Bitcoiners need to be better at framing things.
There is a lot of hype on the Internet this week as Rand Paul and Elon Musk have reignited the topic of auditing Fort Knox to see if the gold we are led to believe is in the most famous vault in the world is actually there. 4,580 metric tons to be exact. With Elon suggesting that it would be a good thing to do a walk through of the vault and livestream the physical audit, many bitcoiners took to X to exclaim how excited they are for the bitcoin price to pump once the world discovers that the gold is not in the vaults.
Your Uncle Marty is here to throw some cold water on this framing because it is objectively a weak frame that doesn't protect the downside risk of discovering that the gold is actually in the vaults under Fort Knox, which is the most likely outcome if a livestreamed audit is actually conducted.
Think about it. Do you really think Donald Trump is going to let Elon Musk take the DOGE team, likely accompanied by someone like Mr. Beast to make sure it is a must see Internet event, into the elevator shafts of Fort Knox and have those doors open for everyone on the Internet to discover that the United States of America is gold poor? You have to be out of your god damned mind. There is no way on God's green Earth that this would ever happen. Trump is a winner and he would not want to be associated with one of the biggest L's in human history. The most likely scenario if an audit does actually happen, which I highly doubt it will, is that the elevator doors will open and we'll be blinded by the shimmering fluorescent light beaming off of stacks and stacks of bullion.
As we made you all aware of last week, there is a mad dash for physical gold underway and the last thing the US wants to do is let every other nation know that it is sitting with a tiny stack. The only way we're going to see the vaults is if they are filled with gold so that Trump can signal economic strength at a time when the world is rushing to hard assets.
This isn't to say that the gold was always there or that what we'll be shown is even actual gold. The point is that Trump will make sure the US is made stronger by this unveiling, not weaker.
Those who are hoping that we go to check the vaults to find them empty and bitcoin pumps as a result are a bit naive in my opinion. It is important that people show restraint and tact when it comes to the framing of the Fort Knox audit as it pertains to bitcoin. Instead of going for the lowest common denominator bitcoin plug - the gold isn't there which is proof that people can't trust the government to secure your hard assets therefore there will be a rush to bitcoin - the frame should highlight the root problem of the Fort Knox mystery, limit the downside narrative hit for bitcoin if the gold is there and maximize the narrative upside if it isn't there.
The root of the Fort Knox mystery is that people question whether or not the gold is there because the vaults haven't been audited since the 1950s. Bitcoin solves this by making it trivial for anyone who is so motivated to audit the network at any point in time. The network of nodes audits the bitcoin supply and where it is held every ten minutes on average. Check.
Limiting the downside narrative hit means holding the frame around the auditability of the supply of gold. If the gold (or fake gold that people are made to believe is real gold) is in the vaults, then you have the ability to say, "This is a pleasant surprise. I'm happy that the nation actually has the gold it thinks it does. However, none of this would have been necessary if the government simply built up a strategic bitcoin reserve and publicly disclosed the addresses that people could monitor 24/7/365 from their own nodes to have the assurance that the government actually had the reserves the whole time. Are we even sure that's real gold? Was it assayed by an independent third party? Can we watch them assay every brick?"
Maximizing the narrative upside is holding the frame around verifiability, discovering the gold isn't actually in the vault and being able to say, "See! This is why bitcoin is superior to gold. If we were using bitcoin as a reserve and required the government to publicly disclose the addresses the country's bitcoin is held in we would have been able to discover that the government was misappropriating our hard money this whole time! Also, you can't trust any government's word when it comes to how much gold they hold so you should buy bitcoin! Others are coming to this realization in real time right now and coming to the same conclusion so you should buy bitcoin as quickly as possible because the price is going to rip!"
Framing; it's important. Frame things in a way that makes it so any outcome leads to a win.
In our latest episode, Peruvian Bull laid out a compelling case for using gold market stress as a leading indicator for Bitcoin price movements. He explained that gold historically front-runs major waves of quantitative easing by 12-18 months, citing multiple cycles since 2005. The current unprecedented stress in gold markets - including vault draining, delivery delays at the Bank of England, and record COMEX deliveries - mirrors patterns seen before previous liquidity expansions.
"If you take the gold chart and push it forward to the price of Bitcoin, it foretells of a massive rise in Bitcoin price in the next six months or so." - Peruvian Bull
While I've observed gold's price movements correlating with Bitcoin since 2020, what's particularly interesting is Peruvian Bull's insight about Bitcoin's amplified sensitivity to liquidity changes. He estimates that for every dollar of net liquidity growth, gold might rise $1.50, while Bitcoin could jump $5 - a dramatic difference that could translate to significant upside if his gold market thesis plays out.
TLDR: Gold market stress historically precedes Bitcoin rallies; signs point up.
Check out the full podcast here for more on GameStop's potential Bitcoin strategy, Trump administration's fiscal policy impact, and the current state of institutional crypto adoption.
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