Paydirt Editor Doug Hornig is back with a compelling look at how gold is being re-monetized—and why he’s buying gold stocks now…

It’s April 17, and today I did something I haven’t done in a while. I bought some shares of stock in a gold mining company.

I’m not gonna tell you which one. That’s the boss’s job. It’s just the fact that I hit the Buy button that’s important. It means that I feel the bottom is in for gold and the miners that produce it.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no crystal ball (and if anyone tries to persuade you that they do, run in the opposite direction). As a longtime commodities investor, I simply try to make the best decisions I can, given the available information.

I’m well aware that the current truce in the Iran war is fragile. If it resumes, markets may well take another swan dive into an empty pool. Even best case, volatility is likely to be with us for a while longer. But there comes a time when it’s wise to set fear aside and adopt an optimistic view. For me that moment was today.

Paper Gold

No question that March was the cruelest month. It had many spooked investors scrambling for the exits in the PM sector. On 3/1, the gold price was at $5311/oz. By the 26^th, it had sunk to $4409, a steep 17% decline.

Doomsters are never in short supply, and plenty of market observers opined that gold’s bull run might be over.

I couldn’t disagree more. I submit that a year from now we may be wondering not that the gold price crashed as much, but that it crashed so little. The thing is, investor sentiment is not what is lashing this bull. No, it’s who is doing the buying, in what I call the global re-monetization of gold. That has been continuing quietly, behind the scenes. It never slowed, despite the sell-off.

One of the facts of modern, interconnected finance is that whenever the stock market drops significantly, gold tends to follow. For a while. What we think of as gold’s price—spot—is determined by the action in its futures market. That in turn depends on the wagers being placed by the individual investors, banks and funds who participate. These contracts create the daily fluctuations in the price of paper gold.

If the spot gold price is sinking, it just means there are more paper sellers than buyers, that’s all. The balance shifts to the Sell side because more speculators see a profit opportunity in shorting the market. They aren’t really selling gold, just jousting with players who are taking the Buy side. Nearly all of the action is in contracts settled at the end of the day—or the month, at most.

Sure, there are always people who are buying and selling physical metal (or its ETFs), Which can happen for any number of reasons. As stocks fall, some holders need to quickly raise cash to meet margin calls. Others may succumb to fear of heavier losses, especially in times of geopolitical jitters. Others may just want to book some profits they’ve been sitting on, and sense the time is right to diversify.

But what is going on in the background is the real determinant of the long-term trend. Which includes re-monetization. Failure to recognize that is like trying to solve your car’s starter problems without popping the hood.

Some Quick History on Re-monetization

At the end of World War II, the U.S. was the last man standing, largely due to the sacrifices Americans had made in order to defeat some formidable enemies. Washington was in a position to impose a new order across the globe. Which it did, including the establishment of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world.

Yet over the next 80 years, the most vibrant economy ever seen morphed into an empire of debt. The descendants of those who had accepted privation in the ’40s grew complacent, expecting the government to solve all their problems. That same government broke promises, continually devalued the currency, imposed sanctions, and froze or confiscated other countries’ assets. Concurrently, the feds have run up debt that approaches $40 trillion! That’s a number none of us can really comprehend—and it can never be paid back.

The U.S. has been able to maintain its monetary dominance during this fiscal debacle. But only because everyone else on the planet was forced to stockpile dollars (in the form of Treasuries) in order to engage in international trade.

Is it any wonder that other nations are increasingly saying enough is enough? Isn’t that what you’d do?

But they’re not shouting it. Very quietly, something new is taking shape.

A New Monetary System

It begins with the world’s central banks re-valuing gold. Not long ago, no one wanted it. For nearly three decades, banks had been net sellers. Then, after the great financial crisis of 2008, that changed dramatically. They became net buyers, especially from 2022 to 2024, when the world’s central banks added over 1,000 metric tonnes of gold to their stockpiles each year. The pace slackened a little in 2025, but remained well above historical averages.

Who’s buying? Cumulatively, from 2020 to 2025, these countries added:

• China: 357 tonnes (estimated)
• Poland: 315 tonnes
• Turkey: 252 tonnes
• India: 245 tonnes
• Brazil: 105 tonnes

And the World Gold Council reports that 76% of central banks plan to increase their gold holdings in 2026.

Please note something really important. These are not the momentum traders who play the futures market and are responsible for daily price gyrations. They are finance ministries and central banks making long-term reserve allocation decisions. They want to own physical gold, plan to keep it, and are willing to pay for it. Which means they provide a strong, ongoing level of price support.

Twilight of the Treasuries

Now consider what happened on Good Friday, April 3, 2026.

• On that day, for the first time in thirty years, global central bank gold reserves exceeded U.S. Treasury reserves in total valuation.

The banks now collectively hold approximately $4 trillion worth of gold vs. $3.9 trillion in Treasuries.

It’s a huge vote of no confidence. China, for example, held over $1 trillion in Treasuries in 2020. As of early 2026, that number was less than $700 billion. Over the same period, the People’s Bank of China has ramped up its use of gold as its reserve asset, adding some 350-450 tonnes to its stockpile (due to China’s opacity in reporting, exact numbers are impossible to come by, and could be much higher).

This didn’t make the evening news? It should’ve. It’s impossible to overstate what a massive tectonic shift it represents.

For decades, the 10-Year US Treasury bond served as the benchmark against which all other assets were compared. It was THE risk-free asset to hold. The value of every stock, every corporate bond, and every alternative investment was measured against it. If you wanted safety, and were averse to the risks of other assets, that’s where you went. When 10-Years yielded as little as 0.5% during the Covid hysteria, people still bought them. They were the safe-haven anchor of the entire global financial structure.

No longer. The status of ‘risk-free’ Treasuries is under siege.

Today, the 10-Year is yielding around 4.3%, which should attract plenty of buyers. But foreign banks and investment funds have soured on the USD. They fear how much inflation is eating away at it. They fear the consequences of $40 trillion in debt. They fear an unpredictable American government that seems politically unstable.

In the end, they are opting for the original safe haven, gold, despite that it yields nothing.

Gold is being re-monetized. Does this mean a return to some uniform financial system with a formal gold standard? No. Not now, probably not ever. But we have hints about its coming role.

Shadow Gold

Take Russia. The country has been hit by powerful sanctions, and largely cut out of the SWIFT system of international settlements. But it needs trade with China, and has developed a workaround that analysts sometimes call “shadow gold backing.”

Here’s how: Russia sells oil, gas and other commodities to China and accepts payment in yuan. It accumulates yuan balances in Chinese banks, which it uses to buy goods like machinery and electronics. When a trade imbalance develops, or if yuan liquidity becomes questionable, Russia can use the Shanghai Gold Exchange to convert yuan to gold that it then holds in reserve. Gold thus helps stabilize confidence in non-USD trade, for both parties, and mitigates Russia’s long-term risk of holding foreign currency.

Not strictly monetization, since gold is not the medium of exchange. Yet. But gold serves as a convertibility backstop, risk hedge, and long-term settlement layer. Call it partial gold re-monetization. Given the pace of gold buying by so many central banks, and the growing distrust of the USD, it seems safe to assume that such arrangements will only proliferate in the future.

A Major Player Emerges

Finally, any discussion of re-monetization would be incomplete without mentioning Tether.

Tether is a crypto giant that has become a gold trader of importance. Its primary product is USDT, a stablecoin that is the world’s most popular digital dollar, with 534 million users and more daily volume than Mastercard. And it has been using its enormous profits to buy gold, hand over fist, to the tune of 1-2 tonnes per week. At last count, on February 1, it held about 148 tonnes in a former nuclear bunker in Switzerland.

Exactly why they’re doing this is somewhat mysterious. According to an L. A. Times article, “relatively little is known about [Tether’s] inner workings, or its gold strategy.” All Chief Executive Paolo Ardoino will say is, “We are soon becoming basically one of the biggest, let’s say, gold central banks in the world.” He intends to maintain the pace of Tether’s gold buying, maybe even stepping it up.

Ardoino also predicts that Washington’s geopolitical rivals will eventually launch a gold-backed alternative to the dollar. Is this a sly suggestion that there is something similar in Tether’s plans? We’ll see. But it has already launched XAUT, a gold-backed token redeemable for a specific physical bar in a Swiss vault. It has issued the XAUT equivalent of about 16 tonnes of gold.

Tether’s bigtime purchases contributed to gold’s rally last year, and will continue to do so, according to analysts at Jefferies Financial Group. They describe Tether as a “significant new buyer,” which “could drive sustained gold demand.”

The company not only helps move the price, but intends to profit from it. Tether will become “the best trading floor for gold in the world,” Ardoino says. He’s unreservedly optimistic, yet turns coy when asked if he has a gold price target. “We have it,” he says. “But we’re not sharing it. You’d think we’re crazy.” Hmmm…

Whatever Tether is up to, it’s bullish for gold, like all else I’ve covered here.

Mining Shares

As gold was experiencing its March meltdown, those who produce it fared even worse. Over the same month, the bellwether GDX miners’ index fund plunged from $115/share to $82, a nasty 29% haircut.

Since then, gold is up about 6%, and the GDX has recovered by a stunning 20%. Keep in mind that the global average all-in sustaining cost to pull gold from the ground is around $1600/oz. So miners were still making plenty of bank at $4500 gold. Imagine the profits to come if J. P. Morgan’s analysts are on target with their prediction of $6300 gold by year’s end.

As noted, I believe the bottom is in, and that gold is reasserting its uptrend. In which case investors in the companies Jeff covers are going to do very, very well indeed. That’s why I’m buying gold stocks again.

In fact, Jeff and team are releasing a new gold stock pick this Thursday. It’s undervalued based on its current footprint, and has mine study on the way plus drilling to define more upside. And after a recent pullback it now has a very attractive entry point. Check out all the wins in the Paydirt Prospector here—now is the time to be long!