Scottsdale Mint's Phair: Eroding Trust Is Pushing Investors Into Gold

Josh Phair runs one of the larger private mints in the US, so when he describes why people are buying gold, he's speaking from an order book, not a spreadsheet forecast.

Speaking to MINING.COM this week, the Scottsdale Mint CEO called gold a "trustless asset." His argument: investors no longer trust government-issued economic data from any nation, and they don't trust the parties on the other side of global trade. That combination, he said, is steering money into gold in a way he hasn't seen before.

There's signal here. A mint owner sees demand ahead of the official statistics, and a claim grounded in distrust of institutions describes a buyer who doesn't bolt at the first soft data release. That kind of motivation tends to last.

There's also self-interest. Phair sells physical metal, so framing the macro backdrop as gold-friendly is hardly a stretch for him. This is one executive's characterization of demand, not audited flow data. Hold both ideas together.

For US buyers, the more immediate lever sits at the Federal Reserve. Gold pays no yield, so the level of real interest rates sets the opportunity cost of holding it. When the Fed leans dovish and real yields fall, non-yielding gold gets more attractive; a hawkish turn does the opposite. The distrust story and the rate story can pull in the same direction — or fight each other.

Our read: take Phair's comment as texture on why physical demand has been resilient, and let the hard numbers settle the question. US Mint bullion coin sales, ETF holdings and central-bank purchases are what confirm whether the mood is real money.