The Critical Importance of Understanding a Gold Standard's Benefits to All, by J. Kim
And Especially the One I Implement Right Here
Recently, I just increased the USD fiat price of my monthly and annual subscription fees slightly and some people wrote me, stating that they were planning to join, and what was the reason behind raising my subscription fees. However, all current subscribers will always be locked in at their original subscribing fee, as long as they remain subscribed. And I’ll explain the multiple facets in which my decision to price all fees on this platform on a gold standard has benefited all paid subscribers here, much more so than it has benefited me. But before I proceed with this explanation, if you are brave enough, please use the comment button below to answer the question presented in the above photo: What is the great irony of the 1/4 ounce British gold sovereign coin? But please comment only if you are unsure of your answer. If you unequivocally know the answer to this question, please do not comment, as a definitively correct answer will ruin the fun of this question for all others that wish to fathom a guess. I will provide the answer in the conclusion of this article.
Those that recently asked this question only asked this question because they were unaware of the fact that I have priced my subscription fees per a gold standard, a decision that has been enforced in the same year of launching this newsletter in 2022. If you follow this link, you can confirm that at the end of 2022, I stated that the monthly subscription fees would amount to a monthly subscription fee of 0.2128g of gold and an annual subscription fee of 2.1445g of gold. I further stated that my decision to implement a gold standard model was in order to provide a static subscription fee of the same gold weight that would not change, even though the fiat currency price due to Central Bankers’ destruction of fiat currency purchasing power, would change.
Furthermore, since I employ my own strategies of stacking physical gold, I believe it only fair to show strong faith in my own discussed strategies and to tie my substack income to not only strategies I endorsed but strategies that I myself implemented. In other words, my implementation of a gold standard was the exact opposite of my experience working for a Wall Street firm, when I rarely encountered a money manager that had any significant amount of his own money invested in this own managed money portfolio. If I were going to endorse a strategy of applying your own gold standard to your savings, and anyone that followed my strategy were to lose money from this strategy, then it would only be fair, that by tying my income to this strategy, my income would decrease as well. The Gold Standard I applied to subscription fees here, as described upon the date of implementation on December 2022, below:
Since that day, every time real physical gold prices dipped (as I explained my gold standard prices would be tied to the 1-ounce price of a Canadian gold maple leaf coin), I lowered my subscription fees the following month, and when they rose, I increased them accordingly (as changing my fees were based upon prices within the past monthly period). In this manner, if I led my newsletter subscribers astray, my income would be punished, but if my guidance was correct, my subscribers would not only be rewarded from the increasing fiat currency value of their stack (whether they stacked in US dollars, Euros, Yen, Yuan, or other currencies), but they also would be rewarded by actually paying less every month they were subscribed to my newsletter.
In fact, I fielded a couple questions from subscribers that were extremely skeptical of gold prices rising from the $1,798 price level at which I implemented my gold standard, and they asked if I would really lower my subscription fees if gold prices fell, which indeed I executed when this happened. In response, some answered that they would subscribe to my newsletter after gold fell by another $1,000 to save money on the current subscription fee of little more than $12/month. In any event, these investors were likely those that followed frauds like Harry Dent, though in all honesty, if my analytical skills were so bad that I launched a gold standard at $1,798 price levels and gold collapsed by 56% to $800, why would anyone want to subscribe to my newsletter at that point? Though this question seems like a rhetorical question, it really isn’t, for Harry Dent still has millions of loyal disciples, despite his public offering of embarrassingly wrong gold price predictions for nearly a decade straight.
But back to my explanation of why a gold standard benefits all physical gold stackers and holders, not just the person implementing it. As stated above, the closing price of gold the week I moved to a gold standard was $1,798 per ounce, so the monthly subscription fee, per my gold standard of 0.2128g of gold, equaled a USD fiat currency price of ($1,798/31.10348g/ounce * 0.2128), or $12.30.
For all those that stacked physical gold, a constant narrative I have espoused during not only the duration of this newsletter but one that dates back to when a physical ounce of gold could be purchase for only $580 an ounce, that same 0.2128 ounces of gold is now worth ($2,353/31.10348g/ounce * 0.2128) = $16.10. Consequently, not only are subscribers that followed my guidance since I switched to a gold standard sitting on USD profits of 30.89% on their physical gold stack, but better yet, if they remained subscribed during this period, they are still locked in to their original $12.30 subscription fee and do not have to pay the higher USD monthly fee that exists today (($16.10 - $12.30)/ $12.30 = 30.89%. Though my gold standard yields a $16.10 monthly subscription price today it is actually lower than that right now, for its calculation is based on the average physical price for the preceding month, or preceding 30 days, as it is adjusted only once every 30 days). Thus, I actually do not apply the gold standard to all existing subscribers and all existing subscribers still pay their much lower subscription fees today. I allow all subscribers, and still do so today, to lock in their original fiat currency price at the time of subscription, so their fiat currency subscription fees do not rise over time to meet my gold standard price (for the period of time they remain subscribed without cancellation), which benefits my subscribers much more than myself.
So today, these same subscribers are not paying the current gold standard USD equivalent price of $15.50 per month for the same static weight of 0.2128g of gold, but they are still only paying the original fiat currency price they locked in, when first subscribing, of $12.30. Thus, I set up my gold standard to benefit my subscribers over my own benefit, because if I had implemented a true gold standard, the fiat currency monthly fee of even existing subscribers would have risen to $15.50 today. But instead, I set up my gold standard to provide bonus discounts on a fixed fiat currency price, even when my gold standard results in higher current fiat currency prices.
An alternative way to view the savings my gold standard has provided to subscribers of this newsletter since December 2022 is the following. At today’s USD gold price of $2,353, the same USD monthly subscription fee of $12.30 paid by December 2022 subscribers, as this would still be their monthly fee today (as all subscribers pay the same fiat currency fee at which they subscribed, not the current day fiat currency fee), the equivalent gold weight necessary to pay $12.30 is not 0.2128g of gold but only $12.30/ ($2,353/31.10348g/ounce) = $12.30/ ($75.65069889/gAu) = 0.1627g of gold. In other words, if someone had kept all their savings in gold and needed to liquidate gold into USD to pay the monthly fees, when they first signed up, 0.2128g of gold would have been required to pay the monthly fee. But today, a mere 0.1627g of gold, or 23.5% less gold, would require liquidation to pay today’s monthly fee. Anyway you slice my gold standard pie, my subscribers win huge, and I still also win a little bit.
And as I believe gold price increases have really not even launched (in terms of USD prices) during this last phase of USD purchasing power collapse, the above real world example not only applies to the 16 past months in hindsight, but in my opinion, it also will firmly apply to the next 16 months moving forward. Thus, I set up my gold standard in such a manner that it benefits the client more than myself. For example, if my USD fiat gold prices rise to $20/month by year-end, any person that subscribed this month, would still receive the significantly lower $15.50/month monthly subscription fee and not my significantly higher USD $20/month gold standard calculated fee. The higher resultant gold standard hypothetical fee would only apply to new subscribers, and I would only receive a higher monthly payment from new subscribers, not from my existing subscribers, as a true gold standard would dictate. My clients receive a true gold standard from my policies (as long as they stack physical as I have been advocating), and the gold standard I experience only applies to new subscribers and not from my exisitng subscriber base.
Thus, in the end I never changed any of the subscription fees to my newsletter. The dollar has literally lost purchasing power against physical gold and the only reason anyone would inquire as to why I “raised prices” recently on my newsletter are those that make the choice to hold their savings in fake money of fiat versus the real money of physical gold. And today, all new subscribers would still immensely benefit, if my prediction above is correct, by receiving locked in fiat currency prices for my gold standard weight and never having to pay higher fiat currency prices than their original subscription price that result from my gold standard that apply to all new subscribers (as long as they remain subscribed). Note that when someone unsubscribes, their subscription rate resets to the current fiat currency price. Thus, a 2022 subscriber that is still paying only $12 a month, as well as earlier subscribers that locked in an even lower monthly subscription price of $10 a month, only lose their much lower fiat currency rates when they unsubscribe.
By the way, if you are wondering why the price of gold per troy ounce listed in my calculations above is higher than the fake synthetic prices of gold right now, I mentioned in the aforementioned gold standard post published in December 2022 that I would tie my gold standard to real physical gold prices of a 1-ounce Canadian maple leaf coin, and the above price is the price of a 2022 1-ounce Canadian maple leaf coin right now. It would make zero sense to run a gold standard and then tie prices to the fake, synthetic prices established by Western bankers.
However, to give all new subscribers a break in fiat currency prices, I do not even tie current USD fiat currency prices to a 2022 1-ounce CA maple leaf coin, though this is the standard I explained I would use. I actually tie the USD fiat prices to a current year 1-ounce CA maple leaf coin, which is always slightly cheaper than prior year coins. Thus, this is just another way that I bias the decisions of my gold standard in favor of the client over myself. Consequently, those that asked why I raised USD prices recently of this newsletter perceived the entire situation backwards and upside down. I actually ran my newsletter at discounted prices for the entirety of this year, until just a few days ago, to provide the numerous people that stated they were considering subscribing with nearly a 90-day sale window. I figured if someone cannot decide within 90-days to subscribe, they are unlikely to subscribe in the future and this is when I decided to end my year-long sale and revert back to my gold standard of monthly USD fees equivalent to 0.2128g of gold and annual fess equivalent to 2.1445g of gold.
The reason why I noted the equivalent of a BTC standard or silver standard in the above chart but ultimately settled on running my platform on a gold standard is because silver prices are typically too volatile to serve as a good standard, as I sought a standard to implement that would not yield wild price fluctuations in fees from quarter to quarter. And in comparison to silver, BTC is completely rogue in terms of price stability. For example, had I used the “BTC standard” to price my newsletter, at current BTC prices, my monthly subscription fee would be about $54 compared to our current monthly fee of little more than $15 (and remember this monthly fee was considerably less for the entirety of this year until I finally reinstated my suspended gold standard just a few days ago). Thus, due to BTC’s historical extreme price volatility, I determined that doing so would be a logistical nightmare as it might result in a monthly fee of $12 one month, and then $60 a month two years later, and then perhaps $25 another 12-months into the future. And this is why running a platform on a “BTC standard” was not possible. I know that many investors are lured by the constant rags to riches pitch of industry talking heads (Cathie Wood, Mike Novogratz, Michael Saylor, Blackrock and JP Morgan employees, etc.), but I simply lean more conservative in my strategies and would much rather have the bulk of my savings committed to an asset that wins the slow and steady race.
However, using the same real world example above, and acknowledging BTC’s meteoric price rise since I implemented my gold standard, even the increased monthly and annual USD fiat currency fees that occurred just a few days ago, should be mere peanuts to all those that bought BTC at the end of 2022. The resultant USD price increases from my return to my gold standard should be most irrelevant to specifically those investors that chose to buy BTC over gold at the end of 2022. As the gains in USD fiat BTC prices dwarf the slight USD price increases I’ve implemented by running my platform on a gold standard, the resultant USD fiat currency price increases should feel like a fraction of fraction of a penny to BTC investors that are both new and long-time subscribers.