The financial industry has grown gargantuan by selling any kind of instrument that can be thought up:

bonds, notes, derivatives, futures, forwards, ETFs, ETCs, options, structured products, SPACs, SAFEs, convertibles, perpetuals, stablecoins, staking yields. Stacked top of all this are endless layers of tokens, tranches, wrappers, and synthetics.

These are claims on future money. You could also call them promises. In short, you hand over your money today in hope, bet, expectation, or hope of more money tomorrow.

Promises are much easier to make than they are to keep. The incentive is always to create more and hope people don't all ask for their money at once.

The gold market demonstrates this.

Physical gold is hard to find, mine, refine, mint, and store. But banks can create vast quantities of "paper gold" through derivatives, ETFs, and futures contracts.

That's how Big Finance turns real things into fairy dust.

History shows the pattern: humans always make more promises than can be kept. Bubbles expand until they burst. Systems work until they don't.

The dollar-based International Financial System still holds together.

It works because key players are all-in, so it's in everyone's interest to expect or hope that quadrillions in obligations can be met. The illusion holds as long as confidence does.

But confidence is weak glue.

Crashes, hyperinflations, and manias are psychological events that follow predictable arcs:

Optimism → Greed → Mania → Loss of Confidence → Fear* → Panic → Contagion → Collapse

*You are here.

A rising, volatile gold price signals we are accelerating from fear into panic. As panic turns to contagion, bank runs begin. People rush to swap paper and digital tokens for something more real. Credit gets crunched and currencies die.

These are the rare, but extreme scenarios gold owners try to hedge against.

Extremes are building: currency risk, geopolitical risk, systemic risk, counterparty risk, and growing financial instability.

What you cannot hold, you might not own.