell it to a pawn shop and sell it to a pawn shop and sell it to a pawn shop let's maybe uh appoint a custodian to make sure you get fair value if they do want to liquidate it you know so we're unusual in that way that i we will take for time whether it's selling an ounce or four and a half tons we will take the time to make sure you get the most suitable product in the most suitable form great well you can also yeah uh so 236 this is the year end of production at the end of this year the osmium institute who cut and certify all of the crystalline osmium produced in switzerland they're ceasing production so we're already running out of certain grades and certain pieces so this is an interesting time to have a look at crystalline osmium don't don't put a lot of your portfolio but i think because it's so beautiful so rare and so wearable and so enjoyable a fraction of a percent of one's portfolio you're going to be pleased with the result no it's not liquid like silver but unfortunately in the current system silver has not proved very liquid with some of the big companies offering stupid spreads you know selling for eight dollars over buying back at ten dollars under silver has not proved very liquid not not as a cost effective i mean we help our clients get a much narrower spread than that so that's again that's another thing we specialize in we've built up great relationship with the largest wholesalers that we have uh we have an out to liquidate if we need to lay off somebody brings in or a family office brings in a huge amount we can get them a good price um i don't know why the rest of the industry doesn't do it because it's a trade and every trade even if you make a tiny percentage on it's a trade i don't know just got lazy or whether uh their businesses are in distress so they have to make a larger and larger spread to pay for their overheads maybe it's a bit of both um so yeah we we specialize in being very personable and approach approach the business you know most of our clients turn into a friend you know a few turn into enemies they do the dirty they order stuff and then disappear and don't pay for it um they're not our friends anymore but you what with what's coming you want your dealer to be your friend you want a face you want a phone call you you want somebody that you know you're going to be able to talk to you go to a big company that person you last dealt with they were probably a salesman on commission they're not interested in you anymore unless you're buying
Speaker 1some more yeah and i i consistently get great feedback in the comments section about uh dealing with yourself and arc uh so definitely guys reach out to ian the number is on your screen right now you can also reach out by email ian at arcsgo.com that is also on your screen uh i'll see you next time bye i was wondering do you uh ship to customers outside the united states do you deal with canada at all or or any other countries or is it only u.s yeah we
Speaker 2have shipped to canada we ship to australia we ship to germany uh we do have some uk clients um so yeah we are probably probably going to open up in the uk as well oh nice you know some of the spreads in the u.s are huge you look at some of the big names how much they're charging for a silver eagle is double the premium that we charge but in the uk it's even worse there's even less competition it's a smaller market so we are seriously thinking about uh branching out opening up an outlet in in the uk but yes we will ship anywhere i mean we would prefer the client to do the research or what are the implications what how could it get held up at customs canada generally has been okay um larger amounts can get tricky because there has been a lot of theft in transit so some companies have blacklisted regions in canada but there are certain regions that have been fine and if it's a small order 50 100 ounces we've found that usps and it transfers over to the canadian post office we've had zero issues so far shipping to canada that way right well
Speaker 1once again numbers on the bottom of your screen guys reach out to ian today ian thank you so much for coming on the show great conversation once again thank you jesse commodity culture is a podcast that covers investing in commodities and natural resources if you'd like to hear more be sure to subscribe so you were always alerted of the latest episodes
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