Red Metal Banter, page-450

Was introduced to RDM by Giovanni. Thanks, mate.

RDM's high-grade and potentially economic polymetallic tenements are quite appealing to an investor. It's even more so to me because I like gold and silver, and that red metal Cu. I'm still doing my due diligence on this company.

In the meantime I'll give some of my thoughts from a different but valid angle...

I used to hold gold and silver bullion as a form of wealth insurance because of the out-of-control public and private debt levels, and the untenable unending fiat currency printing. Eventhough precious metals are millenia-tested preservers and protectors of wealth, I have sold them all now after their prices doubled.

The risk of fiat currency collapse remains real. My unresolved concerns are that, should this scenario eventuate, there are other difficulties and risks in using precious metals bullion/coins/wafers for commercial transactions, including:

• Bulkiness and weight.
• Storage and transportability (esp. crossing international borders).
• Each bullion/coin/wafer is indivisible unless the owner is prepared to destroy its mintage quality and value by slicing it up.
• Risk of counterfeit gold and silver, requiring testing of each precious metal before accepting. That's time consuming and who pays for the test?
• Can the testkit or the professional tester be fully trusted to do a proper job? Could the test be negative but the gold/silver is authentic, and vice-versa?
• Certification is no proof of authenticity because the originals could have been counterfeited to be fraudulently used to accompany the certificates.

A thought for RDM and other shs: if fiat currency did collapse, how to buy and sell shares using precious metals?

Some crypto moonboys claim that cryptocurrencies could be backed by precious metals. Doesn't make sense, because crypto is meant to be trustless, decentralised, under no one's authority, and free from political interference, but to then turnaround and trust a centralised gold storage system and authority for value-add is self-defeating.

But probably half the world would still prefer to trust a centralised authority that they think they know well, like central banks, Fort Knox, JP Morgan, etc. So they might be more reassured by the following facts:

• Estimated 212,000 tons of gold produced over the entire history of gold mining, and the central banks hold 36,700 tons (17%) of that. Only 59,000 tons of reserves remaining. (Source: World Gold Council)
• JP Morgan holds 4.6M tons of silver bullion, being 45% of all silver bullion available in the world. (Source: Mint State Gold)
• Then there are the other players (still very big in comparison to retail investors) with their ETFs.

One would think that, as these rich and powerful entities have a lot of skin in precious metals holdings, they wouldn't pull the rug from under the retail investors. But retail investors didn't come down with the last showers, so they are aware of the following case:

"In October of 2009 China received a shipment of gold bars from the United States Department of the Treasury Bullion Depository in Fort Knox. The gold is regularly exchanged between countries to pay debts and to settle the balance of trade...Chinese officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. The gold shipment contained a tungsten core with a thin coating of real gold. These tested gold bars originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years." - CNBC.