Donald Trump’s return to the global political forefront as the 47th US President came after a tumultuous and very eventful campaign and signified a decisive gear shift for American politics. As he made abundantly clear in his inaugural speech and as he demonstrated in the first months of his presidency, he is committed to reversing most of the signature policies of his predecessor. He proved as much by signing dozens of Executive Orders and rescinding 78 of former President Joe Biden’s within hours of the transition. By now, it is clear that the country is set to return to many of its pre-2020 goals and priorities, especially when it comes to immigration, economic and social policies, foreign relations and economic cooperation strategies.

In mid March, gold shattered yet another psychological barrier, this time by surging past $3,000 per ounce and even rising over $3,100 just a few days later. Justifiably, this sparked widespread jubilation among most precious metal investors. However, at the same time, there were some voices calling for profit taking, or even confidently declaring that the yellow metal had “topped” and it was time to sell. After all, it has indeed climbed steadily from its 2020 low of around $1,700/oz, delivering a roughly 76% gain in just five years. However, gold’s story is far from over, and all of the economic, geopolitical, and monetary forces driving its trajectory suggest it has room to run—especially over the long haul.

BFI Bullion has made the decision to discontinue our Collective storage option. We made this decision not only to ensure our offering optimally serves the current needs of our precious metal’s investors, but also to lay the foundation for a sequence of service upgrades that will follow.

It may have been easy to miss if you were justwatching the daily news, but those that keep their thumb on the pulse of thegold market, surely know of the mass “migration” of physical gold that movedfrom London to New York at the start of the year. The mainstream media blamedit all on the threat of Trump’s tariffs pushing the futures price of goldhigher in New York, but frankly there are more questions here than thissimplistic answer can address. What is clear is that “now” is still the righttime to buy gold.

Since Donald Trump was elected and has now been inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States of America, he hasn’t wasted time in sharing his plans to cut federal spending and reduce the size of government. To do this, Trump, using an executive order on day one in office, created a presidential advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or the DOGE, which will now be led by Elon Musk alone (after Vivek Ramaswamy stepped down to run for governor of the state of Ohio). In any case, the DOGE better get hoppin’ as I have a story of government waste for you today…

Nothing like some good news to usher in the new year. Our friends at Copenhagen Atomics are taking great strides as we roll into 2025. Their joint project with PSI (the Paul Scherrer Institute) in Switzerland marks yet just another key milestone they reached as they prepare to run their first live test reactor.

In the spirit of Christmas, we’d like to share the story of the Asian Pacific Children’s Fund, a non-profit organization supporting children that don’t have a family to celebrate the holidays with – to put it lightly.

The BFI Capital Group celebrated its annual 2-day Christmas Team Event last week in Lenzerheide, a mountain resort and well-known ski area in the canton of Graubünden, in the southeast corner of Switzerland. As we do for our blog readers every year, we want to try and put you right there in the mountains with us and share the “Alpen Stimmung”.

Since the start of 2024, we’ve been following a fascinating trend amongst prospects and clients alike wanting to purchase gold through us at BFI Bullion. You may have been living under a rock if you haven’t followed the climb of gold’s spot price this year. But with this price surge, we’ve also seen the rise of the desire, the hesitation, and then the ultimate regret experienced by investors who wanted to purchase gold but held off doing so because of the higher prices.

Gold has been a symbol of wealth, privilege, opulence and power for millennia. It has always been “the metal of kings” and it has been used to show off affluence and project dominance since time immemorial. However, gold owners have also been perceived as greedy, secretive, or suspicious for not investing their savings like “normal” investors. They instead choose to “hoard gold bars and coins” like Scrooge McDuck instead of opening a savings account or buying some bonds like everyone else.

The buzz is building as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) prepares to officially launch its Gold Bar Integrity (GBI) database, the first steps in leading the world’s gold supply chain towards greater standardization, product integrity, and transparency. The physical precious metals market is taking the opportunities of this digital age in a new direction, and aXedras has harnessed that technology as creator, developer, and what will be the ongoing technical support behind it.

BFI Bullion’s managing director, Scott Schamber, recently appeared on a podcast out of the U.S. where he spoke in detail about the services BFI Bullion provides, how they set themselves apart from other international precious metals dealers, and how the political polarization in the US is causing investors to look for investment options – as well as alternative citizenship - outside of the US.

In a matter of days, barring similar circumstances to 2020, the most powerful nation on the planet will have a new leader. The implications for the rest of the world, both economically and geopolitically, are extremely important, as are those for both American and international investors. As is customary by now, this vote has been described by the media as “the most important election in history”, like the one four years ago and the one before that too. Levity aside though, it is not an exaggeration to say that this particular election cycle has been different than the ones that preceded it on quite a few different levels.

In our last edition of our BFI InSights, we looked at the new role gold is playing as an anchor in today’s global financial system. We made the case why precious metals in general have a promising outlook for the months and years to come. Over the course of the summer, gold has moved decisively higher, pushing through some very important resistance points and currently prices are trading around USD 2’615, so in recent weeks there has been a more than 10% gain for the yellow metal. However, as explained in our last update, the action in the gold market can’t be seen as isolated from all the other ongoing developments around the world.

The global financial, monetary and economic landscape is once again shifting and the changes that are already underway are bound to have a significant impact on investment strategies. After much speculation and anticipation, the Federal Reserve recently announced its decision to cut interest rates by 50 basis points, very likely signaling a return to a more dovish policy direction.

As September rolled into October, tens of thousands of Bank of America customers found themselves logging into their accounts only to see that those accounts were temporarily unavailable…or even worse, with a zero balance! Some were stranded without access to their direct salary deposits, while others couldn’t pay rent on time. Let this be a warning the computer glitches are a glaring reminder of why “jurisdictional diversification” needs to become part of your vocabulary!

For the 14th year in a row, Switzerland continued its innovative advantage when it again ranked 1st in the Global Innovation Index (GII) published by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The index assesses world economies leading in global innovation from amongst 133 countries using some 80 different indicators to measure their overall strengths and weaknesses.

It probably goes without saying that when you plan on buying physical bullion, you need to choose the dealer you are going to purchase from and store with well. Like any investment, that can be hard enough to do, but in a recent (and yet another!) case out of the U.S., apparently even choosing a reputable, recommended dealer isn’t enough. Once again, the victims are U.S. retirement account holders that were simply trying to protect their wealth.

If you read the (BFI Bullion Quarterly) Digger regularly, you know that we try to focus on and address what we are hearing about from you: our clients, partners, and other friends. While the first half of the year has been nothing short of wild, we continue to hear the same recurring questions in our conversations: one is no surprise, while the other is a classic.

In a very recent podcast by the World Gold Council, as part of their “Unearthed” series, they sat down with the Royal Canadian Mint to discuss what role the Mint is playing in shoring up the integrity and transparency of the global gold industry. The RCM is committed to implementing the Gold Bar Integrity Programme, and in doing so, proudly names aXedras’s technology and ecosystem for that purpose.