Happy Thursday, GoldBuzzers!

The Treasury gave gold us two headlines in one day, and both spread fast. A new coin with the President's face, and a straight answer on what’s inside Fort Knox.

Ok. Let’s get into it. ⬇️

Gold finished Wednesday modestly higher near $4,060 per ounce while silver dropped about 1.5 percent to $57.31, a split session for two metals that usually move together.

June producer prices fell 0.3 percent, with core PPI up a softer-than-expected 0.2 percent, and the report landed one day after a cooler consumer inflation print, giving traders two reasons in two days to trim their Fed rate hike bets.

Oil is still the complication. The US reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports and kept up airstrikes after Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, lifting Brent toward $86 and keeping enough inflation risk alive that markets still price roughly a 44 percent chance of a September hike.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told the Senate the central bank has "no tolerance" for persistently elevated inflation. Gold is holding above $4,000 but stalling below the $4,090 resistance zone that has capped every rebound attempt so far this month, while silver's heavier industrial exposure left it on the losing side of the split and stuck near multi-month lows.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave gold two mentions in a single day on Wednesday, and both moved quickly across precious metals feeds. One was a new coin carrying President Trump's face. The other was a direct answer to years of questions about what’s actually sitting inside Fort Knox. Neither is quite the boost the headlines suggest, and the reasons are simple enough to lay out.

Let’s start with the coin. Bessent confirmed that the US Mint has begun striking a $1 coin marking America's 250th anniversary, the semiquincentennial dated 1776 to 2026.

The front carries President Trump's portrait alongside "LIBERTY" and "IN GOD WE TRUST." The back shows the presidential seal with the figure 250. Bessent wrote that the coin honors "the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism." Production is running at the Philadelphia Mint, with release expected in the fall.

One detail matters for anyone who holds metal. This is a gold-colored coin, not a gold bullion one. It uses a clad, non-precious composition, so it carries no bullion value beyond its dollar face. Several outlets still ran "gold coin" in their headlines, which is where the confusion starts.

A separate 24-karat commemorative gold coin cleared the Commission of Fine Arts back in March, and the two projects are not the same thing. The legal footing comes from the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, signed during Trump's first term, which lets the Treasury issue semiquincentennial dollar coins through 2026.

Bessent has pointed to the 1926 Calvin Coolidge coin as the precedent for showing a living president on a coin.

I think the Fort Knox comment carried more weight. Asked in a Fox News interview whether he had visited the vault, Bessent said the gold is "present and accounted for" and called the US holding the largest in the world, worth over a trillion dollars at current prices.

That trillion-dollar figure needs a correction, because it’s easy to misread. Fort Knox itself holds about 147.3 million ounces. At a gold price near $4,070, that stockpile comes to roughly $600 billion, not a trillion. The trillion-dollar number applies to the entire US reserve of 261.5 million ounces, spread across Fort Knox, West Point, Denver, and New York. It’s a real figure, but it belongs to the full reserve, not to the Kentucky vault on its own.

The audit question stayed open too. The Treasury runs an internal check every year, but the last comprehensive public inspection of the bars ran back in 1974, which is why groups like the Sound Money Defense League keep pressing for an independent count. Bessent's assurance does not change that record. It does, for now, put the "gold is gone" story to rest.

The real story runs underneath both items. That 261.5 million ounces still sits on the government's books at a statutory price of $42.22 an ounce, a number set in 1973 and left alone ever since. At true market value, the same reserve clears well over a trillion dollars, while the ledger records around $11 billion of it. The book value captures under one percent of what the metal would fetch today.

That gap has pulled in serious attention, from a Federal Reserve research note last August to congressional proposals to mark the gold closer to market. A revaluation would lift the government's asset position on paper. It would not pay down the roughly $39 trillion debt directly, a limit to hold onto whenever the idea comes back around, but it could be used to give gold-backing to new US treasuries.

Gold itself is trading near $4,070 as of Wednesday, down from the record near $5,600 it set in late January but still up sharply from a year ago. So the practical read is narrow for now. A commemorative coin doesn’t move bullion demand, but it does once again bring gold to mainstream attention with the public.

Confirming the vault is full is also reassuring, but the revaluation debate is the piece that could meaningfully affect the gold price if it shifts from talk to actual policy, and that’s the one to watch closely.

That’s all for this Thursday, folks. See you on Sunday.

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Rick Adams
Founder, GoldBuzz
rick@goldbuzz.com