Interview with Jeremy Cordon

Summary

Part Of The Problem — Interview with Jeremy Cordon (Goldback)

Podcast: Part Of The Problem
Host: Dave Smith (GaS Digital Network)
Guest: Jeremy Cordon (President, Goldback Inc.)
Date: May 22, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Dave Smith welcomes Jeremy Cordon, President of Goldback Inc., for a deep dive into monetary policy, inflation, central banking, and the potential of privately issued gold currency as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. The discussion explores the roots of current economic hardships, the mechanics of inflation, the threat of central bank digital currencies, and pragmatic solutions like Goldback’s fractional gold notes for people concerned about the failings of fiat money. The tone is knowledgeable, passionate, and at times critical, with a shared libertarian perspective and an eye toward practical, market-driven answers to systemic financial issues.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Monetary Inflation and Central Banking: The Core Issue

• Dave’s Framing (01:45 – 03:25):
  Dave argues that monetary inflation and central banking are the “worst problem” in America, underlying unaffordability in housing, family security, and declining living standards.

  • “The median first time homeowner in this country is now 40 years old. You got to be 40 before you can buy a house... And I think one of the points that I've always been trying to make is that this is because of this model of central banking and fiat currency and the inflationary environment we live in... All regular people, end up footing the bill for that, essentially.” (01:45)

• Jeremy on Living Standards (03:07 – 04:39):

  • To match the buying power of $100,000 in 1995, you need about $350,000 now.
  • Wealth should be measured in how much labor is required to acquire goods, not nominal stats or stock markets.
  • “We pay for it with a lower standard of living… It doesn't matter if you're now making $150,000 a year, but the house cost $800,000, then you are poorer...” (03:07)

2. The Real World Impact & “Shrinkflation”

• Jeremy (05:05 – 07:28):

  • Dollar as a measuring stick is distorted yearly—like making a “meter” shorter every year.
  • Companies are blamed for raising prices, but the government’s monetary policy is the root.
  • “It distorts what's really happening when the dollar loses so much value so fast and it tricks the average person. And that's why we have shrinkflation...you know, real inflation...has been at least 30% [since COVID].” (05:05)

• Dave (07:28 – 08:25):

  • Inflation can’t be hidden from people; they feel it at grocery stores.
  • Politicians scapegoat “corporate greed” but ignore the money printer.

3. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC): Freedom at Risk

• Jeremy (08:38 – 09:02):

  • With CBDCs, privacy vanishes and government can surveil and control spending, citing China’s model and the debanking of Canadian trucker protesters.
  • “If cash is gone completely…then you can only use central bank digital tokens. So everybody's in the system. There's no privacy. There's nowhere to run.” (08:38)

• Dave (10:03 – 11:25):

  • CBDC is a workaround for the regime to silence dissenters by financial means without explicit legal bans.
  • “They can just say, no, you have the right to say whatever you want to, but we have the right to shut off your bank account.” (11:19)

• Jeremy (11:25 – 13:01):

  • Even now, traditional banks can cut out politically disfavored groups (“Operation Choke Point”), but with CBDC, it’s universal and automated.
  • Cites gold’s purchasing power: in 100 years, the dollar has lost 99.6% of its value when measured against gold.

4. Gold’s Consistent Value Across History

• Dave (14:04 – 16:07):

  • Gold maintains purchasing power across centuries—a gold ounce buys roughly the same basket of goods (e.g. a suit) now as in ancient Rome or 1948.
  • “In the year 2026, an ounce of gold will get you like a suit and a hat and a pair of shoes. It is almost like representing almost the same amount of purchasing power.” (15:30)

• Jeremy (16:07 – 16:54):

  • All U.S. coins are now obsolete as units of value—today's penny (~$2.50 in 1920s terms) was the smallest coin worth using.
  • “All of our change is obsolete. Quarters are obsolete...When was the last time you’ve...cared to count up and add up your change?” (16:21)

5. Unfair System: Benefiting the Debt & Asset Rich

• Dave (16:54 – 18:16):
  • Inflation is a “giant welfare program for the rich”; those with assets or large debts benefit, while middle and working class struggle.
  • “It’s great for people who are in huge amounts of debt...But for people on a fixed income...it’s just absolute death.” (17:31)

6. Why Not Just Return to the Gold Standard?

• Jeremy (18:16 – 22:28):
  • Post-Ron Paul libertarians realize a return to the classical gold standard isn’t practical:
    • U.S. doesn’t own enough gold, silver, or copper—the reserves were always a fraction of claims, even at peak.
    • Most gold and silver are now tied up in industry (electronics, etc.), so they aren’t available for money.
    • “You can’t really go back to that because the trust isn’t there...even if libertarians won, you can’t fix this with a law.” (21:44)

7. Goldback: A Private Market Solution

• Jeremy (22:33 – 24:36):

  • Goldback uses proprietary tech to “micro-fractionalize” a gold ounce into spendable paper notes (as small as 1/1000th of an ounce).
  • “What Goldback has done...is we've taken that one ounce and we've split it with microchip technology into 4,000 pieces...in a way that has never been counterfeited.” (22:33)
  • Goldbacks are hard to counterfeit—cost-prohibitive for would-be fakers.
  • Their smallest denomination is worth about what a wheat penny was 100 years ago (~$2.50).

• Dave (24:36 – 24:52):

  • Goldback enables a voluntary gold standard as a parallel system that people can choose to use.

• Jeremy (24:52 – 26:53):

  • In some U.S. cities, people do the bulk of their transactions in Goldbacks—hundreds of businesses across all industries participate.
  • Goldbacks are designed to act as a real medium of exchange, something that hasn’t worked with bullion coins.

8. Preparedness, Community, and Mass Adoption

• Dave (26:53 – 27:28):

  • Government will not lead the way out of this—market alternatives must be ready before crisis hits.
  • “We can't look to government to be the ones who are going to create this type of stuff because that's a game that you'll die waiting.” (27:28)

• Jeremy (27:32 – 31:32):

  • There are thousands of local currency experiments in U.S. history, but Goldback’s network is more robust, with over 5,500 participating businesses.
  • Most alternative currencies cap at 100 businesses; Goldback far exceeds that.
  • Most users are NOT older goldbugs—70% are under 45.

9. What Happens if the System Collapses?

• Dave (31:32 – 32:42):

  • Fractional gold (as offered by Goldback) is far more practical than gold bars/coins for real-world trading under monetary collapse or hyperinflation.
  • “If you have a bunch of gold bars, you're still gonna have the problem of like, but how are you going to effectively trade that for something?” (32:11)

• Jeremy (32:53 – 33:56):

  • Goldbacks can be purchased via 600+ dealers across the U.S.; their system is established and growing.
  • Highly liquid, used in everyday transactions.

10. Adoption, Proof, and Demographics

• Jeremy (37:50 – 38:01):

  • Younger people are driving the adoption of Goldbacks and alternative currencies.
  • “Most the people buying gold backs, they're our age. 70% of buyers are between the ages of 20 and like, 45.” (37:50)

• Dave (38:11 – 39:16):

  • As older generations phase out, younger, more liberty-minded consumers will shape the future of money.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Inflation’s Reality:
  “You can tell people we’re winning a war in Afghanistan when we’re losing it…and they might believe you. But try telling people their grocery bills aren’t going up. Anybody who goes to the supermarket...knows how much poorer you’re getting every week.”—Dave (05:57)

• CBDC as Social Control:
  “If cash is gone completely...everybody’s in the system. There’s no privacy. There’s nowhere to run.”—Jeremy (08:38)

• On the Futility of Government Solutions:
  “You're not going to vote yourself out of the central bank problem.”—Jeremy (27:28)

• On Gold’s Timeless Value:
  “In ancient Rome [an ounce of gold] would get you like a toga and a headpiece and a pair of shoes...in the year 2026, an ounce of gold will get you like a suit and a hat and a pair of shoes.”—Dave (15:30)

• The Goldback Innovation:
  “What Goldback has done...is we've taken that one ounce and we've split it with microchip technology into 4,000 pieces...in a way that has never been counterfeited.”—Jeremy (22:33)

• Demographics Driving Change:
  “Most the people buying gold backs...70% of buyers are between the ages of 20 and 45.”—Jeremy (37:50)

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Time-Stamped Highlights

• 01:45 — Dave frames monetary policy and inflation as crucial, underlying all major public complaints
• 03:07 — Jeremy puts living standards in perspective: $100k in 1995 ≈ $350k now
• 05:05 — Jeremy explains how inflation distorts economic reality and causes “shrinkflation”
• 08:38 — CBDC dangers and loss of financial privacy
• 11:20 — “We have the right to shut off your bank account.”
• 13:01 — Dollar has lost 99.6% of its value versus gold in a century
• 15:30 — Gold’s purchasing power compared across history
• 17:31 — Inflation as a disguised wealth transfer to the rich and indebted
• 21:44 — Classic gold standard isn’t viable: not enough gold, and trust is gone
• 22:33 — Goldback’s technological breakthrough: micro-fractional gold
• 24:52 — Using Goldbacks as a real, spendable currency
• 32:11 — Gold bars aren’t practical for preparedness/trade
• 37:50 — The youth of Goldback’s user base is a hopeful sign for future money

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Resources and Next Steps

• Learn More/Purchase: goldback.com — Directory of dealers, business sign-up, product info
• Support the Show: Let Goldback know you heard about them via Part Of The Problem for show credit.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode presents a sobering analysis of America’s monetary predicament and unpacks the impossibility of truly reforming the system through traditional political means. Instead, Jeremy Cordon’s Goldback offers a practical pathway: a voluntary, private alternative currency rooted in gold, accessible and already in use. The conversation is both critical and hopeful, urging listeners not to wait for government solutions, but to build market-based resilience now—especially as inflation, centralization, and government overreach continue to erode financial security for ordinary people.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. As always, thank you for tuning in. We have a very special show for you guys tonight that I'm excited about. We have our special guest here tonight is from Gold Back Incorporated, Jeremy Corden. How are you, sir?

[D]

Doing great. Thanks for having me here.

[C]

Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. I wanted to talk to you specifically because I do feel that, as I've said several times on the show, I spend a lot of time talking about the news of the day and a lot of time on foreign policy and, and I probably don't spend enough time talking about monetary policy and economics, which is a real passion of mine. So thank you very much because I know this is the world you live in. So thanks for joining to talk about it.

[D]

Awesome. Super excited to be here.

[C]

Well, you know, one of the reasons why I, I've really tried to commit to talking more about this stuff, particularly this year, is that it really is the case that monetary inflation, central banking is in many ways really the worst problem that we have in America. It's really the issue of our time. And now you even notice all the Democratic candidates are running on unaffordability, but they're very vague with what exactly that means. And of course the solution is a government program. The median first time homeowner in this country is now 40 years old. You got to be 40 before you can buy a house and then start thinking about having a family at that point, I guess. And now everybody's spending hundreds of hundreds of thousands, you know, to even just try to have a baby and nobody can afford to get ahead in this world. And that just seems to be more and more kind of the experience of the average American. And I think one of the points that I've always been trying to make is that this is because of this model of central banking and fiat currency and the inflationary environment we live in where we have a government that we can't afford, so we have to print the money to make it up and everybody, all regular people, end up footing the bill for that, essentially. Is that right?

[D]

Yeah, no, it's exactly right. We, we pay for it with a lower standard of living. I think I was reading today that to have the equivalent of a six figure salary from 1995, you have to be making about $350,000 a year today.

[C]

Yeah, that's right. It's like literally it's right in front of you. And as you know, I was talking about this with my buddy Keith Knight the other day, that really, if you want to measure wealth or if you want to measure a standard of living, the only measurement that really makes sense is like how long you have to work for a given product or a given cert, how many hours do you have to work for a chicken? And that's how you measure wealth. It's the only meaningful way to measure. Well, you look at the GDP or the stock market, but what difference does that make if you don't have stock and you're not participating in the growing gdp? And yeah, I mean, as, as you put out, we pay for it in our, in our standard of living lowering. And so my, my father in law tells me about this all the time. When he bought his first house in like 1971 and he only made $13,000 a year, but the house was $13.5K. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter if you're now making $150,000 a year, but the house cost $800,000, then you are poorer than you were making 13,000 a year.

[D]

But they've got everybody telling themselves, oh, But I make 13 times the amount of money that I made 50 years ago.

[C]

Right.

[D]

Or that my grandparents made. And you know, if I have a six figure salary now, that's making it because when I was growing up, that's what making it looked like. And it's kind of this crazy world where we use the dollar as a measuring stick. And imagine we use, let's say we use the metric system, but every year they recalibrated the meter to be a little bit shorter.

[C]

Right.

[D]

And then people started saying ludicrous things like, oh, my house grew 5% this year. We're all getting taller and, like, they just, you know, it's so confusing. It's like you almost don't. It distorts what's really happening when the dollar loses so much value so fast and it tricks the average person. And that's why we have shrinkflation. You can buy less and less, and the grocery companies are like, oh, shoot, we got to raise our prices. But that makes us look like the bad guy. We're the bad guy, because we can't. We can't keep up. And then you get your 2% raise or your 3% raise at work or you get your little raise in Social Security. But, you know, real inflation, they think just since COVID with all the money printing, has been at least 30%, and that was just trillions of dollars that went to, what, fraud?

[C]

Yeah, Yep. That. That's right. And I mean, it's. It's. It's one of these interesting things because I say this a lot of times on the show, but, you know, inflation is one of those things that you kind of can't hide from people. You can attempt to. But everybody sees it, everybody feels it, and so you can, you know, you can. You can even attempt to tell people that Joe Biden isn't senile and keep them away from them as much as possible. You can tell people that we're winning a war over in Afghanistan when we're really losing it, and they don't really see it, so maybe they'll believe you. But try telling people that their grocery bills aren't going up. Try telling them that, like, anybody who goes to the supermarket and has been for the last five, six years knows how much poorer you're getting every week. And I guess I just think that in a weird way, you watch people, particularly progressives, who are trying to seize on this moment, you watch them spin it in different ways. You know, the problem is that corporate greed spiked, so they'd kind of go along with. With that perception that, yeah, the problem is the supermarket or the supermarket chain is raising their price. And I do think it's really important for some of us to come along and go, yeah, but you know how, like, since George W. Bush, they've printed 80% of the money that ever existed. I think that might have something to do with that. Like, just. Just maybe your. Your dollars being less valuable might have something to do with the injection of tens of trillions of dollars of new money, which you would think would be kind of intuitive for people to understand.

[D]

You know, I'm old enough where I remember where people used to talk about the national debt, but people would take turns talking about it. It was kind of this political football. When your guy was in office, you didn't talk about it. The other party talked about it. And when your guy was out of office, you talked about it again. And I remember during Bush, during Obama, there's kind of this back and forth of whose fault the national debt was and who's made it worse. And really, it's just the dollar is just going down and down and down and down. And now there's new threats. You know, they're. They're trying to push through central bank digital currencies now. And they've already done that in parts of the world, like in China, where you have a social credit score and you cannot bank or use your money if your score falls below a certain threshold.

[C]

Right. Yeah. And this is. There wasn't there was just recently a bill about this. Right. There was a bill in the Senate, and I think it got defeated. But it is worth pointing out that they are still trying to push this central bank digital currency.

[D]

Yeah. And the threat is if cash is gone completely, like physical cash, then you can only use central bank digital tokens. So everybody's in the system. There's no privacy. There's nowhere to run. If, you know, the government doesn't like your show, they don't like, you know, they did this even without central bank digital currencies to like the Canadian trucker protesters, remember that?

[C]

Yep.

[D]

They be. Banked them for. For their protest.

[C]

Yeah. And I think it's one of the things that's very concerning and I think perhaps that because this was more of a Democratic Party idea, and I guess Donald Trump had. There was enough noise from the grassroots that Donald Trump had said in his campaign, one of his promises was, I guarantee we'll never have a central bank digital currency. Then again, he also said no new wars. But, you know, so. So Donald Trump had at least brought this up and that. That maybe then creates the illusion for people where it's like, all right, well, at least that concern is kind of tabled for now. But of course, you know, even if Donald Trump doesn't break that promise, him breaking the promise on the war has been enough to make him very unpopular and almost guarantee that the Democrats are going to come back into power now. And so that whole threat comes. Comes right back to the forefront. And I got to say that's one that I'm particularly concerned about. Because first of all. Well, there's a couple of things. Number one, clearly our monetary Policy is unsustainable. And so we're coming up to kind of like a turning of a chapter here where this can't keep going forever. And so they're going to try to supplement it with something new. And the regime is well aware that they have this major problem right now, which is free speech on the Internet, and the fact that the tech censorship has kind of not worked and, and rolled back and that now all of the most popular voices are challenging government propaganda. They've got a real issue with this on their hand. And this is one where you go, shoot, how are you going to rein that in? I mean, trying to do tech censorship again is going to be very tough. There are these, you know, websites like Rumble and places where people can go at this point. And also, even if you shut me up or you shut Tucker Carlson up or you shut whoever up, is their audience really going back to Jake Tapper? No, probably not. They're. They're going to find other voices in this space. But, you know, what really does solve that problem for the regime very nicely is a central bank digital currency, where all of a sudden they can monitor, well, what have you been saying online? What have you been doing, you know, wherever? And if they have that, they don't even need to pass an amendment to abolish the First Amendment. They can just say, no, you have the right to say whatever you want to, but we have the right to shut off your bank account.

[D]

It won't even be the government doing it. It'll be their. It'll be their partners, it'll be the banks. And they. This already kind of happens. Like, you know, you had Operation Choke Point under Obama where precious metals dealers and firearms dealers, they were getting debanked and had to run from bank to bank to bank to try to figure it out. We've dealt with this problem at Goldback where the bank just says, gee, the regulators are putting a lot of pressure on us. We don't know if we can continue this banking relationship. I know it happens to influencers, too, but we have some. At least we have a bunch of different banks. But if you centralize that control and you make it uniform like in China, you can just bankrupt all of your opponents and make it so scary. You know, China, they don't even talk about politics. It's too dangerous to talk about politics. It's just, you know, it's not safe. You're looking at being homeless and not being able to feed your family and on and on and on. So, you know, there's the Central bank, digital currency threat. But even if we don't go there, like, even if that doesn't happen, and we can stave that off. If you were to measure the value of the dollar in gold. So 100 years ago, an ounce of gold was about $20, and it was a $20 gold piece. It wasn't exactly an ounce, but it was about that. It was the double eagle, and that was just the money. And today I want to say gold's like 4,500 bucks.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

So just measuring the dollar in gold, it's lost, like, what, 99.6% of its value.

[C]

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[D]

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[C]

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[D]

Yep.

[C]

Then by the year 2000, it's at like $300 an ounce. So like, oh wow, it's 10 times less. But you could see how. And then how rapidly the dollar has been des recently that were now between four and five thousand dollars for an then. And I don't know, this is going back a while that I, I had read this, but there's these interesting things. The, the reason why measuring it in gold is not just like an arbitrary measure is that gold is very unique in the fact that it preserves its, its purchasing power. Like there's, it's. I, I know people would say like, you know, like an ounce of gold, they say in ancient Rome would get you like a toga and a headpiece and a pair of shoes. Like, it would essentially get you like a SW suit for that time. And in 1948, $35 would like get you a nice suit and a hat and a pair of shoes. And then the year 2026, an ounce of gold will get you like a suit and a hat and a pair of shoes. It's like it, it is almost like representing almost the same amount of purchasing power. And so, man, is it creepy to look at that and then go, yeah, that's literally what this policy has done. They've robbed 99% of the wealth of your dollar that you're holding.

[D]

Yeah, they robbed 99% and then another 60% after that. So if you had a hundred dollar, if you had a $1, if you have a hundred dollar bill today, it would be like less than a dollar 100 years ago in purchasing power or another way to look at that. Like the penny, the wheat penny, that guy had about $2.50 worth of purchasing power and that was the smallest amount of money they even bothered with. If it was less than 250, like, forget it. And in that context, all of our change is obsolete. Quarters are obsolete, half dollars, obsolete. Dimes, nickels, all of it's obsolete. I mean, when was the last time you've, you know, cared to count up and add up your change?

[C]

No, it's like a thing that my kids put in their piggy bank as like a game, but it's not really like, so you know what I mean? It's just like, oh, that's what I do anytime I have a coin, which is rare that I have them. And it's, you know, it's also worth pointing out that, you know, when, when you have this inflationary economy, right? So like when you start from that point and you keep diluting the currency until we get to where we are today, this of course is essentially in effect a giant welfare program for the rich. You just transfer money upward and upward and upward because if the value of the dollar is going down, well then people who own are benefiting from that. If you, or at least, at least you're keeping up if you own something because the thing you own is worth a lot more than it previously was. So that's okay for people who own a lot of stuff. It's great for people who are in huge amounts of debt. And when I say debt, I don't mean like you have a little bit of credit card debt. I mean debt like you have borrowed billions of dollars from the bank to start some, you know, new enterprise and now you only really in effect got to pay back millions. But for people on a fixed income, for working class people, for middle class people, as everybody around them can see, it's just absolute death. The guy who was making 70 grand a year was doing great 10 years ago and now he's struggling to get by. It's just ruins.

[D]

It's hard to even diagnose the problem. It's just like, man, like costs have gone up, I don't know why. Houses, you know, everyone's so greedy on their houses. If you were to measure housing in gold, if you looked at the US stock market measured in gold, the US stock market has been down since like year 2000, right? If you measure it in gold, it's just the value is not there, the prices are overinflated because everyone's pushing their IRA money into it. And you know, in terms of real value, it's just, it really changes what the economics landscape looks like. We're not hitting all time records in the stock market. If you measure it in something that, that isn't constantly losing value. And you know, we talk about this and maybe the reason why you don't talk about it more is because there's not, there's not like really a whole lot to be done about it. So I, like you come from a similar background. You know, I came into this whole thing as a Ron Paul guy. I was 21 years old when he ran for president the second time and I went and got elected to be a Ron Paul delegate. And one of the things that he talked about a lot was just this issue. He had the book and the Fed. Central banking is the biggest issue. And there's a problem because you can't really return to the gold standard. This is something I've been super obsessed with and I've researched it a lot. There's a few problems. Even if we, you know, libertarians won, Congress is full of, you know, Massey's, we got Ron Paul into the Fed or some Ron Paul type guy into the Fed. He's, he's a little old now. Maybe Ron Paul doesn't want that job.

[C]

Give him a break. Let him relax. But.

[D]

Yeah, let him relax. But, you know, you figure you win. Going back to the gold standard that we had 100 years ago, it used up all of the nation's copper. It used up 90% of the nation's silver. And now 80% of silver is tied up in industrial demand. 99% of copper is tied up in industrial demand. And even then, like brics, countries that are like looking to go to the gold standard, they can't figure out how to do it because the gold standard essentially failed because its main central point of failure was does, is it in the vault? Does Fort Knox even have the gold? Is the gold even there? They couldn't figure out how to divide an ounce of gold. So what you had to divide it with was copper tokens, which were sold for like 4000% above their melt value. Silver tokens that were bigger, and I call them tokens because you take 2 cents worth of silver and mint it into a coin that said $0.10 on it. That's essentially what constitutional silver was. So there was a huge markup and a profit to be had in making coinage. And you'd think if anything should be profitable, it should be literally making money, right?

[C]

Yeah, right.

[D]

And then a lot of those 20 gold coins out there that were to kind of back up the whole system, there just weren't a lot of them. The banks didn't have a lot of them. You had a lot of bills, hundred dollar bills. There's ten thousand dollar bills, fifty thousand dollars. There's a hundred thousand dollar bill. You know how valuable that is? Considering that gold was $20 an ounce, and they would use these for like interbank transfers. In the US they didn't have the gold. I mean, like, if you were to measure all the gold that the gold standard actually had, it might be like 5 to 10% of the gold standard was backed by actual gold at the melt value. That was it. So you can't really go back to that because the trust isn't there.

[C]

Right, Right.

[D]

Like so you know, the bridge is burned. So then what do you do? You just stay in Central bank inflationary hell, you know, like there's not, there's not a great solution. So it's not, it's almost like something that's not really people talk about because it's like what do you do? You know, like what do we, what do we do? How do we fix it?

[C]

Right, right. All right, so where does, where does your company, where does Goldback come in on that?

[D]

Okay, so what we do is we go out and the thousand 2000 year old problem with gold, so this isn't just a problem 100 years ago or 50 years ago in Roman times it was a problem is you, you can't really fractionalize gold down that small. You have to use bronze, you have to use silver, you have to do something else because the gold is just so valuable. What Goldbach has done, what we've done with gold Back is we've taken that one ounce and we've split it with microchip technology into 4,000 pieces and in a way that has never been counterfeited and wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be easy to counterfeit. So it's, you know, this is a,

[C]

which is as much as you can say for any paper currency. It's not, you know, like not easy. Anything I guess is theoretically possible to counterfeit, you make it very hard to do.

[D]

So yeah, we, yeah, we raise the bar really, really high. You're not, you're not looking at $100,000 worth of equipment. You're looking at $20 million worth of equipment and 10 years of dicking around to try to, you know, make it look the same. So you know, you want, and you want to raise that bar all the time to just make it like more obnoxious for counterfeiters. So the quarter gold back has the same value as a wheat Penny did 100 years ago. So it's like a 2.50 gold product. It's the cheapest gold product in the entire world. We mass produce it. We've got the one gold back. And the idea here, the drive with gold back is we're trying to kind of reimagine and restore the gold standard in the private sector and invite people to participate. And so far it's gone. It's gone really well. We, there are more places in the United States that take payment in gold, you know, a la Goldback, than there are locations that take Walmart gift cards.

[C]

And so the idea, so the idea is here to essentially create a gold standard for a private currency and so that there's, you know, like you, at least in a sense, it's like an opt out option from the dollar potentially. Ultimately.

[D]

Yeah, because if you, there are people today that do 70, 80% of their financial life in gold. There are cities today that have dozens of industries that participate. You know, grocery stores, gas stations, entertainment, health care insurance, you know, contractors, dollar stores, you name it. People that do your yard landscaping people, they all take payment in gold backs and they're all driving distance. So it's becoming more and more possible the more and more we grow the network and you imagine you get debanked and it's like, hey, you're kind of screwed if there's no cash alternative and there's nothing you can do and you don't really want to come up with a solution on that day. You don't want to say, okay, you know, we have a big problem, we're, we're all bankrupt and, but we have things that we can trade. You know, like what if we, you know, you, you want to start building up solutions well in advance. And you know, I think the reason why gold bullion and silver bullion haven't really taken off, like that was the first thing I tried to do. The reason why they haven't really taken off is because they're not really a system of money. So if you buy an ounce of gold that doesn't have an equal value to 10, 10 ounce coins, right. They have different premiums, they have different values. A lot of gold coins are fake. You have to have an $800 Sigma machine to really know for sure if it's real. And it's not an easy enough system where people actually do that. So we wanted to make something that looked and felt like cash that people could intuitively understand and, and get on board with where you know, it wasn't, it wasn't like some high friction transaction.

[C]

Yeah, well, it's, it's a really interesting idea because I, you know, and part of the reason why I'm interested in this stuff is that, yeah, like you said, we really do, we have to begin to look for solutions to this kind of coming problem. And as I'm sure you also being an old school Ron Paul guy, I came in in 08. I'm a little older than you, but. Or a lot older than you, but it makes older people sound good when you go a little bit older than you. But you know, we can't look to government to be the ones who are going to create this type of stuff because that'll, that's a game that you'll die waiting. If you're waiting for.

[D]

You're not going to vote yourself out of the central bank problem.

[C]

Yeah, no, that's right.

[D]

The system that primarily benefits people with massive amounts of debt and assets. Who do you think the donor class is? Why would they ever change the game? Because it's, it's the donor class getting richer and richer and richer and richer and the average person getting more and more and more poor. And if there's a labor shortage, like, let's just import tens of millions of people, you know, like let's, you know, just be poor, you know, like suck it up, you know, like that's seems to be.

[C]

Yeah, it's. No, you're absolutely right. And look, I mean we're, as we're recording this, it's the, it's the day after Thomas Massie lost his primary. And it does kind of show you something about like you could have this guy who's an enormously popular congressman in his district who gets in trouble for taking enormously popular stances on big issues like opposing the war in Iran or being. For the Epstein files being declassified. I mean, these are like 80% of the American people are with him on this, but the money isn't. And so they pump $32 million into his district and they get him out. So again, to your point, when there's a system that benefits those who hold tremendous debt and those who hold tremendous assets, if you want to go one on one versus Goldman Sachs, they're going to come out having more debt and assets than you and they're going to come out having a whole lot more political influence than you. And so these, like, I'm not against government solutions, but I think sometimes there is this, this almost like a bias people have where they go, if you try to come up with some private solution to the problem, they go, oh, that's a little pie in the sky. You know, what are the odds that we're actually going to get people all trading in these gold backs? But then you go, as opposed to what? As opposed to thinking that the democratic process is going to yield some type of results where you have to directly take on all these big money interests that are always going to have more influence than you. I mean, seems to me like going, trying to come up with some type of private solution is the only viable.

[D]

So we're not, we're not the first company to do this. There has been, according to Wikipedia, as much as you can Trust, that over 2000 local currency projects in the United States and A lot of those, you know, they're around for 10, 20 years, then they disappear. Hundreds of these things popped up during the Great Depression, happened in Greece, during their banking crisis. Because if the money doesn't work and it doesn't work for everybody, you know, the bottom comes out. And I was going to ask you, I mean, if we lost 99.6 something percent of our value in the last hundred years, what's the next hundred years going to look like?

[C]

And we seem to be going at a faster pace right now.

[D]

It's probably worse. I mean, 99.6 is like. But even if that's like just as good, you know, is what happened the last hundred years, like what does that mean for your savings? Yeah, like, does it mean, did you, do you just not save? Do you just invest in every speculative thing and just, you know, have a whole society of people like that? And then, you know, we kind of drift because here's the thing, you can boycott a central bank digital currency with cash today. Cash is another central bank product.

[C]

Yep. Yeah.

[D]

Kind of like sad watching libertarians be like, no, don't get rid of cash. It's like still the central bank guys.

[C]

Yeah, that was the last thing we were against. Now we're begging to keep it.

[D]

Yeah, it's just like, and it's better than like, you know, being out of the frying pan and into the fire, but like you're still begging for the frying pan.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, you're still, you're still trading in Federal Reserve notes, you know, and so. Yeah, no, that's a fair point. And of course, as everybody knows, you know, like in all those scenarios, you know, wheelbarrow full of cash, hyperinflation type scenarios, people want your jewelry or they want your, your products or something. Right. You have to find some other way to trade. And so it does seem like you want to give people at least the best fighting chance they have.

[D]

Yeah, you make the best possible product you can. You know, I'd say gold back. If you're going to own a thousandth of an ounce of gold, this is the cheapest way to do it. It's not even close. We have the cheapest kind of hyper fractional gold and the high denomination gold backs. Once you get up to the 50 or the hundred, there are cheaper ways to own gold closer to spot. But then you're not really part of a system of interchangeable money.

[C]

Right. And there's not say in a scenario because almost just from the preparedness aspect of it, it's like you Know if you're gonna, if you're waiting for the moment when the dollar crashes and you have a whole bunch of gold bars in, in your house, in your safe or something like that, you know, forget if you're having it like professionally stored or own a fund or something, forget that. But yeah, yeah, that's not gonna cut it. But if you, but if you, you know, if you, if you just have a bunch of gold bars, you're still gonna have the problem of like, but how are you going to effectively trade that for something? Because what you got like a five thousand dollar gold bar or something like that?

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right, right, right. You're gonna have, you're gonna, yeah, you're

[C]

gonna find yourself in a tough situation. So that is, that is very interesting. Well, let people know. So if they wanted to purchase these, where do they go?

[D]

So if you want to buy them there. We have about 600 dealers that sell gold backs. We have a list on Goldback.com if you want to sign up your business, if you want to take payment in gold, you could also sign up your business on Goldback.com and give credit to Dave that supports the show. So there, there's a few different ways to get involved. And you know, in terms of local currencies, most local currencies cap out at about 100 businesses in like a little regional area that participate. You know, gold back. We have, I want to say we have like 5,500, 5,400 right now in the United States. And we're primarily concentrated in specific states. We've got California coming out. We've got started in states like New Hampshire and Utah. We've got a gold back in Florida, but people are starting to trade these all over the country. And we're seeing more and more business networks getting developed in places where we don't even have like a main series.

[C]

That's very interesting, very interesting. And so, and because also. Right, so like even if you're not in one of those areas, people can still know what it is. They can verify that it's real. They can look it up. Like there's a system of being, of people being able to verify that like, oh, okay, this is legit. And yeah, I just, I really like the implications of it for like, I don't know, as, as I just start, as I get older, I do think more and more about preparedness and stuff like that. And as the world gets crazier and crazier and it is the type of thing that like in a real disaster Scenario you would. To have some of these.

[D]

Absolutely. I mean, as a preparedness thing. Absolutely. And that. That's kind of where we started the company. It was kind of like, hey, you should have food storage and you should have some spendable gold.

[C]

Right?

[D]

Like, and we didn't. I wasn't like that worried about getting people to do it. I thought, hey, maybe. Maybe we can go out and we can sign up some businesses just to. Because too many people ask, oh, what would I do with it? It's like, well, you know, I mean, it's gold. You could trade it with people. Like. Yeah, but who would ever take that? Who would ever accept gold? You know, you can just hear it. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, the. Who's the. Who is the guy that. That did, like, the gold bar in. Where was it? Like, in California, and he was like, asking people if they wanted a gold bar or. Or like a Hershey's bar.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I know. I've seen people do that with Bitcoin, do that with gold bars, and then

[D]

people trying to remember who that was.

[C]

Candy bar. Yeah, I vaguely remember what you're talking about.

[D]

Yeah. It's just, you know, like, a lot of people don't know. And I. I thought, hey, you know, maybe there's like. Like 10% of business owners are queued in and, you know, they're. They're going to do this, and we can sign them up and we can kind of at least have someone we can point at and say, hey, these 10 businesses or these hundred businesses will do it at the value that, you know, these guys have in a given day. And what we've quickly found out is something like half of small business owners will take payment in gold. It's not 5 or 10%. It's like half. Well, they're entrepreneurs and, you know, they're experts at taking appropriate risks.

[C]

Right.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

No, and. And that's. That's without the dollar crashing, you know what I mean? Like, even more. That's. That's. Without us being in an even worse state than we are now. No, I mean, I really do think a lot about this. Like, people, we're going to have to come up with solutions because like I said, like, you can't sit around waiting for the government on this. And as you were kind of getting at, you know, as bad as things are now, what happens when we just keep devaluing the currency even more? And if there's one thing that is clear in the political landscape of America today is that we're going to continue devaluing the currency. There simply is. There simply is no other option. We cannot afford the government that we have. We can't afford even close to it. And currently we have the Republicans who are asking for a $1.5 trillion defense budget. No one is thinking about talking about entitlement reform, let alone, you know, entitlement abolition. And as long as that's the case and Democrats are promising even more social services, they're going to keep doing this. So where do we go when the median, you know, household. The first time household buyer isn't 40, but they're 50 or 60? Where do we go? Yeah.

[D]

If something can't continue forever, then at some point it has to stop.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

When goldbacks came out, they came out seven years ago, they were like 2 bucks, and now they're like $9. Yeah, like, that's. I didn't think it was going to be that much. There's a third of a billion dollars worth of goldbacks out there. So it's like really big and really small at the same time. That's not huge compared to the whole gold market. But if you measure it by units, Goldbacks are the number one most produced gold product in the entire world now in seven years.

[C]

Wow. That is pretty incredible. Well, Jeremy, I really appreciate you taking the time today. Is there anything else you want to tell people about before we go?

[D]

You know, something else that's encouraging is most the people buying gold backs, they're our age. 70% of buyers are between the ages of 20 and like, 45.

[C]

Huh? Yeah. Well, that's another. That is another encouraging sign. It's something I've been thinking about with the Thomas Massie race just because, you know, there was such a big split by age.

[D]

Oh, it's a huge split. Yeah.

[C]

Oh, that was the whole thing. Yeah, it was the whole. The whole election was like how old you are. And you do think that, like, you know, this, this whole system is. Is kind of married to the boomers and it's. It's guys in that age bracket that you just said who are going to be coming into that slot over the next few years, and it's going to be on us to be looking for these, for these solutions.

[D]

Absolutely. I mean, that generation, they're going to age out and that. That's probably the most encouraging thing. You know, as a libertarian, like, you know, we. We kind of lose a lot.

[C]

Yeah, we sure do.

[D]

And it sucks. But you know, long term, like decades down the road, we're gonna. I think we're gonna be fine. There's there's just if we can make it that far, you know, if we can make it 10, 20 years, like a lot of these people, you know, the Pelosi's and the, the, the schumers and the McConnells and, you know, Trumps of the world, the Bidens, they're, they're all gone.

[C]

No, that's right. And people who are much more open to these ideas are, are left behind. So that is an encouraging, that is an encouraging thought that we needed. So, Jeremy Corden, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Thanks for coming on.

[D]

Thanks.

[C]

All right, have a good one. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Catch you next time. Peace.

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