America's Gold Authority Podcast
Jul 29, 2026 · 20 min · 10 segments
On this episode of *America’s Gold Authority® Podcast*, host Mike Barnes is joined by Philip N. Diehl, President of U.S. Money Reserve and former Director of the U.S. Mint, and Brad Chastain, U.S…
Philip DiehlGuest
Brad ChastainGuestMike BarnesHost
Well, they have really been tailor-made for people who'd like to trade in gold on a short-term basis.
So they're not really for the people like us who buy and hold gold for the long term, for the financial security it provides, for the price appreciation over the longer term.
It's really designed for sophisticated traders, traders who use high frequency trading algorithms and and sophisticated models for predicting short term prices.
of investing in the price of gold, although when you purchase an ETF, you never actually own gold.
You simply have a contract that gives you the right to the price of gold whenever you sell the contract.
ETFs, exchange-traded funds, it sounds like something that central banks would like, but they don't, do they, Brad Chastain?
Very, very minimal level for very specific purposes, but not as a core part of their reserve holdings like gold is.
lbma and there are reasons for that one of them is a big one is counterparty risk owning physical gold in your own physical vaults does not have any counterparty risk to phillips point the etfs you don't actually own gold you own a share of a trust that then owns the gold and There is counterparty risk involved in many layers of that process, in fact.
So when they own actual physical gold, there's no counterparty risk, especially when it's held within a country's own borders.
A paper-driven product on an exchange could theoretically still be sanctioned, just like we saw with Russia and their foreign FX reserves more recently.
So, for all of the reasons that central banks want to own gold, physical makes sense for them.
Well, they have really been tailor-made for people who'd like to trade in gold on a short-term basis.
So they're not really for the people like us who buy and hold gold for the long term, for the financial security it provides, for the price appreciation over the longer term.
It's really designed for sophisticated traders, traders who use high frequency trading algorithms and and sophisticated models for predicting short term prices.
of investing in the price of gold, although when you purchase an ETF, you never actually own gold.
You simply have a contract that gives you the right to the price of gold whenever you sell the contract.
ETFs, exchange-traded funds, it sounds like something that central banks would like, but they don't, do they, Brad Chastain?
Very, very minimal level for very specific purposes, but not as a core part of their reserve holdings like gold is.
lbma and there are reasons for that one of them is a big one is counterparty risk owning physical gold in your own physical vaults does not have any counterparty risk to phillips point the etfs you don't actually own gold you own a share of a trust that then owns the gold and There is counterparty risk involved in many layers of that process, in fact.
So when they own actual physical gold, there's no counterparty risk, especially when it's held within a country's own borders.
A paper-driven product on an exchange could theoretically still be sanctioned, just like we saw with Russia and their foreign FX reserves more recently.
So, for all of the reasons that central banks want to own gold, physical makes sense for them.
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