Frank Giustra’s book tour could start in London
- 7 July 2025
Canadian Mining Hall of Famer Frank Giustra describes the book he’s written about his life as an autobiography “with a twist”. He thinks we might be surprised, too, by what’s to come for gold, Bitcoin, the US Fed chair and stockmarket, among other things.
Giustra’s life story will be a fascinating read. He’s a giant of global mine financing and philanthropy but remains as self-effacing as ever, saying on his induction into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame earlier this year: “All I do is surround myself with really smart people and they do all the work.”
All going to plan the autobiography might be out in time for signings at Resourcing Tomorrow 2025 in London in December, where Giustra, CEO of the Fiore Group, will again be a keynote speaker. Like last year, when Europe’s major mining industry gathering was waiting for Donald Trump’s second inauguration as US president, the conference will host closely watched debates on international trade wars, real wars and maybe even gold’s role in a not-so-secret campaign to reset the global economy – aka the other Great Reset.
That could be a standalone chapter in Giustra’s book: “I’ve been talking about this for many, many years, before it was a popular idea,” Giustra said on a new Red Cloud Securities webcast. “The most feedback I got in those days was a lot of eye rolls. It’s now becoming a reality where important people are talking about it.”
He puts that down to accelerating de-dollarisation and now Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that’s “adding dynamite to a dumpster fire” further undermining the US dollar. “We were already on a path to perdition with respect to the ongoing deficits, which were running at $2 trillion a year. Then you add in the additional deficit caused by the bill and the numbers start to get ridiculous. In 10 years [the US is going to have] between $57-and-60 trillion of federal debt. That’s an insane number. What Elon Musk and Rand Paul and Tom Massie are saying is not wrong. This bill will help bankrupt America, and as Musk put it very clearly … All the politicians are whistling past the graveyard.
“The day of reckoning is coming and how it plays out exactly I don’t really know. But I can assure you that the value of the [US] dollar is going to go down. The value of gold is going to go up.
“All of this is happening while China and the BRICS are building a mirror system to the existing global financial system. You couple the mirror system with the de-dollarisation and then you accept the fact that all those countries selling their … US treasuries are the same countries buying gold at an accelerated rate. The purchase by central banks really started in earnest about 15 years ago and over the last three years it's really accelerated. And I suspect by all the central bank surveys that have been done that the plan is to continue to de-dollarise and add to gold reserves. There’s a function to this accumulation of gold and that is to use it as what I believe will be a net settlement asset in bilateral trade.
“Gold will be the anchor for central banks. It’s already surpassed the Euro as a holding in central banks. So now it’s the dollar first, gold second, Euro third in terms of holdings. I think that trend will continue and eventually gold will be incorporated into the monetary system, whether by the US or by the BRICs. We'll have to see.”
On the subject of resets, Giustra says he was “mowing lawns for 50c an hour” in 1971 when the gold standard was jettisoned with the metal at $35/oz. “I didn’t buy my first gold bullion until 2001 when it was around $250-300 an ounce. That’s when I really loaded up. Then I bought again in 2018. I’ve never sold any of my physical gold. I just refuse to sell it.”
He’d earlier moved back to Canada with his Italian parents after they had spent time in Argentina during a period of political and economic turmoil. That ultimately cost his father a fortune.
“He lost everything to inflation and what happened in Argentina can happen elsewhere,” Giustra says. “People don’t think that’s possible but just look at the behaviour and the piling on of debt and deficits.”
Giustra thinks physical gold and cash are two things you want to be holding onto “when the poop hits the fan”. He likes certain mining equities, of course, but recommends geographic diversity – just in case.
“You can’t really predict timing or the exact outcome of this crisis but you should be standing as far away from that fan as possible,” he says. “That means you have to play defensive.
“Defensive to me means you don’t buy overpriced US equities now. They’re the most overpriced they've been in history, and it’s a bubble. Bubbles tend to burst at some point.
“You’d stay away from the longer maturity bonds. Inflation is going to come back … So stay away from long-term bonds.
“Be skewed towards hard assets, commodities, because as the dollar starts to get devalued, and you’re seeing it already, commodity prices start to go up. So be invested in commodities: metals, energy, etc.
“And the best hard asset of all is obviously gold. You have to own physical gold. And I'll say that again, physical, not paper, because in a crisis, that paper gold, I can assure you, will not be there when you go to grab it.”
While interest on US treasury debt might be the least of the country’s concerns down the track, Giustra thinks president Trump will pursue replacement of outgoing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell with someone other than a “sound money person” like Judy Shelton, even though Trump previously nominated the gold-backed-US-treasuries advocate for the job.
“Trump would rather have a Fed chair that will take interest rates down to 1% rather than a sound money person, which Judy is, so I don't think she's going to make Fed chair,” Giustra says.
Gold-convertible US bonds? Giustra believes two unlikely things would need to happen. First, an audit of Fort Knox, which has “disappeared from the discourse” after some fanfare. “Next, and this is the more interesting point, you’d have to revalue the treasury gold holdings to the market price which the US has been a bit reluctant to do because … it’s kind of a vote of no confidence in the US dollar and it’s a way to admit that gold has value. They’ve always tried to educate us that it’s an ancient relic. It’s not necessary. They would have to admit that it has value.”
Gold-versus-cryptocurrency 2025 at Resourcing Tomorrow? Just don’t mention a certain US billionaire with large Bitcoin holdings.
“I never had a problem with Bitcoin,” says Giustra. “I have a problem with what the Michael Saylors of the world are saying. He said something a couple months ago and he keeps saying these very dumb and dangerous things.
“Number one, that gold is the king of garbage investments. He actually said that. That’s got to go down as the dumbest quote of 2025.
“And then, Bitcoin is going to $13 million a coin; $500 trillion of global assets are going into Bitcoin. Bitcoin solves every problem that this world is producing. It’s ridiculous stuff.
“Will Bitcoin ever be the equivalent of gold? I don't think so and it’s for one really major reason. Central banks are buying gold, a lot of it, all over the world.
“We have all these people saying [Bitcoin is] going to this price and that price – going to the moon and the stars. That's hype.
“When there’s so much noise and effort put into promoting something and you compare that to another asset class which is being quietly accumulated and covertly in places like Saudi Arabia and China … I know where I’m going to place my bets.
“I like to buy things that are being quietly accumulated not heavily and shamelessly promoted.”
