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June 2, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
59:27
Chris Olson joins Mike Adams to talk about honest gold pricing, secure storage...
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Welcome to today's interview here on Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.
And as you know, for all these years, I've been a strong advocate of real money, which is in the form of precious metals, of course.
And those of you who have stacked gold and silver over the years have been very happy with how the value has held in those metals, especially compared to the dollar, which continues to collapse in value.
And over all those years, my key partner, and we are an affiliate partner, Well, they have a major announcement right now.
They're launching a new website, a new brand, and they've got a very powerful philosophy behind it of honest pricing.
In this day when there's so much bait and switch going on and a lot of nefarious activities in the gold market, which we're probably going to get into, you need to know where you can get trusted, honest pricing to get gold into your hands or gold that's vaulted for you in a trusted, insured vault.
So joining us today is Chris Olson.
He's the president of Treasure Island and now with Battalion Metals, which is their new venture.
And welcome, Chris.
It's great to have you on the show today.
Thanks, Mike.
Thanks for having me.
It's good to have you here.
This is a pretty exciting announcement.
The website, I've got it up.
It's battalionmetals.com.
And I want to remind people that battalion is spelled with two T's, by the way.
So tell us about Battalion Metals.
What is this all about?
Why are you launching a new site, a new name?
Yeah, well, it's been a long time coming.
We've been thinking about this for many years.
We really got to work on it in the last year, year and a half.
Really, it's more than just a rebranding of what Treasure Island is.
It's the next stage in the Treasure Island story.
We're witnessing an evolution of where we want to go as a company.
This represents a new strategic partnership between us and a group of what I would call Patriotic Americans who want to raise the standards, raise the bar of the precious metals industry.
Well, okay.
I'm definitely one of those patriotic Americans.
But when you say you want to raise the bar, can you speak to...
There are some bait-and-switch tactics going on.
Some people have lost a lot of money by going with the wrong gold provider.
Can you talk about that and how Battalion Metals is the antithesis?
Yeah, and there's a lot of that out there.
And the existence of that type of activity in the industry is what motivated my new partners and I to come together to build this brand.
And we've been in this business for nearly five decades, my family and I. We've sold and delivered over $6 billion of precious metals.
And we have watched firsthand how many companies in this space have completely lost their way or never really had their way to begin with.
There are companies out there who trick Americans into buying metals at rates that are far and away above the fair market price, usually retired people looking to hedge their life savings against what's coming with the dollar.
People who can least afford to be conned at this stage in their life.
And so Battalion was conceived of by myself and our partners, again a group of what I would call very patriotic Americans, as a company to deliver and to continue delivering, as Treasure Island has, but to raise the bar on how we do it.
To continue to deliver precious metals at truly competitive market-based rates using the best and latest technology.
Implementing all of the best practices that we can conceive of to make the process friendly and easy to navigate and to educate our customers as to the true cost of owning precious metals.
The companies that we're responding to, in part, now there are many good companies out there in this industry.
They're not all bad, but there are some very prominent, very loud people They might buy many of them.
And they will target people with money in IRAs who are interested in gold.
And they will sell them gold and silver at 100% markups.
What?
Sometimes higher.
Yes.
Even though it's the same one-ounce coins?
Or what is it?
Do they use weird sizes?
Yeah, they use weird sizes.
They use weird exclusive issues.
So it's like oddball stuff that if you do a Google search for a particular type of gold coin, you're probably not going to find that coin anywhere else except maybe one or two of these sites.
And sometimes it's weird weights where you might have a 1.5 ounce silver coin or a 2 ounce silver coin.
But it's almost never the standard bullion coins like a gold eagle or a gold maple or a Krugerrand.
And they will sell...
And gold was about $1,700 at the time.
And they sold him gold at over $3,000 per ounce at that time.
One spot was about $1,700.
They sold him silver, which was about $27 spot at that time.
They sold him silver for over $70 per ounce.
And this guy spent half a million dollars, all retirement money, and he was instantly out over half of it.
Wow.
And that story has been repeated over and over and over with so many people across this country for a very long time now.
And we would like to see it stop.
Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot.
I want you to walk me through this to my crew, if you can show my screen.
So right now, I'm on your website, battalionmetals.com, and I see you've got gold pricing here.
So here's gold today.
The spot is $3,322.
So I don't know if you want to use that or round it down to $3,300, but can you walk us through, for our audience, if spot is $3,300?
What's going to be the premium for the coin?
What's going to be the markup, etc.?
What are they actually paying to get a one-ounce maple or a one-ounce Krugerrand gold coin in their hand if spot is this price today?
Walk us through that, please.
So, you know, say spot is $3,300.
For any type of gold coin, you should be expecting to pay a premium of You know, somewhere between 3% to 5% over spot.
Let's take an example like a one-ounce gold maple wheat.
Right now, you could get them as low as $3,400.
Let's say if you were buying the highest tier in bulk.
So $3,400 is about 2.25%.
Over the spot price.
How many coins would you have to buy to get that low of a premium?
In that case, you're looking at, oh, I'd say about 100 or more.
Okay.
But the premium's not that much higher for small quantity.
Let's say you were just buying like two or three.
On our website right now, you'd be paying $34.35.
Okay.
So that's a premium of about 3.3%.
Wow.
Okay.
So that premium, I mean, are there any other charges that Battalion Metals adds on to that other than just shipping?
Yeah, there's shipping and insurance.
So the way that we're doing this, we're trying to break out as many of the charges as possible to make things as transparent as possible.
So one component of that will be the shipping charge.
There's another component, which is a very nominal insurance charge, which is about a tenth of one percent.
So, you know, on a few coins, if you're spending, say, $5,000, that amounts to about $5.
It's a very nominal fee.
It's slightly higher if you're buying in bulk.
And that type of fee is actually the kind of thing that you can avoid if you are having the metal transferred into a depository, in which case we're going to waive that insurance fee.
But beyond that.
You can see exactly what you're paying per ounce, any other additional fees, which is just going to be shipping or insurance, potentially sales tax, depending on your location, but there's only four or five states left that even charge sales tax.
They're disappearing rapidly, and that's it.
Let me mention, too.
Since we have an affiliate relationship, our audience can also waive the insurance fee by using the code Ranger at checkout.
That's right.
That's how you know that it's from our audience, and then we would earn some fraction of a fraction of something, maybe.
I don't even know what that is, but we would get some kind of small credit for that to help support our infrastructure, but at no additional cost to the customer.
So that's really important to disclose.
Yeah, that share is baked into our very small spread.
And like I was saying, you know, you're looking at two and a quarter to three and a quarter percent on a maple leaf.
And now our bid on that right now, if we're using, say, 3325 as spot, the bid on that particular coin is 3300.
Oh, wow.
So the spread is very tight.
It's about a 3% to a 4% spread on that particular coin.
And that's the key variable that everybody needs to understand about any particular precious metal product that they buy.
Knowing the premium is one thing, but the really important number to understand the true cost of ownership is what is the spread.
If I buy it from you today, And gold doesn't change.
And a week later, I need to sell it back.
What are you going to pay me?
Absolutely.
What's the in and out cost?
That was my next question.
And I want the audience to understand how liquid gold and silver are.
One of the questions I get from people who are new to precious metals is, well, how do I sell it if I need to sell it?
And I'm like, are you kidding me?
everybody buys gold and silver.
I mean, The question is, how much are they going to give you for it?
Which is what you're talking about, the spread.
So you just said 3 or 4% is pretty typical.
Using the same number, the 3,300, you were just talking about a maple that you would sell for what, what did you say?
3,300 and, I'm sorry, 3,415.
What did you say?
Yeah, it was 3,400.
On one through five or 34 and a quarter.
Yeah, between 3,400 and like say 34, 35 is roughly where it is right now on a maple.
So then if a person wants to sell that coin back to you, obviously there's transactional overhead.
There's risk on your part buying metals because you have to conduct assays and tests so that you don't get counterfeited by scammers, etc.
So there's obviously overhead.
If someone sells you back that same coin or 10 of those coins, what would you pay for them?
Yep.
So in that case, like if the price is the same today, we'd be paying $3,300 per coin.
So, okay.
So you're buying them at spot.
In this case, yeah, this is slightly back of spot.
So we're basing this at 33.25 gold right now.
Oh, okay, okay.
So you're buying the coins back at slightly under spot in this case.
And when you sell them, it's like 3% or 4% over spot.
Yeah, in this case, it's actually under 4%.
Under 4%.
Yep.
Two and a half to three and a half percent over spot.
So all in, your spread is like three to four and a half percent, depending on the size of the deal.
Okay.
Let me put this out there on the record.
That is a very thin spread, and it demonstrates...
But, Chris, you may be aware of this because I've said this publicly, but a couple years ago I was contacted by one of your competitors that wanted to pay me $100,000 a month to promote their scheme, and their spreads are 6% to 8%.
And that's how they can afford to pay so much.
And, of course, I said, no thank you.
It depends on who the actor is.
Some of them, the spreads are far, far higher than 8%.
And 6% to 8%, that's excusable.
I mean, that's livable.
Some people are not as competitive as we are, and that's okay.
There's still a certain level of honesty in at least being transparent about your pricing, as long as your client understands exactly what they're getting into.
The problem that we see in the industry, the real problem, It's not the people that are charging a 7% spread or a 10% spread, but we're talking a 50% spread, 75, 100.
Wow.
We've seen it many times.
And that's what we really want to educate people about with this new brand and with our new partners.
And we're going to have a lot more to say about that in the coming months.
Are you going to be able to show, I mean, are you going to...
I'm wondering, are you going to feature some stories that are true stories of people that got burned and then became educated?
I mean, maybe I'm asking, how can people protect themselves, really?
Well, we are working on an investigation, and we will be telling some stories.
I'm not sure when that will be ready.
It's still a work in progress, so we don't have a timeline.
As far as how can people protect themselves, they really just have to understand that when you call a company up and say, I want to buy $100,000 worth of gold, what they sell you might not be $100,000 worth of gold.
They might take your $100,000 and give you gold, but the gold that you have, you may not be able to liquidate for more than $50,000 or $60,000 on the free market.
Right, exactly.
So it's all about asking those questions.
What is the spread?
And it's important that before you wire the money, to look at the bottom line, how many ounces am I getting, and how much am I paying?
And just use a calculator.
How much am I paying per ounce?
That's key.
You want to know what you're paying per ounce, but you also want to make sure that the product that you're buying is well-recognized.
True, true.
Part of what we've decided to do, because this mission, this evolution in the Treasure Island brand, we're not looking to get rich with this.
We are not motivated by that.
Obviously, we want to make money.
We need to make money.
We want to pay our people well.
But myself and the partners who are involved with me, that's not our primary motivator.
And so to that end, we want to educate.
Our customers and we want to offer them a selection of products that are curated to specific standards before we even offer them.
So what we're doing is we're offering a core selection of products rather than hundreds or thousands of confusing options with prices all over the place without any rhyme or reason and it's all confusing.
We have three core attributes that we believe are absolutely essential.
The first attribute is superior liquidity.
We only carry products that have well-established markets that can be easily sold when you need to liquidate them anywhere in the United States.
There's no point in owning precious metals if you can't convert it back to cash efficiently when you need to.
And so the products in our catalog have been selected because they will maintain that strong demand and be readily sold to dealers anywhere.
And so the second component to that is high recognition.
We are focusing exclusively on products from respected mints and refiners that are instantly recognizable.
So government-minted sovereign coins like the Gold Eagle, Canadian Maples, Krugerrands, and the standard bread-and-butter bullion products.
And staying very focused.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but let's just go through that list because when I've purchased metals over the years, I've purchased kangaroos or Perth or buffaloes or Britannias.
I've purchased Krugerrands.
purchased maple leafs and eagles, but what are the six or seven top mints I think in Japan, isn't it called Asahi?
Or who is that in Japan?
Yeah, Asahi.
That's a very well-known brand.
So what are the top ones?
The top mints are going to be the U.S. Mint, for one.
The Royal Canadian Mint.
You're going to have PAMP, Suisse, and Switzerland.
But I'm sorry, but let's...
When you name the mint, name the coin.
Oh, sure.
U.S. Mint, Eagles, Canadian Mint, Maple Leafs, etc.
Just so everybody's got the terminology.
Yeah, so United States Mint, you've got the American Gold Eagle, Silver Eagle, you have the Gold Buffalo.
You have the Royal Canadian Mint, RCM, which is huge in North America, one of the best mints in the world.
They make the Canadian gold and silver maple leaf, also platinum and palladium.
They make gold and silver bars as well.
Perth Mint is a huge name.
They make the kangaroos, the kookaburros.
We have the Royal Mint in the UK, which makes and mints the gold and silver Britannias.
Austrian Mint.
With the Philharmonic, gold and silver Philharmonics.
And then we have other private mints like Pamp Suisse, which is a private refiner out of Switzerland.
So there's a number of good mints out there.
South Africa?
Yeah, South Africa, the Rand Refinery in South Africa, they make bars as well as the Krugerrand, which is the It was actually in the 1960s.
It was the only gold bullion coin that you could buy at the time because no other government was minting them and we were still in a situation where gold had been basically banned for private use.
You couldn't own gold bullion coins or bars starting in 1933 because they were trying to prop up the failing paper dollar.
And it increased the purchasing power of the U.S. Treasury at the expense of the people.
So, yeah, at that time in the 1960s, that was the only gold coin that you could buy.
And so it became kind of the granddaddy of all the gold bullion coins, and it's still around today.
So if I'm a customer and I've got a mix of these mint coins that you just mentioned, and they're all like one ounce coins, gold or silver, what have you, Is it true that any precious metals dealer would instantly recognize all those coins?
They all have liquidity.
The question is just how much is a buyer going to pay for each one, just depending on the buyer you connect with.
But those are all universal, highly liquid mints, correct?
Exactly.
Yep.
Okay.
And if someone takes coins like that to a local dealer, you know, the guy in town that's got a gold shop, Let's take that $33.22 spot for a maple leaf, one ounce gold coin.
What is a local dealer likely to offer to buy that?
Or a pawn shop, God forbid.
If you really want to get less money, go to a pawn shop.
What are they likely to be offered for that?
Well, at a pawn shop, They're going to look at it at figure probably 5% under spot or worse is what they'll offer you.
So if gold is 33.25 today, they might look at your coin and say, I'll give you 31.50.
That's what you'll see in a pawn shop typically.
A respected bullion dealer in a good coin shop that has a good reputation.
They're going to offer something really close to what we're going to offer.
It might be a percent or two underneath it because they've got to make money and they're going to offer you cash on the spot and you're going to have the convenience of not shipping it in that scenario.
So you're going to be in a spot where they're going to be maybe 1% or 2% under our bid.
But again, the goal behind selling highly liquid products is to be That if you do walk into a coin shop, you're going to have a coin that that dealer might be willing to keep on his shelf, keep in his inventory.
He's not going to liquidate it.
He's not going to melt it.
He's not going to need to get rid of it because if it's a highly liquid product that's in high demand throughout the United States, he knows that he should be able to sell it within the next five days, probably.
If it's some oddball coin that maybe you got for a good deal, But nobody knows what it is and nobody wants it.
They're coming in to ask for the Eagles and the Maples and the Krugerrands and you've got some oddball coin.
He's probably going to bid way under spot because he's going to have to flip it, possibly melt it because it doesn't have the depth of market.
There's not enough liquidity.
There's not enough demand in the market for that particular unrecognizable coin.
Right.
Right.
And then, of course, melting it.
Is a huge pain.
You have to send it to whoever does that, but you need more than one coin to do melting.
So that's very expensive.
You're going to lose a lot of value in that process.
Several percent is going to come right off the top just to get the job done.
Got it.
And it takes time.
Yep.
Okay.
One more question, and I apologize for asking so many technical questions, but this is what I've been asked by some of our customers.
There's a concern about how do I ship coins back to you if I want to sell them to you?
And we agree on a price.
How do I ship them back in a way that's insured but isn't crazy expensive for the insurance?
How does that work?
Yeah, there is no good way for people to do that on their own.
It's very difficult.
The only way that's readily accessible to the average American is USPS registered mail.
Which has an insurance limit of, I believe, $50,000 per package.
It's very expensive and it's very slow.
If you sent a $50,000 package, it's probably going to cost in the neighborhood of, I don't know, $75.
Not exactly certain.
I haven't looked at those prices in a while, but it's expensive and it's slow.
cumbersome we do offer a service here through our depository where we will
So having metal in your possession is great, but if you need to liquidate large amounts or you need to get it back to us, there's going to be costs that have to be covered in order to make that happen.
It's doable.
We help people do that.
It is costly and time-consuming.
The other option is keeping it in a depository.
So we have our own Dakota Depository here in Fargo, and we're also going to be launching soon a division of Battalion Metals, which we're calling Battalion Bunker.
Oh, wow.
And this is a network of premium precious metal vaults across the United States.
We will provide you with a one-stop point of contact with us where we can open accounts for you in multiple locations, and we deal with all the logistics, and we talk to the vault operators, and each one of these vaults is selected for liquidity and operational efficiency so that if we have large amounts of clients with huge positions,
we want there to be efficiency In liquidation.
If we have tens of millions of dollars of redemptions that come in in a particular week, that metal needs to be in a location where there's enough depth of market to support a good bid on that product without a lot of cost.
So we have some key elements that go into deciding what vaults we're going to use.
And so it has to be able to do that.
It has to be able to deliver the product to the client if they want to take physical delivery.
We need to be able to ship it out to them at any point in time.
And this service will have full independent auditing.
All of those reports will be available to the clients.
And also secondary all-risk insurance coverage, which is something that you can't get directly from a primary vault operator.
Most primary vaults have their own policy through Lloyd's of London, typically, that covers the property.
But there are certain exclusions to those policies, namely theft by officer or some kind of collusion or corruption internally, like if there's a scheme or some kind of gap.
A good example of this was Republic Metals, where $100 million went missing with that company.
It was about seven, eight years ago.
A lot of people got stung by that bankruptcy, and they were a huge refiner and a huge operator in the industry.
But that type of loss from their bankruptcy was not covered by their insurance.
Oh, wow.
But we have contracted with an insurance provider that adds a secondary layer of insurance to that who actually did cover claims for Republic's bankruptcy.
I think they had a $5 million claim was their biggest claim.
And so it adds that layer of protection that you can't get directly from a vault operator having that secondary level, that secondary layer of insurance.
So that's another service that is built into, bundled into the service that we're offering through Battalion Bunker, which is coming soon.
It's not ready yet.
We're hoping to launch that product in probably six to eight weeks.
All right, this is important for people to understand about how to store metals.
In a almost entirely risk-free way.
But let me remind those of you watching, if you want to get medals from BattalionMetals.com, use our discount code.
It's Ranger.
You can just enter that at checkout, and then you won't have to pay any of the insurance.
That's going to be waived.
But the prices are still these great value prices.
You're not charged any extra, obviously, by using our affiliate code.
But when it comes to storing medals, It's critical to understand.
I've said that sometimes people say, well, I want to put it in a safe deposit box in a bank.
And I say, oh, whoa, whoa, wait, wait a second.
You should really think about that because we know that banks go under all the time.
There are bank bail-ins.
And we've also seen cases where the FBI would go in and they would seize the safe deposit boxes of everybody at one given bank because they suspected That there were a few criminals using the safe deposit boxes.
That's a famous case, actually, fairly recent.
The FBI just seized everything.
So banks are subject to federal regulation as banking institutions.
And that places your assets there, in my opinion, at higher risk.
So can you talk to us, Chris, about the benefits of a private vault with the private, you mentioned Lloyd's of London Insurance.
But a private vault that's not on the federal banking grid control system.
Yeah, one of the benefits is that it's not a financial institution.
Gold is not technically a financial instrument.
It's not technically a currency within the eyes of the law.
So that's one of the reasons that we can buy and sell and ship and move gold and silver around.
Without having to have a money transmitter license, like you would have to be removing cash around.
It's technically, in the eyes of the IRS and the regulators, it's not money.
It's personal property.
They treat it no differently than if you had a block of aluminum or you had a couple tons of coffee beans.
It's just a raw commodity that's held as personal property.
It's not a financial instrument and it's not being held in a financial institution.
So it's essentially off the books in a sense.
Like if you had gold in a depository, one of the drawbacks to owning gold that people will run into sometimes is that you can't use it as collateral.
Against a loan with a bank.
You can't use it as evidence of net worth.
You can in some cases, but it's difficult because it's not a standardized asset that's trackable and controllable within the financial system.
So some people think it's a bug.
I call it a feature.
It's wealth that's outside of the financial system.
And so private precious metal depositories then are just Operating on a bailment relationship with you, the bailee, who owns personal property.
And it's really no different than if you were asking me to store aluminum for you or steel or, say, a collectible car or some valuable artwork and just keep it dry, keep it safe, make sure that it doesn't get eaten by rats.
It suffers some kind of environmental damage.
It's not a financial asset at the end of the day.
So it's not regulated as such.
Okay, and so I think that's good news because it also means it's very difficult for the United States government to try to confiscate physical metals.
That's the other, you know, sometimes I hear concerns from people, well, they're just going to take it.
Well, how are they just going to take it?
They don't have a physical means to take it.
I mean, if the government wants to mess with anything, they're going to mess with your bank account balances because that's easy.
That's digital.
That's done with a mouse click.
You know what I mean?
What are your thoughts on that?
Or they'll start with the ETFs.
If they wanted to do something like that, yeah, go after the big regulated financialized sources of precious metals, where the biggest pots of gold really are, and it's going to be the ETFs, that type of thing.
Gold is, I call it the original cryptocurrency.
Once you have it, no one knows that you have it.
Nobody knows where you put it.
Nobody knows what you've done with it.
And it's not their business.
It's your business entirely.
Unlike, say, Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin in particular.
It's totally public by nature.
That's part of how it functions is that there's a ledger that's public where everyone can see every transaction and the contents of every wallet and it's totally wide open.
So while it is cryptographically secure, if your wallet ID is ever tied to you as a legal person, as an individual, then all the transactions you've ever done that have ever been associated with that wallet are now known to have occurred.
Probably by you.
And what you do with your Bitcoin is not private in that scenario.
So that's why I call gold the original cryptocurrency.
It has all the properties that you need, especially privacy.
Well, that's really interesting, too.
Of course, most people buy Bitcoin using KYC, so their identity is instantly tied to their wallet the moment they transfer to self-custody.
It's already tagged with who they are, so they have zero privacy with Bitcoin.
But with gold, like you said, once you take physical possession, it's yours.
Nobody knows what you have done with it.
But back to vaulting for a second, I want you to answer this question because there's a difference between allocated gold and silver in a vault that is here's a stack that's yours, it's got your name on it, versus unallocated sort of virtual gold and silver that's part of a pool that may or may not exist
And talk about that, because people get put off by storage fees, especially for silver, because the fees are high compared to the total value, because silver is big and bulky compared to gold.
But some people say, well, I'm going to go with unallocated silver, because the storage fees are a lot less.
Why is that?
I mean, explain the difference.
Well, so there are really three types of positions you can have with precious metals.
There's unallocated, allocated, and segregated.
Unallocated is a position where some counterparty owes you gold or silver, but you don't technically have title to any portion of any gold.
It's more of a liability on some company's balance sheet.
That's typically the way a derivative is going to work.
And so if you buy into that position, it could be very liquid, and it could be tied to the price of gold, but it's going to be directly linked to the financial health of the company that's issuing that unallocated position to you.
Allocated is where you own particular coins or bars of a particular type.
Let's say you have 5,000 Silver Eagles and you're storing at a depository where you have allocated storage, which is going to be the cheapest type of storage, like true storage.
Unallocated is not even storage.
It's an IOU.
Allocated storage is real storage, where you have 5,000 Silver Eagles out of, say,
And so when you have allocated storage, it's important that there are regular audits to go and look at the books of that depository, see what they list as being held on behalf of clients, make sure that it matches what's actually being held.
That's the most efficient way to store.
So you can have all 100,000 Silver Eagles easily stacked and organized in one particular place.
And then you just have very good accounting and very good auditing.
And then the next most secure type of storage, but also the most costly type of storage is going to be fully segregated, where you could say, put your fingerprint on one of your silver or gold coins, and when you withdraw that gold coin 10 years
the future you'll find the same fingerprint because it's always been specifically allocated to you but that's a lot less efficient and so there's higher costs involved with fully segregated storage because of the the way that you have to physically organize it right so battalion bunker will will offer both types of storage you'll have allocated options which Are fully audited, where we will show our published position.
So we'll actually disclose how many gold eagles, how many silver eagles does Battalion Bunker have at this location.
And the auditors will take that list and make sure that what is present in that depository matches what's on the list.
And then they'll also make sure that what's in that depository is also real.
They'll look at it, they'll test it, and do everything that you would do in a standard audit to ensure that it's there and that it is the actual product.
And then also we will offer a segregated option, which has a higher monthly fee, where you can have your particular coins or bars literally put in a bag or a box or some kind of a physical segregation where it's always tied to you directly as the owner.
And it's not treated fungibly.
It's treated as a totally separate alien from the rest of the holdings.
So you put your fingerprint on any of those coins, that fingerprint will always be on those coins whenever you come back to get them.
So we will have both options.
One will be a little bit more expensive.
Okay, got it.
So that's great to know.
And then in either of those cases, when someone is storing with Battalion Bunker, Then they can, on any given day, they can say, I want to sell it back to you.
Exactly.
Obviously they don't have to ship it back because it's already there, but you might have to ship it from one depository to another.
I'm not sure how that works, but bottom line is it's very liquid very quickly and easily from that location, correct?
Exactly.
Yep.
And that's one of the things we're working on is an online component to that so that the Customer can log in, see their holdings, see the transactions, see the current liquidation values, and even execute a trade where they can sell it back to us should they need to.
Or if they want to buy and add to it, they'll be able to do that right online.
And it's going to be quick and easy.
You know, it's interesting.
Thank you for answering all my technical questions, by the way.
I'm not trying to be a pest about it, but these are the kinds of things that customers ask.
I have never sold metals for fiat ever in my life.
And I started buying gold in, I think it was 1992 or something like that.
I forgot the exact year, something like that.
But I was paying below $300 an ounce, so that's an indication for gold.
And so I've always just accumulated, and I use your vault.
But I also have some physical possession, etc.
But I can't imagine ever selling metals for the current fiat dollars, although I can definitely see a situation in the future if there's a breakup of the United States, if there's secession.
There could be states like Texas that offer their own new currency that might be partially gold backed.
And I could absolutely see cases of like selling metals to get the new Texas currency.
I mean, I'm sure these these ideas have occurred to many of your customers as well, right?
Yeah, exactly.
It's not immediately clear how that will work in the future, but we know that it will work.
The need isn't there just yet.
But like I always say, necessity is the mother of invention.
We'll figure it out when the time comes.
We definitely will.
We've got a lot of smart people in this country, and more and more people are looking to gold and silver to be the risk-free asset that they use to protect their wealth, kind of like the rest of the world and all the central banks of the world, as we see this de-dollarization trend and this global vault network that China's working on now, which I was just reading some very interesting information.
It's all being operated by the Shanghai Gold Exchange to create liquidity for the RMB and oil.
Everybody is preparing for a world in which monetary transactions can no longer be denominated strictly in fiat dollars.
That's an experiment that was fun for some people, and they got away with a lot, but it's coming to an end.
They've looted the world for generations, but I want to explain to the audience why what you mentioned, all these gold vaults.
Run by the Shanghai Exchange all over the world.
Why this is important?
Because under BRICS settlements, there can be national currencies changing hands for commodities, for oil, food, rice, whatever.
But where there's an imbalance, where one country is accumulating too much currency, guess how they're going to settle the imbalance?
With physical gold.
But they don't want to actually have to ship that physical gold every time they have an imbalance.
So they're just going to change who owns it in the vaults that are already pre-positioned, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, if you have access, you could instantaneously convert your position from whatever national currency to gold right there through the exchange and vice versa.
If you're selling oil and you're collecting renminbi.
And you've got too much.
You want to turn it back into gold.
You turn it back into gold.
Maybe you turn it back into whatever other currency.
You go back into oil.
The idea is to provide liquidity into gold, efficient liquidity from any particular currency.
And that's really at the heart of kind of the de-dollarization project is to create this sovereign risk-free reserve asset that's neutral.
And it used to be U.S. Treasuries.
But they were politicized.
And now you see yields rising and the dollar dropping.
And Japan selling, China selling, everybody's selling treasuries.
And they're not buying them.
Yeah, they're net sellers.
And look what's happening to gold.
It's a great reorganization at a global scale as everybody is preparing the deck chairs for the end of the music and getting into place.
Well, I'm a strong advocate of people owning gold and silver for this very reason, because it's the bridge asset that will allow you, it's the life raft out of the sinking Titanic of this current dollar-fiat disaster, which is sort of setting itself on fire.
But gold and silver, I believe, it'll be your lifeboat to get to the next system, whatever that system happens to be.
And by the way, probably that system, the next system, will be at least partially backed by gold.
I don't want to throw out numbers because I've heard a lot of people, Jim Rickards and others, that will say, oh, well, if we were to re-monetize the currency in gold, it would be this number, and it's like this crazy high number.
I don't know that that's the way it's going to work, but I do know that metals hold value, and we're seeing it.
Look, since 2022, gold was under $2,000 an ounce, wasn't it, in 2022?
Oh, yeah.
I'm having a hard time even remembering that it was that low.
In just three years, it has gone up roughly 50% in dollar denomination.
And silver is probably, I believe silver is poised to possibly follow in that same track, but it's the dollars that are losing value, folks.
Gold and silver are just holding value.
They're the best holding strategy, in my view.
You mentioned all this auditing, Chris, that happens at the vaults, battalion bunker.
How come our own federal government will never subject its own gold to that kind of audit?
Well, it's the Wizard of Oz.
The man behind the curtain should not be exposed.
So I think the dollar is not exactly what the rest of the world has thought it is.
A lot of bang, a lot of noise, but the reality behind it is it doesn't have the assets backing it.
That it seems to, let's say.
It's probably incredibly overvalued.
And that's what the rest of this decade is going to be all about, is finding what is the true value of gold and the true value of the dollar in relation to gold.
And that's likely why Donald and Elon were Very vocal about auditing Fort Knox until end of March, beginning of April, and poof, they just went quiet.
I noticed that.
What happened?
Yeah.
What happened?
Radio silence.
I think maybe they were told, listen, guys, shut up while we try to get that gold back.
If you keep talking and the word gets out, gold's going to spike up to too much money, and it's going to cost us that much more to get the gold back.
So we have to try to slowly work it back in while we can.
You don't want to yell fire in a crowded theater.
But Chris, even if they get the physical gold into Fort Knox, as you well know, gold is stored in many other locations, you know, Federal Reserve locations, New York, wherever.
But even if the gold is physically there, even if Elon Musk walks in with a camera and live streams, look at all the gold, doesn't mean that we own it.
It could already be allocated to somebody else.
It could be borrowed gold.
Yeah, but as Rickards has pointed out in some of his work, possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Well, but if that's what it comes down to, if the government is going to say, it's ours, suckers, you know, your contract is null and void, we got your gold, that means that the U.S. will be defaulting on its obligations.
Seems like we've maybe done that before, though.
Yeah, recurring theme.
Well, we're just going to call this the decade of default, probably, by the time it's over.
In the meantime, Chris, congratulations on launching BattalionMetals.com.
It's a great-looking site.
I love your philosophy.
We believe in fair pricing, like you have on your site there, honest assessment of what's the spot price, what's the premium, what's the shipping, etc.
And folks, use discount code Ranger, well, affiliate code Ranger, And it waives the insurance fee off of your orders.
It's just Ranger, lowercase Ranger.
Is there anything else you want to add, Chris, before we wrap this up?
Well, it's early days.
We just launched this past Tuesday.
So, Tuesday the 27th.
And it's still a work in progress.
There's a lot more to come.
We're still working out some bugs and kinks, so please We love your feedback.
We want to hear from you.
If there's something you don't like or something you wish we had, reach out to us.
Our support contact is right there on the website.
We read every single report request.
We try to respond to all of them.
It's the same team.
Everybody that anyone's ever worked with here at Treasure Island is still on staff.
We've actually, And we're looking forward to it.
It's a bright new chapter in our history, Treasure Island Coins, now Battalion Metals.
And we look forward to continuing to serve all of you now and into the future.
Well, that's really great to hear.
and I look forward to working with you on this and helping people protect their assets.
Be sure to forward metalswithmike.com to...
Oh, is it done?
Oh, that's awesome.
Okay.
Yeah, because that's the website that I give out for people.
And then what happens if people go to the Treasure Island Coins, the old Treasure Island site?
Yeah, good question.
So if you go to the old Treasure Island Coins website, it will take you to Battalion Metals to a special page that...
And we have a list of frequently asked questions at the bottom that talk more about what we're doing.
There's also a link on that page that can take you back to your account access page at the treasureislandcoins.com website.
So if you want to get your order history or check on the status of a recent order that you might have placed in the last couple of weeks.
All of that information will be accessible through that link just down in the FAQs.
How do you access your Treasure Island account?
We'll keep that link and that access live through the end of August, at which time that will be taken down.
But all of those records are available upon request.
If anyone needs that, we can get that to you in the future.
Okay, that's great.
The reason I love working with you over all these years is because you treat our customers with dignity, with respect, with honesty, really help them resolve any questions or issues or getting records or whatever they need.
Customer service is where it's really at, as far as I'm concerned, in this business.
I understand you're in this for the long haul, long term customer satisfaction.
Is your goal not like a quick sleight of hand, make a bunch of money off somebody and then No, that's not a business model.
That's a con.
No, we want to treat people like people.
We're a people-centric business.
We've been here for almost 50 years.
It's a lot of family members work here.
It's truly a family-owned and operated company.
And we want to be around for a long time.
We're a people-focused company.
We've been here for almost 50 years.
It's truly a family-owned and operated company.
My dad started it back in 1976, and many of my family members work here.
My own son does, my uncle, his son.
And you have to bring in people that you can trust and people that you can hold accountable as well.
So it's nice to have those relationships, but we treat our customers the same.
We treat everyone who calls us or interacts with us, we think of as family.
We're here to help you.
We're not here to take advantage of anyone.
And we're very sincere about it when we work with our customers.
We truly will do anything we can to make things right, to make our customers happy.
And if we make a mistake, we'll be the first to acknowledge it and fix it.
So we're constantly improving.
That's our mission here, is to always be improving and to serve people.
Love to hear that.
Thank you so much, Chris.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you today.
Thanks for putting up with all my questions, and I'm very excited about your new project, battalionmetals.com, everybody.
And have a wonderful rest of your day, Chris.
Thanks, Mike.
You too.
All right.
Have a good one.
You too.
Take care.
And thank you for watching.
Mike Adams here, brighteon.com.
And the website, again, is battalionmetals.com.
And use the code RANGER to waive the insurance fee.
on your shipment and to give us credit for some small affiliate relationship that we have with Battalion Metals.
So thank you for supporting us and you'll be really thrilled about the pricing that you receive there.
It's actually pretty incredible they can do this so efficiently with such low pricing and great value.
So thank you for watching today.
Mike Adams here, brighttown.com.
Take care.
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