The Nasdaq 100 is up 95% over the last five years. Measured in gold rather than dollars, Matthew Piepenburg says the same index is down 23%.
Almost every brokerage statement reports the first number and none of them report the second. Piepenburg's argument is that the currency the statement is written in is the thing that moved, and that reporting returns in it is what hides the loss.
"It's now our currency, our problem. No one wants our IOUs. No one loves our dollar or trusts it."
Piepenburg is a partner at VON GREYERZ, the Zurich firm that stores physical gold and silver for clients outside the banking system, and he wrote the 2022 essay "How the West Was Lost," which argued that freezing Russia's foreign-exchange reserves would cost the dollar its standing as the currency the world settles in. He began his career as a transactional attorney, ran a hedge fund through the Nasdaq bubble, and worked with Morgan Stanley's hedge fund platform before moving to precious metals.
I listened to the full interview so you can skip it. 45 minutes of audio, 19 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Matthew Piepenburg, partner at VON GREYERZ in Zurich, author of Rigged to Fail and co-author of Gold Matters with Egon von Greyerz
🎙️ Host: Anthony Fatseas, who created and hosts WTFinance, a twice-weekly interview podcast on finance, investing and macroeconomics
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on YouTube (WTFinance) and the show's podcast feed · recorded 26 August 2026
🔴 YouTube | 🟢 Spotify | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 45 min | ✅ Time saved: 26 min
Key Takeaways
Three major stock indexes have positive five-year returns in their own currency and negative ones in gold
The Nasdaq 100 up 95% and down 23%; the S&P 500 down 30% since 2022; the Nikkei up about 150% and down over 30%
The 2022 freeze of Russia's reserves is the event he says did the damage, not the debt
Central bank gold buying has gone up fivefold since then, and the BIS made gold a tier one asset
Nobody can say how much gold the United States actually owns
There is no audit, and he says even gold that is in the vault may already be pledged to someone else
The US gold reserve is still booked at a 1973 price of $42 an ounce
At that price the whole hoard is worth about $11 billion; marked to market he puts it above $1 trillion
Revaluing that reserve is the bond market's escape hatch, and it works by killing the dollar
He thinks Washington will let gold run rather than repress it, because a weaker dollar is what it wants
A weaker dollar is not an accident of policy but the point of it
The Triffin dilemma means the reserve currency loses trade wars, so reshoring requires the dollar to fall
He is watching the gap between the 10-year and the 30-year Treasury yield, not the level
It is inside 100 basis points now; when it widens sharply, he says the bond market is out of control
The labor data does not describe the labor market it claims to measure
15 to 16 straight months of downward revisions, 17 million people he says cannot find work, and 4.1% unemployment
His own advice is to distrust him too
1. In Gold Terms, Nobody Is Up
Asked to open broadly on the economy and markets, Piepenburg said the warnings his firm has made for years have gone from incremental to exponential, and then spent the answer on a single measurement problem: what currency you count in.
His starting claim is that the standard retirement portfolio was mis-sold. On the 60/40 split of stocks and bonds that Wall Street sold as uncorrelated protection: "That whole narrative is not just dishonest. It's proven now to be a joke."
A long-dated US Treasury bought 14 or 16 years ago has, on his arithmetic, lost 90% of its value measured in gold
On the equity side he ran the same test across three markets:
"You've got the Nasdaq in the last five years, it's up 95%." Then: "The Nasdaq 100, the core tech stocks, and up 95% is very impressive, but if you price it in gold rather than dollars, it's actually down 23%."
"Since 2022, the S&P is actually down 30% in gold terms." That is with dividends reinvested, over a period he called one of the biggest bull markets he has seen
Japan's index, which took 30 years to regain its 1989 high, is the starkest of the three. "But in gold terms, that same Nikkei up 147 150 is actually down over 30% when measured in gold."
He anticipated the objection that this is cherry-picked and made it anyway. A reader can accuse him of picking his statistical windows and ignoring the periods when gold went sideways, he said, and the five-year comparison still stands
On what a percentage gain in a melting currency is worth: "It is meant to give you hope to see percentage upticks in yen, dollars or pounds or euros or francs."
The instruction he gave listeners is to go and check it themselves. "Even if you're measuring your wealth in an S&P or an NK or a DAX, if you're measuring your returns in fiat money, you're not up, you're down."
His suggested test is to ask a broker for a return measured in gold, which he said would be an uncomfortable moment for both parties
2. Bessent Is Out of Options
Fatseas asked how Piepenburg reads the run of news around Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: the Iran sanctions, the China escalation risk, and the Treasury's buyback of its own bonds.
Piepenburg's frame is that a person's stated views change when they take a government job, and his precedent for it is Alan Greenspan: "We saw this in particular with Alan Greenspan before he became a Fed chairman. He was so pro gold." Greenspan then reversed, on his account, once he was offered the chair
The mechanics he described are a Treasury moving money along its own curve. "Obviously, we all know he just took two billion from the short end of the yield curve to bail out the long end of the yield curve. That's indirect QE."
"He's talking about adding another 950 billion taken out of the Treasury General account to support the long end of the yield curve, which the Fed can't control."
"I mean, this is the sign of a desperate, desperate Treasury Secretary."
The reason the long end is the problem is that the Fed does not set it. Piepenburg's position throughout is that the central bank controls the short rate and the bond market controls the rest, which is why the Treasury is the one intervening
He put the cause in three parts: $40 trillion of public debt and a world demanding a higher risk premium for it; the 2022 freeze of a neutral country's reserves; and the risk of a wider war over the Strait of Hormuz
The conclusion he drew is that the tool of last resort is the currency. "But to save the bond market, we will continue to debase the dollar. That's not even an argument anymore."
3. The Sanctions Admission
The part of the Bessent answer Piepenburg spent longest on is a contradiction he says the Treasury Secretary has now stated out loud.
In a 2023 interview, before taking office, Bessent said on Piepenburg's account that de-dollarization was real, that a short-term dollar rally was possible because so much debt is owed in dollars, and that sanctions on a French bank would push France to look elsewhere
The admission he points to came days before this interview. Asked by a journalist why the administration was warning Iran of sanctions rather than simply imposing them, Bessent answered, in Piepenburg's telling: "I don't want to blow up the global financial system if we put sanctions because then even more of the world's going to hate the US dollar."
Piepenburg allowed that it might have been deliberate rather than a slip
"So basically he just admitted in 2026 what he already knew in 2023" — that the privilege the dollar has held since Bretton Woods in 1944, and since the gold link was cut in 1971, is being spent down
"We can't just bully the world anymore and we're losing friends. We're losing trust and we're losing bids at our auctions for our IOUs."
On the Treasury Secretary's position rather than his character: "So Bessent is kind of like a headless chicken contradicting himself"
He added that he believes Bessent was pro-gold before entering government and expects him to want a higher gold price, which becomes the subject of section 6
He was explicit that this is not a party-political point. The debt was accumulated under every administration since 1971, he said, and: "We can't grow our way out of it at this debt to GDP level."
4. 2022 Was the Watershed
Fatseas asked why sanctions would destroy the financial system — whether it was simply that enough countries would leave the dollar. Piepenburg answered with a retail-banking analogy and then a list of who warned against it.
The analogy is a frozen checking account. If a bank closed your account because a policymaker disliked something you wrote, he said, "You would have a very hard time trusting that bank again." Freezing a country's reserves is the same event at national scale
He named three warnings against weaponizing the reserve currency, all predating the decision: John Maynard Keynes; the economist "Robert Triffin, an economist, came to our Congress in the 1960s"; and Barack Obama's own position in 2016 against sanctioning a major country
His own record on it is a published one. "I certainly was not alone in seeing this, but I wrote immediately in 2022 a piece called How the West was lost." He credited Jim Rickards, who he said was telling the Pentagon at the War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania that policy was being made without an understanding of economics, and Grant Williams
The consequences he listed are all measurable rather than rhetorical. "We've seen an acceleration of central bank purchasing of gold in favor of US Treasuries and central bank gold reserves and gold stacking has gone up 5x since 2022."
"The BIS made gold a tier one asset. The dumping of Treasuries by China and Japan and others is now making headlines."
"When the world is dumping Treasuries, their prices go down and their yields go up."
The single fact he returned to most is a crossover in central bank holdings. "But the world objectively, central banks now hold more gold than US Treasuries."
What that signals, he said, is that "the world prefers physical gold as collateral for net settling trades more than it does the world reserve currency and the US Treasury"
He was careful about the size of the claim: not the end of the dollar or of America, but a repricing of the dollar and a re-evaluation of American hegemony. On the military half of it: "Drone swarms have more impact than multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers right now"
5. Nobody Can Audit the Gold
Fatseas put it to him that there is evidence of foreign central banks buying gold but none of the US Treasury doing the same, and asked whether he thinks it is happening anyway.
Piepenburg's answer was that the prior question has no answer. "How much gold does America really have? What is the audit? Is it 8,131 tons? Is it 260 million ounces?"
The custody question sits on top of the quantity question. "You had Rand Paul walk around Fort Knox and say it's there. And even if it's there, how much of it has been rehypothecated?" Gold that is physically present, he said, may already be pledged to someone else and so not available to use
"These are questions we don't have a precise audit on."
He pointed to the export data as the thing nobody is explaining: an exodus of gold and silver off the COMEX beginning in 2024 and running through 2026, with monetary metals among the largest US exports while, in his phrase, the east accumulates in a fire sale
His guess on the silver is that a large amount went to JPMorgan; on the gold he said the counterparties do not have to be disclosed under exchange secrecy rules
On China he was more definite than on the US. "We suspect that China has significantly more gold than the US." He said Chinese accumulation is running at unusual levels by quarter, by month and by week, and is being done for a reason
The absence of an answer is itself his evidence. The fact that the audit does not exist raises questions, he said, and the fact that it is not discussed answers some of them
6. Gold Becomes the Bailout
This is the section the episode was built around, and Piepenburg credited Luke Gromen with articulating it ahead of the crowd, saying he has written about it himself for over two years.
The mechanism starts with an accounting price nobody has updated. The US holds, on the official numbers he cited, 261 million ounces, carried at a 1973 statutory price of $42 an ounce
"That's about 11 billion of gold. That doesn't really help us at all."
"And we're looking over a trillion dollars if we mark to market our gold reserves."
"What I think Bessent really wants to do and will do is use that piggy bank and instead of marketing it or booking it at $42 an ounce, let that piggy bank be marked to market."
The larger version of the trade is not to revalue at today's price but to stop suppressing the price at all. "But now at 40 trillion in debt and no one showing up at our Treasury auctions and yields spiking, we need to go to that piggy bank, revalue it and let gold run to 10, 12, 15, 17, 20,000."
The revalued gold certificates would then be placed in the Treasury General Account, which he said a Federal Reserve manual permits
At $17,000 an ounce, he said, "you're looking at five to six trillion in money that we can use to effectively remonetize the long end of the yield curve"
His history of why gold was suppressed in the first place is a specific accusation. For decades after the 1970s, "For many, many years since the 70s, gold was the enemy because it was a middle finger to the US dollar." He said "And so a young Leo Melamed and a young Alan Greenspan and a young Milton Friedman got together" to add futures contracts at the CME and create the COMEX exchange, which in his reading price-fixed gold and silver for decades
He cited Paul Volcker as having called gold the enemy, and said the Chinese saw what was happening
The reversal is the whole point of the section. "And ironically, gold comes from evolves from being the enemy of the dollar to its last bailout."
The cost of the bailout falls on the currency. Revaluing gold higher, he said, kills the dollar's purchasing power at the same time, and that is the intended result rather than a side effect
7. Washington Wants It Weaker
Piepenburg's claim that a weaker dollar is deliberate rather than accidental rests on two arguments he made back to back.
The first is the debt. "It's great for DC to inflate your way out of debt. They want a weaker dollar." His comparison is the period after the Second World War, when the US ran negative real interest rates — a policy rate below the inflation rate, which erodes the real value of the debt
The second is the trade war, and he named the theory it comes from. "When you're the world reserve currency, you're going to lose in a trade war because your dollar is going to be more valuable than most other currencies." That is the Triffin dilemma: the currency everyone holds is bid up, which makes the issuing country's exports expensive
"As we're trying to reshore American jobs and win a trade war we need a weaker dollar."
For Wall Street the arrangement still works in nominal terms, he said: indirect quantitative easing supports the stock market, and the gains are reported in a currency losing purchasing power. His illustration is a 20% gain in the S&P 500 that could be a 10 to 15% loss in gold
On what that leaves for a saver, he described the paper currency as an ice cube melting at an exponential rate, and said gold is no longer a fringe allocation but the protection against it
The section's conclusion is about what central banks are already doing rather than what investors should do. "It's just going to be gold is now far more trusted than the IOUs of broken countries." He said that is not a gold-bug argument but what the bond auctions, the rate markets and the currency markets are showing
8. A Checkmate in the Bonds
Asked implicitly what would tell him the bond market had broken, Piepenburg named a specific spread and then described the position as a whole.
The indicator he watches is the gap between two maturities, not the level of either. "I think the spread between the 10-year and the 30-year is still within 100 basis points." When that spread widens materially, he said, the bond market is genuinely out of control
He does not expect the bond market to end this summer, and said the Fed still has tricks available to manage it
He also named interest rate swaps as a place where stress would show, though the passage in which he did so is too garbled in the capture to quote
The position he described is one with no good moves left. He called it "a real checkmate moment", and reached for three historical defeats to name it — Gettysburg, Stalingrad and Waterloo — saying the game can be played for another two or three years
The way it resolves, on his reading, is not a policy choice at all. "But the only real way to play it is debasement and war as Hemingway warned 80 years ago."
Long-end yields, he noted, are now at their highest since the global financial crisis
9. The Middle Class Went Broke
Fatseas suggested it would be terrible for the average person if this played out quickly. Piepenburg's answer was that the damage is not in the future.
Where the jobs went
He traced the American version to a single trade decision. Growing up in the rust belt, he said, "American CEOs just killed the rust belt because they wanted cheaper labor after the WTO trade agreement in 2000 under Clinton offshured the American dream to China."
"Now we have cheaper TVs made in China but we don't have any jobs in the rust belt."
The condition he describes is a split rather than a decline. "But objectively, and this is what's so criminal about it objectively the middle class has gone from what Scaramucci called aspirational to desperational."
He said he sees the same two classes in Europe, South Africa and across the United States, from Pennsylvania to Palm Beach
The household stress he listed is in the credit data: "You're seeing massive rises, 2008-level rises in credit card delinquencies, car loan repossessions", plus "F-150s that cost more than a small house car payments over $900 a month that no one can sustain at huge rates"
On the sentiment survey: "What we saw in 26 was its worst consumer sentiment indicator in its history at lows of 1%." He added that "Anytime it got even near this low, it was always followed by a recession."
What the labor data hides
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which gives us our labor data, is so disingenuous."
The evidence he gave for that: "There's been 15 16 months of consecutive downward revisions in labor market." Then "There's still 17 million people looking for work they can't find right now." Then "You saw an August downward revision of 125,000 jobs and yet they tell us unemployment is just 4.1%."
His mechanism is that the participation rate and the second-job problem hide the picture. "They ignore that many jobs that are created are second jobs for people already working one job because 30% of America uses it entire paycheck just to pay its rent."
His image for it was a weighing scale at a fat camp that records the weight while ignoring what the campers are eating
He extended the same point to Britain, saying a certain class of British households is doing fine while a younger and middle class facing housing, immigration and political stress is being priced out: "they're being priced out of their own countries"
The reason he says this compounds is the absence of a buffer. The middle class does not hold large positions in the stock market, so it has no cushion, and the savings it does have are losing value in real terms while gaining in nominal ones
10. Question Everything He Said
Asked for one message, Piepenburg gave an answer that undercut his own sales position, which is worth noting given that he sells gold for a living.
"My advice is to always be a critical thinker. My advice remains don't get emotional. Get informed."
"You need to question everything I've said here. You need to do your own research." One or two YouTube interviews and one or two pundits are not enough, he said
He named real estate and the stock market alongside precious metals as hedges against currency debasement, rather than arguing only for his own product
His prediction is that the independent research lands where he did. Reading arguments contrary to the gold camp's, he said, still leads to the same conclusions, because the big banks and central banks are now doing what that camp has been recommending for decades
Asked where to find his work, he pointed to his firm's site and its "Why Gold" page, and said the material there is free whether or not anyone becomes a client
Bonus Insights
The two-billion figure and the 950-billion figure sit oddly together in his own telling. He described the completed operation as two billion moved from the short end, then called the proposed $950 billion "nearly a trillion dollars more on top of the two billion that we just put in," which only reads as consistent if the first number was trillions
He was careful to distance himself from the doom framing his own conclusions invite. More than once he stopped to say it is not the end of the world, not the end of America and not the end of the dollar, but a repricing — and that "It's certainly the end of American dollar military and political hegemony."
The 1971 date does as much work in his argument as 2022 does. He treats the break from gold convertibility as the point at which spending stopped being constrained, and 2022 as the point at which the world stopped funding it
On his own credibility he pre-empted the obvious objection. He described himself as a clearly biased sell-side gold executive out of Zurich and said the case has to stand on evidence a listener can check, which is why he kept returning to the gold-denominated returns anyone can pull from a brokerage account
The host's role was to keep shortening the questions. Fatseas apologized twice for asking short questions that produced long answers, and Piepenburg twice noted the mismatch himself
Egon von Greyerz is cited throughout as the earlier voice. Piepenburg repeatedly credited his colleague with making these warnings for decades before he did, and named Johnny Hock among the firm's other advisers
Piepenburg's bottom line is that the United States has no way to fund its long-dated debt that does not involve reducing the value of the dollar, that revaluing the gold on the Treasury's books is the instrument he expects Washington to reach for, and that the way to see whether he is right is to stop measuring returns in the currency being devalued.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
VON GREYERZ (Piepenburg's firm, which stores physical gold and silver in Switzerland for clients outside the banking system; he pointed listeners to its free material rather than to its service)
Wells Fargo and Crédit Agricole, plus Dresdner Bank (His retail analogy for the 2022 reserve freeze: a bank that closes your account over something you wrote is a bank you never trust again)
Bank for International Settlements (Made gold a tier one asset, which he lists among the measurable consequences of 2022)
CME Group and the LBMA (The futures exchange he says was created to suppress the gold price, and the London market he says now has to get out of the way)
JPMorgan (Where he guesses much of the silver leaving the COMEX has gone, with the caveat that counterparties are not disclosed)
Bureau of Labor Statistics (The source he calls disingenuous, on 15 to 16 months of consecutive downward revisions)
University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey (Running for over 50 years, and on his account at its worst reading ever in 2026)
Ford F-150 (His example of household stress — a truck he says costs more than a small house, on payments over $900 a month)
Fort Knox (Where Rand Paul walked around and said the gold is there; Piepenburg's response is that presence is not the same as availability)
The Nasdaq 100, the S&P 500 and the Nikkei (The three indexes he re-prices in gold to make his central point)
Books & Resources Mentioned
How the West Was Lost: A Faltering World Reserve Currency – Matthew Piepenburg (The 2022 piece he wrote immediately after the Russian reserve freeze, and the argument this whole interview extends)
Why Gold – VON GREYERZ (The page he told listeners to read, and the only thing he directed them toward by name)
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