Coming up in a moment on this week’s podcast, we have a special interview with Mark O’Byrne the Founder of Tara Coins in Ireland. Not only is Mark creator of the stunningly beautiful Tree of Life gold and silver coins — available at MoneyMetals.com — but he is also a bona fide Emerald Isle historian and longtime sound money proponent. So be sure to stick around for our fascinating discussion with Ireland’s Mark O’Byrne.
But first, here’s a quick recap on this week’s market action.
The U.S. stock market continues to rise following the presidential election earlier this month.
Gold has mostly recovered from its post-election correction, but it’s only been trading sideways in recent days. The yellow metal looks to end the week — and the month — around $2,670 per ounce.
Meanwhile, the recent price action in silver has been less positive than gold, but silver’s November decline was halted by the key $30 level, and the poor man’s gold is trading a little below $31 here on Friday afternoon as we head into the monthly close.
With today being Black Friday, I want to mention that Money Metals has slashed premiums dramatically on some really popular items, especially 10 oz silver bars and 1-ounce silver rounds. Be sure to go to MoneyMetals.com to take advantage of these deals, including our free bonus offer on all orders containing over $500 of silver.
And for those looking for the perfect gift for a loved one, Money Metals has created a special gift shop at MoneyMetals.com. Please check it out to find all kinds of great gift ideas.
And, now — without further delay — let’s get right to this week’s exclusive interview….
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Mike Maharrey: Greetings, I’m Mike Meharry, a reporter and analyst here at MoneyMetals, and I’m here today with Mark O’Byrne. Mark is the founder of TerraCoins, a company that produces Irish and Celtic gold and silver bullion coins and rounds. We sell some of those here at MoneyMetals. They’re absolutely gorgeous. And he was also the founder of Ireland’s largest gold and silver broker.
He’s retired from that job. And really happy to have you on the show today. Mark, how are you doing?
Mark O’Byrne: I’m doing great. Mike, great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
Mike Maharrey: Well, I really appreciate it. I mentioned the gold and silver coins that your company makes. And I’ve got some of the silver rounds with the tree of life on them and they’re just stunningly beautiful coins, especially if I’m, if you, if you like Irish culture and Irish heritage, as I do. It’s a must have for collectors.
I’m curious how you got involved in and became interested in that side of the business. You started out as a broker. What kind of inspired you to get into producing coins?
Mark O’Byrne: It’s a good question. I suppose the same reason I got into gold in the first place. I studied history I that was my degree in university And I was always interested in, you know, how the world works, and I was using history to try and understand how the world works, because it never really made sense to me as a kid, all these battles and constant killing, and why are we doing that? And this, why do we never learn from history? You know, and I didn’t understand these even as a teenager. Then in university, I began to understand that bit. I started doing sort of extra reading sometimes off the curriculum, which don’t we speak and I’m getting interested in books and realizing that it’s frequently about the money.So it’s like most things in life. You have to follow the money. What’s the motivation? What’s the intent? Everything’s about the intent.
And, you know, there’s been a very powerful. Kings and queens and emperors and emperors throughout history. So it’s important to find out what were their motivation. Frequently their motivation was actually to, to control other nations. That’s the nature of, of, of empires to expand. And frequently it was to actually control gold or to plunder gold from other nations, you know, because it has been money since the first coins were minted in, in created in about 650 in, in Libya, in, in, in modern day Turkey, Anatolia. Yeah. But I think our ancestors for thousands of years prior to that were using little tokens of gold. They may not have had the technology, but they knew it had value. It’s shiny. It’s beautiful. So, I became aware of that quite a young age, you know and I was sort of, yeah, reading about it. And I’m just fascinated by it, but I got sucked into my dad’s business for a period of time, which an employment agency, but then I, I started buying gold in the private capacity in the early 2000s around the millennium, actually, because there’s a lot of fear mongering. If you remember about the Y2K. Yes.
Yeah. And I suspect that I suspect it was fear mongering, but I said, well, no bad thing having a bit of insurance anyway, you know? So I was actually buying from dealers in, in Denver of all places and in New York, there was no dealers in Ireland at the time. And I found that fascinating that. Oh, you know, gold has been with us throughout history, and I knew, I knew it was money, you know so why aren’t, why isn’t an Irish company selling gold? Why aren’t some of the Irish banks selling gold? Why aren’t there stockbrokers that have a vision selling gold? And when I spoke to people, they all laughed at me, and they all said to me, why would you do that? That’s a barbaric relic from the past, you know, and that barbaric relic term was used all the time.
They literally, literally laugh at me, you know, so I had to buy outside of Ireland and I sort of started realizing, well, hang on a second, there’s an opportunity here, you know, and I also realized there was a thing called the EU Gold Directive, so Ireland became part of the EU and we actually became part of the monetary union as well, so we have the euro, and they issued this thing called the EU Gold Directive, which basically harmonized the treatment of gold throughout the European Union, so it’s actually quite good for gold, they’re encouraging the citizens to invest in gold and on gold, which is quite unusual, you know. Because they knew, they knew it had a benefit, you know, it makes sense if you are a good government, you want your citizens to own gold because it will protect them, you know, but they harmonize the treatment of gold and they reduce gold to 0 percent tax credit in the European Union. So that wasn’t publicized in the Irish media, the British media, none of the media publicized this.But I found that on the internet and I said, wow, that’s interesting.
There’s an opportunity here. So, and because what had happened is culturally and traditionally, we never bought gold in Ireland since we got independence in 1922, because there was VAT. So why would you buy gold? You would automatically buy the field, so the field, the green field became our, our golden effect, you know, because we wanted to get that land back from the, the bad evil bricks that took our province, you know, so property in particular, real estate and land became our default tangible asset of choice. And we found it gold. It was almost seen as the English, the gold standard. That was the English money.
And also we didn’t want that. So it’s a very interesting thing. So that’s why I set up the business. I’m sorry. I became aware of since September 11th happened. And I was quite aware of the risks of in the world that the stock markets fell very sharply around. That tech bubble around 2000 as well, and I looked at the charts as well, and just you could see gold had been in a bear market for 20 years, you know, so I was looking at it fundamentally and technically, and I could see it was an absolute no brainer from every perspective in those early 2000s, and yet when I spoke to people,
They laughed at me, including people who would be very, you know considered experts and very, you know, well read and well educated regarding the finance, but they literally laughed at it, you know, and it proved to me, I realized that they had literally been programmed, they had been programmed You know, the educational system today is, it’s gold has been written out of it, you know, so it’s very hard for people to understand that you really have to do a bit of reading and a bit of research, and it’s only when you do that and you understand the context, the historical context, it is decisive, you know, so, and when you do that, then you have that underpinning, which allows you to understand and take a long term view, which is very important with both gold and silver.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, it’s interesting that you mentioned the fact that the EU dropped some of those tax barriers on gold and silver. I wish they would figure that out here in the United States, because it’s very much treated as a commodity and. And I really think almost intentionally dissuaded from being thought of as money here. And that’s kind of surprising to me that the EU would be a little bit more open to that.
Mark O’Byrne: Well, that was the only good thing they did.They haven’t been particularly, yeah, yeah, yeah. They haven’t been particularly positive goal besides that. But that was, and it was quietly, It was quietly brought into the legislation. So people didn’t even know that. It’s quite interesting, you know, but they did state the intent was to, I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was, it was, it was basically to, I’m not sure if they used the word encouraged, but they were suggesting that it’s a good thing for people to own gold, you know,
There was no great follow through on that per se, and I mean, there’s a lot of attacks in the EU on silver in every single country, which very much deters people from investing in silver. The AT& T loan alone is 23%. Oh, wow. You’re down a quarter. Yeah, you’re down a quarter before you begin, which is, it’s terrible. It means that. People are buying silver to tend to, to buy it and they put it into Switzerland. And they put it into some offshore location where they don’t have to pay the DAT. And I think they might put it into Idaho soon. If they find out about the Gleason brothers Walter in Idaho, they might be storing up there fairly soon.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Largest vault bigger than Fort Knox, which It’s pretty cool. So I mentioned that I’ve got some of the, the silver tree of life rounds. Can you kind of just explain some of the symbolism that’s on there? Like the, what’s the significance of the tree of life? And then on the flip side, you’ve got the harp and a couple other symbols. What are, what are the significance of this?
Mark O’Byrne: Yeah. So basically I wanted to, I looked at the history of coinage. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating. I also studied Greek and Roman civilization. So it’s funny, only the other day, I was reading about Croesus again, and you know the expression, richest Croesus, and very interesting, he was a king around, I think about 400 BC in Greece, and he became rich because he engaged in many, many battles with the neighboring states all around Greece and Turkey and that part of the world, you know, and basically, plunder, they took the gold, you know, he became not as rich as Croesus.
So, but they, yeah, they always had, they tend to put the face of the king in the later years, but in the early years, they actually had images of, of animals. And one of the earliest coins they had was actually fascinating. It was like a bull on one side. Because most societies worship the cow because it provided so much for us in terms of dairy, meat and the height in terms of clothing and everything, you know, so the cows are very special. And so then the cow on one side and the tiger and the other, you know, when I looked at, I really wanted to capture the essence of Ireland in the coin. So I had to go and really find out what are the sacred symbols of Ireland, you know, because I suppose as we know, a picture paints a thousand words, right?
So the sacred There’s almost, there’s consciousness almost in it, you know, there’s symbols are very, very important. So, and that’s why to this day, you know, central banks have their insignia on it, and we have fiat legal tender coins, and we have crown insignia on some of the coins, you know. So, the most sacred symbol in Ireland, well, there’s a few of them but the three that we picked and we thought were the most that would resonate most with people were the,harp.
So the harp is basically, we’re the only nation in the world that has a musical instrument as our national emblem. It’s actually on our passports. It’s on our driving licenses. It’s on the, all the government documentation, you know then Guinness popularizes it. It’s a symbol of Guinness, the famous black beer that the people in Ireland around the world drink.
And that’s, so it’s a very, very Yeah, ancient symbol that’s represented Ireland for hundreds of years and, and basically it’s the symbol of sound and we’re a very musical nation. We love music. We love singing, but the very sort of, and it goes back to the Druids in ancient times, they say that they actually had harps that were made from oak and then they had gold and silver strings.
You can imagine the sound that would have come off these, these, these ancients. Harps, you know, and they use them for, for healing, for celebration and may in the same way as we use music today, you know, to relax ourselves and to enjoy ourselves, you know, so, so, yes, it’s a, it’s a beautiful, beautiful symbol and people really, they really resonate with it, you know, so the Tri Spiral is, we have what’s believed to be one of the oldest solar chambers in the world. It’s a place called, in English it’s known as Newgrange, and in Irish it’s known as She Nabru, and She basically means the spirits, the spiritual beings, the fairies are the elemental beings, and then the Bru is either the womb or the mother of the portal. So there’s this basically solar chamber. We use, I studied archaeology actually in first year and we used to be told that these are all tombs. But now we’re realizing that a lot of them are actually solar chambers and they’re actually wombs. They’re wombs that would receive the energy of the sun.
So this, this one new range, it’s interesting, we’re coming up to this, the winter solstice now, and on the winter solstice, our ancestors were much wiser than we give them credit for, you know, we had periods of, I think, periods of enlightenment, and then we had periods of dark ages, you know, and there was a period of enlightenment in Ireland, many thousands of years ago, and they don’t know this solar chamber, new range, it’s, it’s basically older than the Oldest pyramid.
So they say it’s at least 2000 500 BC Hang. I better get this right… Lemme see it here. Yeah. 3,200 BC So yeah, 5,200 years minimum is how old it is, which means it’s older than the oldest pyramid is older than Stonehenge in the UK, you know, and they built it. They were master stone masons, stone workers, and they built this.
It’s a huge solar circular solar chamber, and many of us will be going there now. There’ll be going there now on December 20th, December 21st. That’s the shortest day of the year. Basically the sun would come up on that day and it would. Penetrate the entry to the chamber, and then it will go all the way back to the very back of the chamber, and at the very back of the chamber they had this ancient stone that they had carved in, it shows you there, they had carved in this this tri spiral that’s on the coin, you know, and it’s called a tri spiral or a triscola, and they don’t know, they think it’s possibly means past, present, future, or the masculine, the feminine and the child so it’s the cycle of life fertility. It could actually be birth, life and death, or birth, life and rebirth, you know, so that nobody knows, you know, they were, they were, they were much more wise than we give them credit for, you know, and then we also have on that side of the coin, we have era which is actually the Irish name for Ireland. It’s E for the I R E is the Irish name for Ireland. That would have been on all the old Irish coins from 1922 up until, up until we had the Euro, we had that written on our coin. So that’s the old Irish word for Ireland. And it actually comes from a sovereignty goddess. So goddess of the land called Eru, and that’s where that comes from. And then we have the, the main symbol is actually We went for, it’s sort of a Celtic symbol, but it’s also a universal symbol. So, yeah, it’s interesting. And thank you for saying that, Mike. You know, you see it as gorgeous because it’s interesting that people from all over the world different walks of life, men and women, like German women, English women, even if they have no connection to Ireland whatsoever, they, they see the coin, they go, wow, that’s, that’s really, really beautiful.
You know, they’re quite, quite moved by it. You know, the tree of life, it’s, it’s basically. In so many spiritual and cultural traditions, there was a sacred tree, you know, and it’s called the tree of life. And it’s in the, it’s in the Christian tradition, it’s in the Judaic tradition, it’s in the Islamic tradition and it’s in most sort of, you know, ancient civilizations, whether it be the Mayans, you know, the Buddha. He was enlightened under a peach tree. And also the tree was sort of a symbol of the connection of heaven to earth. You know that’s what the symbol, the symbol it symbolized, but also symbolized abundance.
Obviously it’s a, it’s a sort of a symbol of nature. We get, we get food from trees whether it be fruits and apples, we get shells from trees we get in the winter, we would survive the winter because we would have wood from trees, you know, to cook food. So it’s so important to our ancestors. So, and so we’re sort of celebrating nature.
There’s a lot of pro environmentalism, a lot of fake environmentalism today, but the environment is important and we have to get that balance right. And we do have to have reverence for nature because it does divide everything. And there’s an intrinsic value in nature in the same way there’s an intrinsic value in a tree, there’s an intrinsic value in gold and silver.
And that’s why they have value because they come from nature. Real value comes from nature and then man can enhance that value. So yes, they’re the symbols there. And we did put on the shamrock is also a sacred symbol of Ireland. So we did put two beautiful little shamrocks at the, at the base of the tree.
And we have a beautiful sacred geometry as well. We’ll be balanced. As above, so below, so there’s a lovely balance in the coin between the branches and the leaves and the apples are up above and then the roots down below and the roots, the roots become the fruits, as I think it was Tony Robbins said that, but I’m not sure who said that, but a wise man once said the roots become the fruits.
So we have the shamrock as well. And so yeah, it’s, it’s really, it’s beautiful. It is beautiful. And I actually worked with, with graphic designers, Irish graphic designers, Irish artists, spiritual, cultural mentors to really capture, I really wanted to capture the essence of Ireland, the spirit of Ireland in the coin and I think many people have told us that we have co-created that, you know, so there was a team of people helped me with this. And yeah, I’m very, very happy with the The Finnish, Finnish product, I don’t like using the word product, but it is, it is a, it is a beautiful, beautiful coin, or metal. It’s a non legal tender coin.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah. Yeah. It really is. And, and, you know, legal tender or not, it’s still fundamentally money because gold and silver are fundamentally money. And It’s, it’s a, not only you know, you could look at it as kind of a, from a pragmatic standpoint, but it’s really a work of art.
And like I said, I think people would enjoy having it in their collection not just for the intrinsic value of the gold and silver, but because of the BD you’ve created. So good job on that.
Mark O’Byrne: Yeah. Thank you very much. And that, that was the intention is to have them almost like works of art that people really cherish them.
And they can be beautiful gifts as well. I always look at the Julian being like, no, I don’t understand why people don’t buy beautiful coins for their loved ones, for Christmas, for birthdays, for anniversaries. It’s beautiful. If a baby’s born in 2024, why not get them a beautiful gold or silver coin, you know?
Yeah. And that’s why I started with the small one ounce silver. point one ounce gold because it’s becoming unaffordable for people to buy a large one ounce for many people to buy the larger gold coins. I want to make it accessible to people and yeah, I have these beautiful works of art that people can give to each other as gifts, but we also have a mass produced silver coin as well, which is the three nine pure three nines pure silver tree of life.
And we’re minting that with Regency mint. So that’s more Mass produced bullion coin rounds, which is a much lower cost for people who want to get and it’s a very high call. It’s not quite those are there being you they’re brilliant uncirculated. So there’s a mirror finish on them So they’re absolutely spectacular to the fish and that’s why they are a little bit more expensive than your your, you know They might have a premium close to American Eagle rather than a Kruggerand but the mass produced coins would be a slightly, not quite as good a finish, but still a very nice finish and people can buy them at a slightly cheaper price, you know, so there’s a nice mix, mix there for different, different people, depending on what they want.
Mike Maharrey: So here in the United States we’ve seen somewhat of an enhanced demand for physical gold with the inflation that we just went through. Nothing like, I think, what. We’ve seen in, in Asia. How has the European market and maybe even more specifically, iron Ireland has the inflationary pressure kind of increased that interest in gold and silver investing, or are people still kind of locked into that, as you, as you mentioned earlier, that paradigm of, oh, it’s relic.
Mark O’Byrne: There’s still that paradigm, unfortunately, and, and the media just doesn’t cover gold at all in Ireland. And. It’s going to sound egotistical. I don’t mean to sound egotistical, but I think I did a daily market update from 2004 to 2020 for about 16 years and did the daily market update nearly every single day because I was so passionate about it.
And I really wanted to help people understand, you know, what’s going on. That it would protect them from the various risks in the world, you know, and I had to really, you know, call up journalists, meet journalists, bring them out for coffee, bring them out for lunch, bring them out for pints of Guinness, and just really talk to them and say, listen, this is important, you cover this, you know, because they would just almost refuse to cover it, you know, and then they’d, they’d only cover it when they hit record highs consecutively for a period of time, then they’d cover it, you know.
Yeah. And, then you know, financial times and Bloomberg and CNBC were covered and then the Irish media would only cover it. They sort of follow the international media, you know, they wouldn’t stay, they would never take the lead and cover it. And lately it was interesting when, as you know, gold hit consecutive record highs there in recent months, over a period of weeks and months.
It’s a new nominal record highs is important to realize, you know, we have to adjust for inflation, but there are normal record highs, but it was interesting to see NBC’s and Bloomberg’s and even FT, they weren’t covering it as much as you know, see now when Bitcoin hits a record high, it’s getting a lot more.
You know, so I’ve seen this for a long time. Unfortunately, a lot of demand is being siphoned into the Bitcoin and the cryptos, you know, and we’re seeing that in ours as well. So the, the, the, the, the, the struggling so much, you know because they’re not seeing that. New demand, not seeing a new entrance, really, you’re not really seeing a big influx of, you know, buyers, a new demographic, you tend to see, you know, a 30 year old for 40 year olds coming into the marketplace.
But they’re not really seeing that. I think a lot of those people are being sucked into the Bitcoin ripple into all these cryptocurrencies, you know, so there’s a, there’s a lack of awareness. It’s not being covered in the media. So, yeah, and then when gold hit record high, it’s interesting. They actually saw a lot of selling because they’re hearing gold at record highs and maybe some people, some people have financial pressures, you know, there is a cost of living crisis.
Liquid assets that they have. So they’ve had to sell it. So a lot of the dealers are saying, well, yeah, we’ve actually seen quite a bit of selling rather than buying. So it’s interesting. We’re definitely not seeing any mania. So it actually does bode well. It’s not great in the short term, but I think it bodes very well for the medium and long term, you know, providing that the big point thing, I think it’s very important that we, as an industry, have been quite poor at you know, talking about it, and I’m actually not anti Bitcoin per se, but I have become wary of it when I see some of the promotion of it by certain people, shall we say, and certain institutions who are using it as a speculative asset, and I think it has gone from being a potential means of exchange and a potential store of value to becoming a speculative asset, you know, which is fraught with risk.
There’s a lot of risk there. And I think as an industry, we really need to be talking about it and sort of pointing out, you know, the benefits of gold and silver. And, you know, not being anti Bitcoin per se, but just, you know, being realistic and saying pros and cons you know, it’s not tested in any, in any way in terms of, you know, doesn’t have that long term data and the volatility is just crazy.
You know, it is. Yeah. So I, I think that’s, that’s what’s happening and that’s my sense in our own definitely. But even yeah, UK, I’m not sure about Germany in recent days, but there was a lot of selling in Germany of gold in the last few months as well. And, the premiums are under pressure because there is quite a lot of inventory there, you know, so I think that will change but we may need to think.
Yeah, I think the 3000 number that could be a light bulb moment It’s hard to know everyone’s expecting the 2000 we got there a few years ago or very close to it and 2000 was important once we get through there That could lead to the influx of the man, but I think it looks like It looks like we might need to get to $3,000 and and then silver. Yeah, I think obviously $50 is a big one for, for, for silver, you know, but again, if the media isn’t covering it, there is, I think it’s more in America. It’s interesting. You guys in America have more of a tradition. There is a tradition in Germany, a hard money tradition. There is an Austrian in Switzerland to a degree.
But in America, you guys have it more. So there is more of an understanding of gold and silver, obviously, in your constitution, you know, people who are a little bit more aware of history in America it is more in your DNA should we say, and it was interesting with Costco that there was, they were saying demographically that they were seeing younger buyers come into the marketplace and they’re seeing women come into the marketplace as well.
So I think. I think that’s likely to continue because, you know, with the cost of living crisis, unfortunately, lots of young people, they can’t afford to save, they can’t afford to buy, sorry, they can’t, they can’t afford to save to buy a home because the price of property has become so crazy. So some of them are actually saying that, that they’re actually beginning to, and the inflation is high, so you’re not getting any yield in your savings in the bank.
So many of them are actually beginning to buy gold as a form of deposit to buy a family home in the coming years, you know, so hopefully. We’ll see a little bit of that in Ireland as well, but we’ll have to, unfortunately, I think we’ll have to see the media has to cover it, you know, because people do tend to trust, you know, the, the main newspapers, the main radio stations, and frequently if they don’t hear being covered, they’re just not aware of it, you know?
So yeah, we as an industry need to come together and just promote its benefits as a, as a hedge and as an asset and a form of money.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, you make a really good point. In terms of bitcoin and I just did an article this week talking about a little bit about bitcoin and pointing out the fact that that Bitcoin and gold aren’t the same and I think there’s in some people’s mind that that They’re almost as if it’s a substitutable thing, you know, you can have Bitcoin and gold.
They’re the same, and they actually don’t correlate very well. The correlation between gold and Bitcoin is almost zero over the long term. And so, you know, I’m, I’m like you, I’m not really anti Bitcoin. I’m more of a mentality. Why not both, you know? And, and. It is interesting to see that, that, you know, there’s that interest and maybe it’s just because it’s, you know, it’s technology as opposed to something old.
Maybe that intrigues people.
Mark O’Byrne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No technology. It’s, it’s, it’s sexy to use that word, you know, and we’re, we’re seduced by it and, and the media is, pushing it, you know, almost promoting it.
And the likes of Elon Musk, obviously he’s got a massive platform. He’s promoting even this DOGE coin, you know, Now we have the Department of Government, what’s it called? Department of Government?
Mike Maharrey: Department of Government Efficiency, I think.
Mark O’Byrne: Efficiency, that’s it, yeah. So, it is being promoted. And even, I mean, the head of BlackRock, you know, BlackRock is not an institution that I would trust particularly.
Larry Fink, you know, he has the position as digital gold, you know, so the meme, the narrative out there to younger people is that it’s digital gold and it has all the properties of gold, it’s just better than gold, you know, and it’s rare and it’s finite and but it, it doesn’t have all the properties of gold because, well, the, the, In with gold is it is a proven form of money.
It’s real money and the central banks are buying gold in huge volumes as you guys in money metals have been pointing out and you’re doing great research. You really are, you know, and if people knew if the media covered. What you guys are covering, then there would be a stampede in the gold if people knew what was happening, you know, if people knew where the Chinese bought 60 tons of gold last month, like that alone would be sort of alarm bells, but that doesn’t get reports in the media, you know, so, but meanwhile, you know, Elon Musk has something about Bitcoin that might get reported in the media, you know, So, and I am, I’m getting worried because I think, you know, the history of money is very interesting, and, you know, there used to be a great chart, you probably remember it, Mike, it was the, I think it said, what was it?
Reserve currency status does not last forever. And it basically showed. Portugal, roughly 100 years, Spain, roughly 800 years, Netherlands, France, Britain, and the U. S. And the U. S. also came to Scranton Woods in 1945, you know, we’re nearly, we’re nearly heading on 80 years, you know, so next year is the anniversary.
Some people say it was 44, some people say it was 45, it depends on when you time it. So, so reserve currency status doesn’t last and the dollar, I’m very pro American but you know, America and corporate America and banking America, which is not real America, but Wall Street and corporate America has been living beyond its means.
And the government is living beyond its means, you know, and that can only go on for so long as you know, and the debt is out of control as we know, you know, so it’s,, it’s not good. And the reserve currency status was based on America being a good economy, a strong economy, not based on debt and speculation.
And it was also based on the petrodollar. And now, you know, the Saudis, the Iranians, most of the Middle East, Russia, most of the energy producing nations in the world are, unfortunately, almost like enemies of America, you know, and it’s a very, very dangerous situation, you know. So, and it looks to me now that, that Bitcoin and the cryptos, they’re trying, they know the petrol dollar is over, so it looks like they’re trying to position a Bitcoin dollar Mm-Hmm. or a crypto dollar because tether is at the back end. And in, in some ways you need the, the mechanics is that you need dollars to buy Bitcoins via coin base.
So it’s sort of a, it’s almost a propping up. Bigger the crypto universe grows in terms of overall capitalization and the bigger the Bitcoin capitalization goes, the more demand there is for dollars and for U. S. Treasuries, you know, and I think that’s why it’s been promoted by Financial Times, Economist, you know, the big publications, the globalist publications are very much pushing it, you know, and, and they’re anti gold and anti silver, you know, and, and, and, and yet they say this is digital gold.
It’s like, but these are the same people who are anti gold. I’ve seen them be anti gold all their, all their lives, but like, but they’re pro digital gold. It’s like, you know, they’re not libertarian people, you know, they don’t, they don’t. They don’t believe gold and silver are money, and they don’t want it to be money, you know, so, you know, I think people should be very wary of it, and I have people telling me, see, what’s happening is a lot of the gold people are actually, and silver people, particularly silver people, because we used to get a good return on silver so a lot of them are Well, we’re going to get the return and go on Bitcoin and cryptos, and then we’re going to put it into gold and silver, but that’s a very risky strategy because, you know, I know senior people in IT, there’s backdoors into, into devices, the backdoors into exchanges, the hacking you know, just because you have something off your Bitcoin off in a treasure wall or something to have liquidity, you still have to get it back into the system and back into the technology. So, the US government has confiscated a huge amount of these assets. So, so there’s risk in, and there’s also price risk, you know, but I hear people all the time tell me, oh, you’re right.
Gold and silver are thing, and these are speculations, but I’m gonna make money on Bitcoin and crypto, and then I’m gonna put it into gold and silver. Yeah. And they tell me it’s gonna go up 10 x and then I’m gonna sell it. But I’m like, what if it goes up eight x and it collapses? Right. Why not just the silver?
Cause silver is probably going to go eight X or 10 X. So why not just go straight to the gold and the silver to real money rather than speculating about the other thing and potentially losing all your money and then not having the money put into gold and silver. You know, I’m actually quite concerned about it because I think that’s what’s happened to a lot of people of the younger generation and even my generation, men, men in their fifties.
A lot of people are quite, you know, the financial pressures and there is an element of this There’s a get rich quick thing going on, and there’s also a photo thing, you know, and the photo thing is happening big time now because they’ve been hearing this for years and now they’re going, Oh, it’s 100, 000. I should have bought 200,000. So I think it’s an important thing we need to discuss because, you know, it’s, it’s been very, I was actually pro it. I was one of the first people to write about it because it did actually have a lot of the qualities of gold in terms of, you know, the decentralized privacy.
21 million. So rarity, you know, it did mimic some of those qualities, you know, but it’s not, it’s, it’s not digital gold. It’s, it’s, it’s a speck of speck of acid. Unfortunately, I think Wall Street in the same way that manipulate gold and silver price, I think they will, if they’re not already manipulating Bitcoin, which I think they probably are. I think they will get control of it via they’ve set up so many different products now and, and, and even BlackRock and these guys are in Binance left, right and center. You’ve got the exchange rate performance. Well, you know, so at least with China and Russia and and the central banks in the world are buying gold.
So that’s going to create, you know, a true fee market price for gold will be seen at some stage in coming months and years, but same with silver because of the industrial demand. So the manipulation we’ve seen for many years will end in gold and silver. I believe it’s ending right now. I do genuinely believe that, you know, and I think we’ll see that in the coming months.
But I think the opposite might be the case with bitcoin, you know, and it may be pumped higher But it can be dumped as quickly, you know so I just think people need to be wary and I just think we all need to be talking about it because it’s it’s it is it’s it’s a risk it’s a risk to everybody because You know, we saw what happened recent years the push for digital ids and I think that push is going to come again You know And with digital currency comes digital ID.
So if you’re a true libertarian, you need to be sticking with goals, you know, practice what we preach,
Mike Maharrey: You can hold it in your hands.
Mark O’Byrne: Well, I really say false or a combination thereof. Yeah. If you feel very secure in your own home, you know, some people don’t, if you get your sleepless nights, don’t most people.
Are most people are fairly comfortable with it, but it depends where you live and all the rest, which so, but it’s interesting that repatriation thing is very interesting. And I think we’re going to see more of that. And I think, yeah, because we’re the benefit of that in bulk. And we had a lot of American clients who are storing via us in Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore, but now I think it’s closer given the we’ve never seen such high geopolitical risk in the world So, you know and and there’s a lot of fear mongering now about nuclear war I think we’ll pull back from the brink, but it’s highly irresponsible What’s happening and we need to as Churchill once said we need to jaw jaw up not war war, you know So, but everybody, I think, should repatriate their gold as much as possible.
I think you should have it close to the home. So if you’re an American citizen, have it in vaults, you know, in, in Idaho, it’s a great location, or if you live near Miami, have it near Miami. If you are, you know, safety deposit box in your nearest city you know, and, and, and, and I’m encouraging people for many years to store some of them as well, because The system is very close, and it’s a good jurisdiction as well, it’s very, very liquid.
So, but it’s all about different eggs in different baskets, you know, but having some folks at home is very, very important.
Mike Maharrey: Yeah, I agree. Well, where can folks find find your work and find out more about Terra? Can give us the, give us, give us your locations in the net, internet world there.
Mark O’Byrne: Yeah, thank you, Mike.
So it’s tarcoins.com. We’ve been very much focused on sort of wholesale and selling to partners like Money Metals, who are now a very strong partner of ours. But we’ve actually just launched. So on that website, yeah, you can see the list of the distributors. Both in the U S in the UK, in Ireland and we’ve distributors in, in many, many countries around the world.
So, you can buy directly from those distributors. We’re beginning to do some retail with, with, with, with companies and with certain size orders over certain limits. So all that information is on taracoins.com. And then if you’re buying for a gift. We have a new website called goldandsilvertreesoflife.ie
“IE” is the Irish domain. Search domain. So it’s gold. It’s a bit of a medical gold and silver trees of life dot I E and people can buy it with that one. You’re actually buying it as a gift, so you’ll get these beautiful Walnut presentation boxes and you get the certificate of authenticity. Yeah, so they come in the capsule, in the box, with the certificate of authenticity.
And, again, they’re great gifts for people for anniversaries, for birthdays. You have people buying them for their children’s graduations, just to celebrate and to reward their children for the hard slog in university. So, they’re great ways to just mark events in people’s lives, you know, and then for, for, for, for bullying, yeah, you can, as I said, you can buy by distributors or for a certain size, you can buy directly, directly from us, whether it be the, the, the new brilliant uncirculated bullying rounds and then with, Money Metals, we also have the, the, the bullying rounds that we mentioned with Regency Mint.
So they can be bought at their, the lower cost rounds and they can be bought with Money Metals and delivered, delivered around the world and also stored with, with, with, with money metals, you know? So, yeah, we’re on the usual so we’ve been taking off some of the channels. We’re no longer on LinkedIn, but we’re on, we’re on Twitter.
We’re still on Twitter. And but the primary thing is taracoins.com and you can sign up for the market updates and that there, you know,
Mike Maharrey: Well, outstanding. I know it’s getting late where you are, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna let you go, but I really appreciate you taking a little time out of your day to chat.
Very enjoyable, very insightful. And I really do encourage people to check out these coins. They are gorgeous and, you know, Christmas is right around the corner. So if you’re looking for that gift. That’s a great option.
Mark O’Byrne: Absolutely. It really is. Thanks for Thanksgiving. It might be a bit too late for Thanksgiving.
So but definitely people should make it for Christmas Sunday. They’re beautiful, beautiful gifts. So, yeah, thank you for saying that, Mike. Really appreciate it. And thank you for having me on today.
Mike Maharrey: Absolutely, well thank you.
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