Internal Fed Conflict Brews | Russia Sells Gold at Huge Profit -

Welcome to this week’s Market Wrap Podcast, I’m Mike Gleason.
Coming up don’t miss this week’s Money Metals exclusive interview with Dominic Frisby, a man of many talents – a British comedian, an esteemed financial writer and commentator and author of the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Gold-Money-Politics-ebook/dp/B0DP8PKRRX" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Secret History of Gold</a>.
Join Mike Maharrey and his fascinating guest as they dive into a range of topics, including Dominic’s background on gold and how he came to study and write about the subject; the issues with the U.S.’ gold in Fort Knox; the history of gold as a store of value; and how the most recent iterations of a gold standard used by countries in the 20th century were incredibly flawed.
So, stick around for a truly enlightening and interesting conversation with the wonderful Dominic Frisby, coming up after this week’s market update. And if you enjoy this material, please do us a favor and like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you consume this content.
Well, another Federal Reserve meeting came and went this week with no real action. And as usual, the big news centered around what Jerome Powell & Company said and didn’t say.
For the third straight meeting, the FOMC held interest rates steady at between 3.5 and 3.75 percent. This comes as no surprise, given the uncertainty facing the economy as the conflict in Iran drags on.
<a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260429a.htm?tblci=GiCB9a4pBBlehdsJSAXBSvtzY7kC2AKY69BgUiVdqNpQmSDKuWUo-sCAu_nVmNN8MK67Pg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The official FOMC statement</a> noted that inflation is elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices.
The cost of the basket of goods the BLS uses to calculate <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/04/11/cpi-spikes-on-energy-prices-but-thats-not-the-real-inflation-story-004832">the CPI rose 0.9 percent month-on-month in April</a>. That was the largest single-month jump since the height of the post-pandemic surge in 2022. The big monthly rise in prices pushed the headline annual CPI to 3.3 percent. The last time it was that high was March 2024.
The surge in CPI was almost entirely due to skyrocketing energy prices. The energy index rose 10.9 percent month-to-month. That was driven by a 21.2 percent monthly increase in gasoline prices.
The Fed also said that developments in the Middle East are contributing to a high level of uncertainty about the economic outlook.
In fact, most observers think the central bankers will hold rates steady in the near-term, despite the market’s desire for rate cuts.
Powell seemed to confirm this perception, but also tried to minimize expectations of a rate hike, signaling a patient stance for the time being.
So, the thought today is the central bank will keep rates higher for longer to battle potential price inflation due to the energy shock from the war in Iran.
Gold and silver have struggled to gain a footing since the conflict began due to this perception. Because gold and silver are non-yielding assets, they face headwinds when rates rise.
However, the interest rate hawks seem to be ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room – <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts/2025/11/12/the-debt-black-hole-004473">the debt black hole</a>.
The Fed has addicted the economy to easy money, incentivizing billions of dollars in debt.
The Fed pumped nearly $9 trillion in new money (inflation) into the economy through quantitative easing alone from the onset of the Great Recession through the pandemic. That’s on top of the inflation it created with nearly a decade of zero percent interest rates.
That monetary malfeasance has consequences. It created a massive debt bubble, along with all kinds of malinvestments in the economy. The full impact hasn't manifested yet.
So, why don’t they hike? Given the stubbornly high CPI and the looming trickle-down effects from $100-plus per barrel oil, it would be hard to dispute such a move.
Well, it’s because they know that rate hikes would run a dagger through the heart of this debt-riddled bubble economy.
And that’s the Catch-22. The Fed simultaneously needs to hike interest rates to fight inflation and cut them to rescue the economy.
It obviously can’t do both.
To date, the central bankers at the Fed have been trying to walk the tightrope. But at some point, economic realities will force their hands. They’ll have no choice but to cut aggressively when the bottom falls out of the economy. The oil price shock could cause that sooner rather than later.
Our view at Money Metals is that America faces a protracted period of stagflation. And you might want to hold onto your inflation hedges, especially physical gold and silver.
In other news, the Bank of Russia has sold 22 tonnes of gold so far this year to help fill the government’s growing budget hole. At the current gold price, that amounts to roughly $3.4 billion.
According to official data reported by the Moscow Times, Russia’s gold reserves fell by 0.7 million troy ounces to 74.1 million troy ounces as of April 1st, reflecting the Bank of Russia’s selling.
The war, along with falling oil and gas revenues, has strained the Russian government’s budget and they are selling gold to help finance budged deficits. <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2026/03/27/turkey-sells-60-tonnes-of-gold-to-backstop-lira-004792">Turkey also sold around 60 tonnes of gold</a> in February and March to backstop the lira and cover their rising costs of energy.
Russia put itself in a position to deal with the current budget crisis years ago. The Bank of Russia launched a gold buying spree beginning in 2014. Over the next six years, the Russian central bank increased its reserves by around 40 million ounces (1,244 tonnes).
During this period, the price of gold ranged from $1,100 to $1,500 an ounce.
When the Ukraine war began, Russia held about half of its reserves in dollar, euro, and pound sterling assets. The other half was in yuan and gold, which remain accessible.
The Russians also made a shrewd move before the invasion of Ukraine, transferring their National Welfare Fund holdings into yuan (60 percent) and gold (40 percent).
Russia’s recent selling reveals just why central banks hold gold. It serves as a long-term reserve free from <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/02/29/buy-gold-and-silver-to-hedge-against-counterparty-risk-003015">counterparty risk</a>. And since its value is recognized around the world, it can serve as an emergency fund – even if you’ve been locked out of the global dollar-dominated financial system.
Well, before we get to this week’s interview let’s take a look at the weekly trading action in the metals.
Gold is down for the second consecutive week, off 1.4% to check in at $4,654 an ounce. Silver meanwhile has been on a bit of a heater here for the last couple of days after struggling at the start of the week. The white metal is now in positive territory, showing a slight 0.5% gain since last Friday’s close to trade at $76.80 an ounce as of this Friday late morning recording.
As for the PGMs, platinum is off 0.6% to trade at $2,013 an ounce. And finally, palladium is the biggest winner among the precious metals this week – it is up 2.7% to trade at $1,552.
Well now, without further delay, let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview.
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Mike Maharrey: Greetings, I'm Mike Maharrey and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dominic Frisby. Dominic is probably best known in England as a comedian, but he's a prolific financial writer and recently published a book titled, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Gold-Money-Politics-ebook/dp/B0DP8PKRRX">The Secret History of Gold: Myth, Money, Politics and Power.</a>” How are you today, Dominic?
Dominic Frisby: Hello, Sir. How are you doing? I'm very well, thanks.
Mike Maharrey: I'm outstanding and I appreciate you taking a little bit of time to chat with me today. I had been aware of you. I've heard you on Tom Woods' show. I knew you as a comedian. Didn't really realize that you were in the realm of finance and whatnot. So I guess if I was a comedian, I'd come up with a joke about a comedian writing about gold, but I'm not funny, so I'm not going to try to do that. I'll leave that to the professionals. But I am curious how you kind of ended up at this point. So I would love just to start off to get a little bit of your background, both in terms of your work as a financial writer and then also as a comedian and how you kind of got to this point.
Dominic Frisby: So, I've been investing in gold and reading about gold and writing about gold and thinking about gold for 25 years now and a long, long time. And I discovered it. I was trying to make some money. And this was back in the 90s, early 90s. And I was reading a lot online and everyone was like, "You've got to invest in gold, the growth of China, the dollar's going to collapse." All these kind of narratives that were there in the 90s. And something I could never understand is where I grew up in London. I could never understand why house prices were so high, why houses cost so much in relation to what people actually earned. And it just always mystified me. And then as soon as I started reading about gold and fiat money and debt and manipulated interest rates and all the rest of it, it all suddenly made sense.
And I've been hooked on gold ever since and I've been hooked on sound money. And I wrote a film called Four Horsemen, which was very popular about 15 years ago, shortly after the financial crisis. I think it had something like 15-million views or something like that. But I made the argument in that film that if we're going to save the world, we have to go back to sound money. And then Bitcoin came along and I was a big advocate of Bitcoin as well. But I tend to find that Bitcoin divides Bitcoin and gold is quite weird. I'm 55. I was born in 1969 and I find that people born earlier than that tend to favor gold and people born after that tend to favor Bitcoin. And I'm right on the cusp. So I'm a sort of gold both guy, but it doesn't really matter.
As long as the money is independent and sound, that's the most important thing. And our past, one of the things I argue in this book is if you say to Google, "What is the first metal that human beings used?" It will always say copper. And it's just wrong. Copper, we've been using copper maybe five or 6,000 years BC, but maybe with the Bronze Age, a little bit before the Bronze Age, we were using gold tens of thousands of years before that. Human beings found gold, little nuggets and riverbeds as they hunted and gathered in the stone age. There's evidence of gold use in Spanish caves, paleolithic caves that goes back 50,000 years. And what did we use gold for? Well, we wore it. We used it as jewelry. We used it to store wealth, to display wealth, and we would've used it as a reward, as a prize, as a tool of gratitude, maybe even as a tool of barter.
But in other words, we were using it for exactly the same thing. We use it now, which is money. And people tend to think of … When you say money, people tend to think of a medium of exchange, but they forget unit of account and store of value. And as a unit of account and a store of value, gold is infinitely better than fiat money. Maybe not so much as a medium of exchange because of all the fantastic FinTech and so on.
To make a payment of one cents worth of gold or five cents worth of gold doesn't make a lot of sense, but we use copper and nickel for those kind of transactions. But anyway, but as a store of wealth and as a unit of account, like as a unit of account over time, why would you measure something in $2,000 and 2026 dollars and 1970 dollars because they're a completely different … They're just the valuations have completely changed and gold is the constant. So if you want to measure the relative value of goods and services over time, you should use gold as your unit of account. The only reason we use US dollars and pounds and euros and so on is because we have to account for that money to the tax man and we have to pay our taxes in that money. But gold is a much better unit of account.
But anyway, I just think the world would be a much better place with sound and honest money. And that's why I've bought large amounts of gold and I've encouraged my readers to buy large amounts of gold. And that's one of the reasons I've written this book.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I'm basically the same age as you are. I was born in ‘67 and I'm the same way. I'm kind of like, gold, Bitcoin, why not both? And I totally agree with you. Would you agree with me that the fiat money system is kind of the engine that drives big government?
Dominic Frisby: Oh, 100%. When one body in a society has the ability to create money at no cost to itself, and everyone else in that society has to expend energy to create money or earn money, then it's inevitable that the body that can create money at no cost of itself will grow to disproportionate size. People struggle to explain – Margaret Thatcher’s in charge and government still seems to grow, particularly the deep state, as you call it in the states. And we just have the state here in the UK, but just endlessly health and safety and the military industrial complex and welfare and benefits and various government grants. And it's just art subsidies and green energy subsidies. Just any number of arts council subsidies, any number of initiatives, there seems to be no end to them. And of course they get abused and the people who operate within those various government bodies are incentivized.
There's no end to charity. Once the charities fixed whatever the charity was set up to do, it should shut down. But if it was a Karen existing, as a Karen lobbying for more government money, and government has the power to create money to give these bodies this money, and it doesn't have to be balanced out by what is received in tax revenue. And so the inevitable result of this is just government grows and grows and grows in a way the rest of society can't, and society ends up out of balance as a result, and I'm afraid that's where we are.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, absolutely. You titled the book, The Secret History of Gold. What's the secret or can we give that away?
Dominic Frisby: I suppose it's only … I don't want to give you too much insight into my methodology and ruin the allure of the book, but one of my friends who read it, an early draft, just said, oh, this is a good title. And I thought, oh yeah, that sounds like a good title. So, we literally called it that because it just sounds like a really good title. But I suppose it's the secret history because there's so much in there about gold and about the effect it's had on the world and humankind that you just don't hear anywhere else. And so it's a secret history in that there's … I mean, even the most ardent goldbug, James Turk was one of the people who read the book and James founded Gold Money. I'm sure all your listeners are all familiar with James. And even James was saying, "My goodness to me, there was loads of stuff I didn't know about gold in here." And so I suppose it's a secret history of gold in that sense.
There's loads you didn't know. And when you think about it, gold is wealth in its most distilled form. And there was a veteran American investor by the name of Gerald, oh my goodness me, his second name escapes me and… Loeb, Gerald Loeb. And he said, "Our instinct for gold is the oldest commercial instinct in the human race." And you can go all the way back to Greek myth and Jason in the Argonauts. They were just early prospectors and they were early explorers and he was the first guy to cross the boss for us and go into the Black Sea from Greece and navigate the treacherous waters. But the reason he did it was gold. And the reason the Spaniards went to South America or any number of ventures and exploration activities. So the reason we have California is the gold rush. People wouldn't have gone there otherwise.
Oregon was better. The farmland in Oregon was better. And it has driven human beings to do the most brave, the most adventurous, to be innovative, to be inventive, to do the most amazing and wonderful things. It has also driven human beings to do the most terrible things and the most awful things because that's what wealth does. And many of those that have struck gold have thought their fortunes have changed for the good. Now they've now have these enormous riches. And time and time again, we see the same story that those who find the gold and get incredibly rich, their stories end badly. Bizarro, Jason, as in Jason and the Argonauts and many others besides … There are many examples in California. The guy on whose ranch gold was first discovered when the guy shouted out Eureka, I found a gold mine. He ended up penniless.
So, it's just this amazing metal. But I would say that after sex and hunger and perhaps the need to put a shelter over our head, it has been the primary motivator of all human action in history.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I guess it'd be fair almost to say that the story of gold is the story of human society in a lot of ways. Would that be a fair statement?
Dominic Frisby: Very much so. Very much so indeed. And you never hear, for example, those gold discoveries in the second half of the 19th century, it started in California, but then obviously Australia, New Zealand, South Africa was the big one. 40% of all the gold that's ever been mined came from that one reef, that one discovery in South Africa. The prospector who discovered it, Australian by the name of George Harrison, sold his license for 10 pounds, must be the worst deal in all human history. And then of course, Canada that followed that. But that extraordinary wealth and most of it made its way to the British Empire. In a funny kind of way, it funded the decline of Britain in the 20th century because we just wouldn't have been able to make all the stupid decisions we made if we didn't have this constant backup of all that South African and Australian gold, funded those two World Wars.
It's just incredible the impact of those discoveries. And what you don't hear about often in the States is that the Californian gold revenue went to the Union and it went to the North. So, when the Civil War came along, the North was much better funded than the South because they had the gold.
Mike Maharrey: What is the old saying who has the gold makes the rules?
Dominic Frisby: Yeah. Which was actually coined by a comic book writer.
Mike Maharrey: Was it really?
Dominic Frisby: Yeah, it was on the front cover of a comic, but it's one of those sayings that's entered the lexicon and it's absolutely right. What it basically means, who's got the money, has the power. And I'm afraid the reality of the world in which we live in today is that China has the gold. And of course, the big question is about American gold – that Fort Knox gold hasn't been audited since the 1950s. And the great joke is the head of security goes to the US president. He says, "Mr. President, we haven't got any gold in Fort Knox." And the president says, "What do you mean there's no gold in Fort Knox?" And the head of security says, "There's no gold in Fort Knox." And the president says, "Double the guard!”
Mike Maharrey: Right. That makes sense.
Dominic Frisby: Yeah. It does. But what's been happening with China is that America has 8,100 tons, thereabouts. China's two, two and a half thousand, a little bit less nominally. But if you just look at Chinese mining, China's mind about 8,000 tons this century, 8,000 tons. It's also been the world's biggest importer of gold this century, and it does not export any of its gold. So any gold that goes to China or gets mined in China stays in China. And you can't really
Audit how much gold goes through London, Dubai, and Switzerland, because it's all private, but we do know about Shanghai withdrawals from the Shanghai gold exchange, and some of that will get double counted, but even so, something like 30,000 tons, maybe even as much as 40,000 tons … Sorry, 25 to 30,000 tons has left the Shanghai gold exchange. But when you factor in gold that's made its way to China and hasn't gone through the Shanghai gold exchange, plus Chinese mining, you arrive at a figure of somewhere between 30 and 40,000 tons. I'm going to say those figures again, 30 to 40,000 tons. America says this has 8,000. Of those 30 to 40,000 tons in China, how much is state owned? Some say 50, 60%, others say closer to 30%, even if it's only 30%.
If it's one third of 30,000, that means the Chinese state has 10,000 tons of gold. That's more than the United States, and the United States gold hasn't been audited. And in all likelihood, even if the United States gold is there, it's not good delivery quality because it's all coin melt from the 30s, and the dollar coins in those days were only 90%. And so China has more gold than the United States, and it has at least four times the amount it says, might have as many as 10 times the amount it says. China has the gold. He who makes the gold makes the rules. It is the biggest story in global finance. It really is, and nobody talks about it.
Mike Maharrey: Yep. I wrote an article just a couple of weeks ago about the quality of the gold in Fort Knox. And as you say, it hasn't been audited. So I mean, we can't say for certainty how many gold bars are actually there, but if we even take it at face value, only 17% of the gold that's in Fort Knox, and this is documented, only 17% is actually deliverable gold that is qualified for international exchange. So, you hit the nail on it.
Dominic Frisby: It's a shocking state of affairs. And Besson said he's seen it. But when Trump got elected, we were going to audit the gold. And I know there's a movement in Congress to have an audit, but that narrative has gone to sleep. This is over a year ago now. What happened to the audit of the gold? And I think it all boils down to that joke. It isn't there. It's the only … Until it's proven that it is there, you've got to assume it isn't, or it's not of good delivery quality. And there was that sudden influx of gold just before the tariffs came in, and you've got to ask yourself, where did that gold go? And nominally that was to escape tariffs, but there was something more to that. So maybe they just bought some of the gold to replace what's not there.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. I'm curious about something. You mentioned the decline of the British Empire, and I kind of feel like the US is in a similar position today where it's kind of desperately trying to hold onto its world hegemony. Do you see that similarity as well? Are there some parallels there? Or am I stretching?
Dominic Frisby: Yeah, I sort of see Britain as Rome and America as Byzantium, if that kind of makes sense. And the Byzantines saw themselves as Romans. And the Byzantine Empire lasted a long time. I guess it was founded in three, 400, something like that, and it went on until nearly a thousand years, 80 or 900 years.
And China's very much a nation in the ascendancy. It's hugely ambitious. It's been top dog in the world before, so there's no reason it can't be again. It's got the sort of national IQ, but America is still … I keep reading on the internet. Americans get so frustrated with their own country and the bad decisions its leaders make and the excess welfare and the dependency culture and the undercurrent of drugs and the directionless youth and all those things that people complain about. But let me tell you as an Englishman, every time I go to America, I'm like, "This is fantastic. This is a great country." And there's so much more ambition there. There's so much more get up and go. You celebrate other people's success in the UK, we resent other people's success. It is still a phenomenal country. And if I was a 21-year-old man with no family ties and you said to me, "I can go anywhere in the world and start up a business and have a career," the first choice would still be America.
So things aren't that bad yet.
Mike Maharrey: That's good. I like that. I like that bit of optimism because I tell you what, sometimes it can seem pretty gloomy over here. Kind of along those lines, I've been writing a lot about de-dollarization and we're certainly seeing that. We're seeing many, many central banks increasing their gold reserves, diversifying away from the dollar. Is that something that's being talked about over there? And do you kind of see that process playing out too and that the dollar is possibly losing its dominant role as the world reserve currency?
Dominic Frisby: I think de-dollarization is a thing and it's very definitely happening. And where you see it most prominently is in Chinese holdings of US treasuries, which have been … But China still has three trillion in US dollars. So it's actually US dollar holdings haven't declined, but it's treasury holdings have. But yes, it is a very real thing. It obviously accelerated after the freezing of Russian assets after invading Ukraine. That was a real catalyst a few months after their gold buying, but it makes … I don't understand why nations would hold US dollars in the first place. I mean, yes, it's liquid currency in a way that gold isn't. And for example, Russia bought some drones from Iran and it paid for them in three tons of gold and it flew three tons of gold from Moscow down to Iran. Well, that's insane. You can't be flying three tons of gold every time you want to make a payment.
So the dollar's much better for that point of view, and that's why we have banks and so on, to facilitate those kind of transfers. And obviously the story from the Strait of Hormuz is that Iran's going to start demanding payment in Bitcoin, and that just makes Bitcoin a much better currency for international settlements as the world will soon discover and admit at the moment it's not quite there yet, but we're slowly getting there. But your original question was de-dollarization is a thing, and it makes total sense for countries to diversify their holdings. And I think we're at roughly 30% now, depending on the gold price. Gold holdings are roughly 30% of central bank reserves, and US dollar holdings are about 50%. And I think in the next 10 years, gold will easily overtake the US dollar. We just need a slightly high gold price for that to happen.
But of course, there's actual central bank buying as well. But given the choice, if you are a sensible central bank, and that doesn't mean the Bank of England, which is retarded, but if you are a sensible central bank, and particularly in a country that isn't necessarily … I'm not saying an enemy of the United States, but isn't fully a traditional ally. Britain is a traditional ally of the United States. You wouldn't know it by what's going on at the moment, but we are. But if you trade with the US and you have reasonable relations, but maybe you're an Islamic country and the US is Christian largely or whatever the reason, it's just sensible to not keep all your central bank holdings in US dollars. It's just sensible portfolio management. You want to have a bid in US dollars, a bid in euros maybe, but you want to have probably the largest position in money that is nobody else's liability.
And there's only gold, and maybe Bitcoin, but really only gold is your only option there. And so it's not such a sort of terrible … It just makes sense. And I think this de-dollarization is coming off those 2015 levels when Central Bank Gold Holdings reached an all-time low. I think it went as low as 12 or 15%. I forget the exact number, but it was just insanely low and the natural position for it to be is in excess of 50%. So, all we're doing is making our way back to what is a normal and sensible level. It doesn't necessarily mean the end of the US dollar, but we are going into a more fragmented world. And I want to say that there's something isolationist about Trump, but if he's getting involved in bombing Iran and so on, you wouldn't call that isolationist, but he is sort of doing what he's doing without NATO approval and without European approval.
And we do see the world … He's looking to control the Atlantic and South America and maybe a bit of Europe and so on. And he puts a lot of his efforts into choke points for Chinese oil supply, like the Strait offer moves, like the Panama Canal and so on. So I think there's probably a bit more method to the madness than many might think, but even so, in that kind of world, you don't want all your eggs in one basket and owning a large chunk of gold, whether you're a central bank or a nation or just an individual, it just makes sense.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. It's the one type of money, I don't really mean to use air quotes, because it is real money, that as you mentioned, there is no counterparty risk. Nobody else is controlling it and holding it. And I can take a gold coin anywhere in the world and it's going to be recognized as having value. Whereas somebody may or may not want a dollar, they may or may not want a pound. So I think you're absolutely correct.
Dominic Frisby: Well, the point about gold is you could take that gold to anywhere in the world at any point in history and probably at any point in the future, and people would understand that it has value. And in that sense, it is the most universal money there is. And why would you not want to own it?
Mike Maharrey: I don't know, but some people don't. In fact, our favorite economist, Keynes, he called gold a barbarous relic. I'm going to get you out on this one. Is there a place for gold in the digital 21st century world?
Dominic Frisby: He actually called the gold standard of barborous relic.
Mike Maharrey: True, true.
Dominic Frisby: And the gold standards of the 21st century were bogus. In the 19th century, gold was money and gold coins circulated and silver coins circulated. After the First World War, European nations went back on the gold standard, but they withdrew gold from circulation. So there was just no gold. We didn't mint any coins. There was no gold in circulation. And you couldn't go into the Bank of England and swap your notes for gold unless you had above a certain amount, which was only the kind of levels that a large corporation or a nation would have. And then of course in the United States, you drew gold completely in 1932 and made it illegal. So they weren't real gold standards. If gold plays no actual part in the money, the day-to-day money and the citizens don't actually hold it, it's just a bogus gold standard. So that to me is why the gold standards of the 20th century failed is they were just bogus.
And also with the growth of government, they were unsustainable anyway.
But it's a question I ask myself frequently, the horse was natural transport for thousands of years, and then somebody invented the motorcar and suddenly the horse was redundant. At first, they called cars horseless carriages, which I find quite amusing. And now a horse is just a sort of unnecessary … It's a luxury to have a horse rather than something essential as it once was. So except if you're a farmer or something like that when you still use them. So there is an argument that gold is just irrelevant and useless, but in that case, central banks wouldn't still hold it. It's completely unofficial. Has no official role whatsoever, and it still makes up 30% of central bank gold holdings, and they're buying more. Investors still hold it. Corporations still hold it. The gold price rose 60%, maybe 70% last year. So it clearly does have a role, even if it's unofficial.
And I would argue that the role that it plays is the same role that it played when we were a Stone Age man, which is to store value and to display value. And in those respects, there's nothing better.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I hope folks have gotten a little bit of a flavor of your breadth of knowledge on this subject, and hopefully they'll run out and buy the book because it certainly sounds like an outstanding read and I think people will want to avail themselves to that. So before we go-
Dominic Frisby: Adam Fleming, who is Ian Fleming's nephew and big gold bug, he used to be the chairman of Harmony Gold. And he's read every book on gold and he said it's the best book he's ever read on gold.
Mike Maharrey: That is high praise.
Dominic Frisby: It was.
Mike Maharrey: High praise indeed. Well, let folks know where they can find the book and then also please point them to any other things that they might want to follow to keep up with your work.
Dominic Frisby: Well, with pleasure, thank you. It's called The Secret History of Gold, and I guess you order it from your local bookshop or Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com. You can order it now. And if you like what I had to say, I have a popular Substack in investment newsletter and it's called The Flying Frisby, and you can find it at theflyingfrisby.com. That's flying frisbee, F-R-I-S-B-Y.com.
Mike Maharrey: I saw your video when you unboxed the book and you mentioned you weren't completely pleased with the cover, or at least as far as the design goes, because you didn't get everything you want, which is typical with publishers. But I thought it looked really good. I'm not going to lie. I liked it.
Dominic Frisby: It does look really good. And I'm now really paranoid that my publisher saw it and saw me looking disappointed because I'm not actually. I think it looks really good. Yeah, no,
Mike Maharrey: They'll get over it. No, it looks fantastic. It's a beautiful book and I'm really looking forward to diving into it and learning a little bit because you go from the very beginning, you talk about the origins of Golden the Universe, which is pretty cool. So it is a sweeping treatment of the subject to say the least.
Dominic Frisby: It is. And it's not that long as well.
Mike Maharrey: I encourage folks to avail themselves of it. And it's really a pleasure to meet you. As I said, I've watched you from afar and it's really a pleasure to talk to you and I'm excited about the work that you're doing and appreciate the knowledge that you're throwing into the pool and trying to make this not quite as secret as it is because it should not be a secret that gold is money and we still need it.
Dominic Frisby: Thank you very much, sir.
Mike Maharrey: All right. Thank you.
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Really enjoyed hearing from first-time guest Domonic Frisby there and we hope you’ll support his work by checking out that book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Gold-Money-Politics-ebook/dp/B0DP8PKRRX">The Secret History of Gold</a>, and maybe you want to check out some of his other commentary on gold or maybe even some of his comedy as well – he really is a dynamic and well-versed individual.
That will do it for this week. Be sure to check back next Friday for our next Weekly Market Wrap Podcast. And to check out any of our audio programs, including our second podcast, the Money Metals Midweek Memo, just visit <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com/podcasts">MoneyMetals.com/podcasts</a> or find them wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And as a big help to us we would ask you to please like, subscribe, download and rate our podcasts. Doing so helps us extend the reach of this material.
Until next time, this has been Mike Gleason with <a href="https://www.moneymetals.com">Money Metals Exchange</a>, thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend everybody.

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