Desperate Banks, Controls & Credit Signals Favour Rising Gold in 2026

In this first Gold Matters discussion for 2026, VON GREYERZ partners Matthew Piepenburg and Jonny Haycock address the critical themes impacting the precious metals markets with refreshing clarity.

Haycock opens the conversation by placing the recent volatility and price action in the gold and silver markets within the necessary context. Despite the headlines in late January, both metals continue to find their stride as well as a secular direction north.

Speaking directly to the headlines of January’s “Silver Friday,” Piepenburg holds nothing back in describing the event as an entirely engineered price-flushing by the CME and Western exchanges to effectively bail the larger bullion banks out of an otherwise fatal short squeeze in silver. For Piepenburg, this choreographed price fall was not a sign of demand risk for silver, but rather of derivative risk for wrongly positioned banks. Despite their clear yet waning powers of paper price manipulation, these Western exchanges and banks cannot solve for the rising and more powerful forces of supply and demand for the physical metals, whose longer-term direction will continue higher.

Haycock addresses equally rising concerns over percolating capital controls and other historically rhyming repression mechanisms emanating from debt-strapped and hence desperately centralising sovereigns. He points to recent passport proposals out of the U.S., as well as alarming tax legislation out of Holland, as examples of the same. In addition, Haycock discusses the various indicators pointing to ever-rising and grossly inflated stock markets, particularly within the U.S.

Piepenburg addresses such market and banking cracks within the context of an otherwise ignored private credit market, whose default rates and banking exposures are eerily reminiscent of pre-2008 banking, credit and default risks. For both Piepenburg and Haycock, each of the foregoing market, banking and historical risks simply confirms the larger message of preserving wealth outside of these fractured systems via privately vaulted precious metals in uniquely protected jurisdictions such as Switzerland.

Piepenburg addresses such market and banking cracks within the context of an otherwise ignored private credit market, whose default rates and banking exposures are eerily reminiscent of pre-08 banking, credit and default risks. For both Piepenburg and Haycock, each of the foregoing market, banking and historical risks simply confirms the larger message of preserving wealth outside of these fractured systems via privately vaulted precious metals in uniquely protected jurisdictions like Switzerland.

VonGreyerz.gold

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