When trust breaks, money runs here

If you’ve felt like the markets are defying gravity lately, you’re not wrong.

AI stocks keep soaring. Bitcoin, while flat, has maintained levels most thought were gone for good. The indexes hit new highs while headlines talk about layoffs, debt, and deficits in the same breath.

You can feel the disconnect. The sense that everything’s working until, somehow, it isn’t.

That’s because the world is doing something strange: chasing infinite upside while quietly craving something finite.

The same investors funding neural networks and crypto networks are also buying gold, not out of fear, but balance. They understand what most don’t.

That innovation doesn’t erase scarcity; it only moves it somewhere else.

Central banks are hoarding gold at record levels. Sovereign wealth funds are adding bullion for the first time in decades.

Even institutions that built their empires on code and stablecoins are quietly building insurance in the oldest form of value on Earth.

Because, for all our progress, we still live in a world that runs on trust. And when trust feels fragile, people reach for what’s real.

That’s why this essay starts with gold. Not as nostalgia, but as a signal. A rotation is underway, and few are ready for how fast it’s spreading.

In today’s Premium note, I’ll share a quick update on one of our favorite positions. A company still trading like the last cycle exists, even as the next one takes shape.

When Trust Breaks, Money Runs to Metal

For the past year, gold has been quietly breaking records, not in price alone but in conviction.

For four consecutive quarters, combined central bank and investment demand has topped 600 tonnes. That marks the longest buying streak in modern history.

Think about that for a second. The institutions that print the world’s money are the same ones rushing to convert it into metal.

Central banks added 220 tonnes in the last quarter alone. Investment demand jumped 47% year over year, led by ETFs up 134%.

The total value of gold demand hit $146 billion, a 44% increase, even as mine output barely grew half a percent.

The market isn’t just tight. It’s suffocating.

Despite gold’s performance, most investors shrug, and few people are paying attention. AI, crypto, and equity markets dominate the headlines while the real story is happening underground.

Quietly, the world’s financial engine is rewiring itself around scarcity again.

The last time we saw sustained buying from both institutions and individuals, similar to what we are seeing now, was in the 1970s, when gold rose more than twentyfold in a decade.

But this time, the pressure is bigger. There’s more money, less metal, and trust in institutions is at some of the lowest levels ever seen.

It’s not just central banks hedging currencies. It’s a global migration of faith.

You can see it in the data, but you can also feel it in daily life.

The way people instinctively distrust numbers that look too perfect, or leaders who sound too certain.

Gold isn’t rebelling against technology or progress. It’s rebelling against narrative.

And every ounce being pulled off the market is another vote for something the system can’t manufacture: permanence.

Why There’s Not Enough Gold for What’s Coming

Here’s the part almost no one’s pricing in. There simply isn’t enough gold to satisfy this new wave of demand.

Mine production grew just 0.6% in the first nine months of 2025. A rounding error compared to the 39% price increase.

The easy ounces were dug up decades ago. What’s left is harder, deeper, and slower.

That’s geology’s way of saying: “You can’t print me.”

Meanwhile, the supply of money, debt, and digital assets has exploded into the hundreds of trillions.

Global wealth now exceeds roughly $470 trillion, and total worldwide debt is north of $300 trillion.

Against that ocean of paper, the total amount of investable gold in the world is barely $10 trillion. That figure excludes jewelry and central-bank holdings, which together account for nearly two-thirds of all above-ground gold.

The ratio doesn’t compute.

It’s like trying to store the Pacific Ocean in a swimming pool.

That’s why prices have to rise, not because gold bugs say so, but because math demands it. The more capital that tries to rotate into something finite, the tighter the aperture gets.

Pierre Lassonde, co-founder of Franco-Nevada and one of the industry’s most respected voices, estimates that gold could eventually reach $17,000 an ounce if institutions move even modestly toward hard-asset exposure.

Think about it…global wealth exceeds $470 trillion, yet the world’s accessible gold supply is less than three percent of that.

You don’t need to believe in conspiracy theories or currency collapse to see the imbalance. All it takes is a calculator.

That imbalance is already showing up in mining equities, where cash flows are soaring but valuations still trade like the 2010s never ended.

It’s the same cognitive dissonance we saw before every major rotation, when the data screams and investors whisper.

The End of the 60/40 Illusion

For decades, the 60/40 portfolio was gospel: 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

It worked because both sides of the equation followed the same rule. Faith in the system.

Stocks rose on growth; bonds rose on stability. Together, they gave investors a sense of balance that felt permanent.

Until it wasn’t.

When inflation returned and rates spiked, bonds stopped acting like ballast. Instead of cushioning portfolios, they cracked alongside equities.

That failure was a signal that something was seriously off.

The old model depended on a world that no longer exists: one where money had meaning, debt had limits, and central banks could fix anything with a press release.

Today, that illusion is gone.

The numbers make it obvious. The U.S. alone has issued more debt in the last five years than in its first two centuries combined.

Interest payments are now larger than defense spending.

Every major economy is stuck in the same cycle, borrowing more just to maintain the illusion of solvency.

That’s why a growing number of portfolio managers are increasingly questioning their playbooks.

Instead of 60/40, some are moving toward 60/20/20: 60% equities, 20% hard assets, and 20% liquidity.

The hard-asset slice isn’t about hedging; it’s about honesty. It’s about owning what can’t be diluted, restructured, or voted away.

Gold is at the core of that shift.

It’s not replacing innovation or competing with technology; it’s stabilizing it.

The same world that’s building AI chips and digital currencies still runs on power grids, copper wires, and mineral supply chains. Progress still needs physics.

That’s the beauty of the rotation we’re watching. It’s not an either/or world. It’s both intelligence and infrastructure, code and copper, algorithms and atoms.

Gold just happens to sit at the center of that bridge.

The oldest asset in the world, anchoring the newest ones.

And if history is any guide, the investors who understand that balance first are usually the ones still standing when the models break.

The Honest Money Always Wins

Gold’s rise isn’t about price. It’s about proof.

In an age of infinite claims, gold remains the last finite truth, just as physics reminds pilots, engineers, and anyone else that gravity still applies.

When confidence feels abstract, the market always finds its way back to something that can’t be falsified.

Gold has no quarterly earnings, no press conferences, no bailout clauses. It doesn’t depend on political favor or financial engineering.

It just sits there, unbothered, holding the same mass it had yesterday. And yet, that stillness is precisely what gives it power.

Central banks know it. Investors are relearning it. And anyone who has watched a lifetime of paper wealth inflate and deflate can feel it in their gut.

That sense that real money is supposed to mean something.

A decade ago, gold made up less than 10% of the average central bank’s reserves. Today, it’s around 24%. Fifty years ago, it was more than 60%. 

The world hasn’t lost faith in gold. It’s simply forgotten how much of it it once trusted.

Many emerging economies still hold less than 20% of their reserves in gold, which means the buying cycle is far from over.

And the private side is even earlier.

In 1980, gold represented 8% of all private investment. That number fell below 1% for decades and only recently climbed above 2%.

Even if it doubles again, it would still be half of what it was during the last major cycle. A setup that could force prices dramatically higher.

That’s not gold hype. That’s arithmetic.

This is where the cycle resets.

Every few generations, markets rediscover that wealth is not a story we tell, but a substance we hold.

The same world that obsesses over AI, crypto, and digital leverage is quietly rebuilding a new foundation beneath it, one made of scarcity, energy, and proof.

That’s what makes gold more relevant now than it’s been in fifty years.

And if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be early to something eternal, this might be it.

The System Reset No One’s Ready For

Every few decades, the market reminds us that math and trust always reconcile, and it’s usually at the same time.

That’s what’s happening now. The illusion of infinite liquidity is colliding with the reality of finite resources. And in that collision, gold is emerging not as a trade but as the referee.

It’s the quiet constant in a noisy world.

A measuring stick that never needed anyone’s permission to work. When currencies wobble, when debt ceilings rise, when political confidence falls, gold doesn’t react. It reveals.

This is what 2026 is shaping up to be: the year of the great financial re-grounding. Not a collapse, a recalibration.

The world isn’t ending, it’s rediscovering the floor beneath it.

The math makes the case, but history tells the story. Every major reset, from Bretton Woods to the early 1980s to the aftermath of 2008, ends the same way.

With investors circling back to something real. This time, it’s not just individuals. It’s governments, institutions, and sovereign funds all hedging the same risk: belief itself.

And belief, once lost, doesn’t rebuild overnight. It rebuilds with proof.

That’s what gold represents now. Not fear, but proof. Not panic, but proportion.

For anyone paying attention, this isn’t about picking sides between the digital and the tangible. It’s about owning balance.

And for those who’ve been following Moonshot Minute this year, that’s been our compass all along. Find what’s real, buy it before the crowd, and hold it through the noise. We’ve done that with Bitcoin, metals, rare earths, etc.

Because every system eventually resets to the truth.

And the truth, inconvenient as it is, still has weight.

In today’s Premium section, I’ll share exactly how that truth is playing out through one of our favorite miners. A stock we recommended back in August that’s now up more than 20%.

Given their latest results, which we’ll break down in detail for Premium members below, we believe it’s a good time to get in if you haven’t already.

And if you’re not a Premium subscriber, joining today and acting on this recommendation could easily pay for years of subscriptions to Moonshot Minute Premium.

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