Andy Schectman of Miles Franklin joined Andrew Maguire on Kinesis Money’s Live from the Vault to argue that the dollar’s reserve status is being dismantled through a combination of physical gold accumulation by sovereign and commercial players, record COMEX deliveries, and policy moves that allow the currency to lose value against gold without an official decree.
Schectman highlighted more than $81 billion in gold and nearly $18 billion in silver standing for delivery on COMEX so far this year across 24 consecutive months. He noted that the exchange was never designed for physical settlement and that such volumes have never occurred before. “No one has ever demanded delivery, my friend, ever,” he said.
He speculated that commercial banks and entities such as Tether may be acting as intermediaries, keeping metal on balance sheets so it does not leave the system and does not appear on official government accounts. “If it is the Treasury Department that is trying to keep its actions from the rest of the world by using commercial banks as proxies,” he observed, “they do not need congressional approval.”
Tether’s gold buying drew particular attention. Schectman stated that the stablecoin issuer purchased more gold than any other entity on the planet over the past two years except Poland, at one point equating to roughly the equivalent of a 1,400 ounce bar every hour for six consecutive months in late 2025. He connected this activity to the GENIUS Act, under which dollar stablecoins must be backed by short term Treasuries whose interest is non transferable. “What are you going to do? You will buy gold with it,” he said. “Why would you buy gold? Because this is how the dollar is devalued.”
Schectman framed the process as a deliberate but deniable strategy to weaken the dollar relative to gold, address the Triffin dilemma, and restore American manufacturing. He pointed to the presence of Judy Shelton, advocates of fiscal repression, and officials who have publicly discussed the costs of reserve currency status. “Why would any foreign government want to continue holding our Treasury bonds if we were going to publicly devalue the dollar?” he asked.
A formal decree setting gold at an extreme level would create global problems, he argued, whereas allowing the price to rise organically through money movements and intermediary buying achieves a similar result more gradually. “Let gold ascend to the moon through the movement of money artificially, but organically,” he said. “The only way to do that, in my opinion, as my mentor Richard Russell said, is you inflate or default, period.”
Silver received special emphasis as the most undervalued asset in the current environment. Schectman and Maguire discussed ongoing physical demand, the inability to hide large paper sales in silver the way they can in gold, and the classification of silver as a vital mineral. They also addressed the case for holding metal outside the banking system, noting that the next crisis will not resemble 2008 and that open interest in paper markets has already contracted sharply as participants move toward physical.
Schectman closed by acknowledging the speculative nature of parts of the thesis. “I know all this sounds crazy, Andrew. But deep down, I believe there is a great deal of truth in this. And I want everyone to know that this is just my theory. I have no proof,” he said. “None of this makes sense to me anymore. None of it. The volume of deliveries we see, and a company like Tether buying more gold than any other entity on the planet, none of this makes sense to me unless there is something bigger.”
Maguire described the discussion as pure gold and agreed that the coincidences are too numerous to ignore. Both men stressed that the window for ordinary investors to acquire physical metal is closing faster than most people realize.
