➡ The value of a currency, like the dollar, is not determined by military power or control over resources like oil, but by its gold value. Despite the belief that winning wars and controlling oil-rich countries strengthens the dollar, this is not true. The real strength of a currency comes from its ability to be converted back into gold. Regardless of the outcome of wars, the dollar’s value will not benefit. The gold value of the dollar is what truly matters.
➡ The value of credit comes from money, specifically gold, which is why the US dollar became a global reserve currency. However, if the dollar loses its gold value, countries may abandon it in favor of gold. This shift is already happening, and it could lead to a new credit system based on gold and silver, created by the free market. This process could take decades, but it could also lead to a more balanced and decentralized global economy.

The truth is, it’s a currency’s gold value that gives a military its power, not military power that gives a currency its value. The currency is what gives them the influence, it’s not the influence that gives them the functioning currency. Hey guys, Raf here from The Endgame Investor, and it’s been a while, and I had a valid excuse. Another war broke out. And there’s been sirens here on and off, and I’m in and out of bomb shelters every night, and I haven’t gotten much sleep. Don’t worry, I took some of my silver coins, I made silver bullets out of them, and I shot down some of the missiles that were coming over us, and everything’s fine now.

It’s the right beer now, pour it all and work it out. Though it hasn’t been as bad as the last round in June against Iran, I don’t really enjoy war. But now that another war has indeed broken out, I figured that I’d talk about the dollar in the context of this war. There is a particular stance that I saw written by James Hickman, who works at Schiff’s Sovereign, which is one of Peter Schiff’s companies. And he put out the thesis that if America wins the war, or America and Israel wins the war, meaning there is a regime change in Iran, and it becomes a Western-friendly country as it was before 1979.

Many people don’t know this, but Iran and Israel were allies from the founding of the state in 1948 until 1979, the Islamic Revolution. Iran was actually one of the main trading partners of Israel until 1979, providing it with Iranian oil, especially during the 1967 war, the Six-Day War. And one of the reasons for that war was the blocking of the Straits of Tehran in 1967. Those are the straits that lead up into Israel through the Red Sea. That is how the country imported Iranian oil up to that time. So the two countries were allies, and a US victory and an Israeli victory would be that Iran turns into an ally again.

Hickman’s point was that if that happens, then the dollar would strengthen, because the US would be able to conquer more countries and force them to subsidize its debt as it does as an empire, and that would give the dollar many more years of strength. And I’m going to read the parts of his article that I agree with and I disagree with and explain why that is not true. There is no binary option here. The dollar is on its way out because it doesn’t matter how much resources the US controls through its empire proxies. What matters is the gold convertibility of the dollar.

The dollar is not an oil derivative. It is a gold derivative. It still is a gold derivative. The entire concept of a petrodollar, it sounds convincing, but it’s not true. And the reason is actually pretty simple. The argument that a fiat currency gets its value from force, that the paying of taxes in that fiat currency is what bestows value upon a fiat currency and by extension, if America takes over all these other countries with oil like Venezuela, Iran, etc., and then controls those resources, then the dollar gets strengthened. That is an extension of the argument that force is what confers value upon a currency, but that’s not true.

Why isn’t it true? What’s the easiest proof against that theory? Hyperinflation itself. All hyperinflations happen in countries where the currency that’s hyperinflating is backed up by force of violence, a threat to kill you if you do not pay taxes in that currency, and nevertheless, the currencies collapse anyway. The force does not confer value on a currency. Only its convertibility back into money does. And so whatever way this war goes, whether America and Israel win or lose, or whoever you want to define that, the dollar will not benefit either way. What matters is the gold value of the dollar, not the oil value of the dollar.

The oil value of the dollar stems from its gold value. Everything stems from its gold value. That is inescapable. So let’s go into this article and what I believe he is right about, James Hickman, and what he’s wrong about. And quickly before we get to that, check out the Endgame Investor on Substack, where I wrote about this in a very coherent, concise way. I always say I’m a better writer than I am a podcaster. I kind of ramble a little bit, and I don’t really like doing that. So check out the crisp version of this thesis at the Endgame Investor.

I will put a link in the description below to the exact post, and you can read it for free. And don’t forget, take some of your gold and silver and put it in a dirty man’s safe use code Endgame10 at checkout for 10% off. Link in the description below. And get your gold and silver at Miles Franklin. Mention the Endgame Investor. Link at the description below. This is the article written by James Hickman, The Precipice, March 2nd, 2026. There’s this nice graphic here of a guy jumping off of what looks like Upper Wisconsin into Canada, maybe, or into the abyss, which maybe Canada is the abyss.

Kind of seems that way. But we will start in the middle over here. He says he wants to focus on two key points. Very quickly, the first point, I agree with the second point. I do not. The first point is, the first is that, regardless of how someone feels about this conflict, World War III is less likely today than it was on Friday, and it’s not hard to understand why. U.S. military capabilities have been on full display this year, first in Venezuela, where Special Operations Forces managed to extract one of the world’s most tightly protected dictators.

And it was over in a matter of hours. Only weeks later, we see total dominance of Iran’s air defense systems, most of which are Russian or Chinese technology. In other words, China and Russia saw their military technology completely embarrassed by the United States. And this unmitigated defeat makes them both less interested in taking on America’s military. More importantly, Russia is completely depleted after four years of war in Ukraine. China’s military has almost no combat experience and has never had to project power beyond the South China Sea. So while they’ll certainly phone in their condemnations and strongly worded tweets, these countries have neither the capacity nor the inclination for war.

That, I completely agree with. America is an unmatched military superpower. It remains that way. However, its military superpower status depends on the dollar surviving. Because once the country goes through a financial crisis, it won’t have the ability to project military power because it’s too expensive to do so. But anyway, the second point here, he says, is what’s really at stake. And here, I believe that James Hickman is completely wrong, as well as everyone who believes that the dollar is really a petrodollar, that it is backed by oil, it is not. Military action of this scale, he says, brings almost infinite permutations.

And yes, there are many possibilities which result in the US subduing Iran’s military, and a new America-friendly regime takes control of the country. By exerting de facto control, or at least significant influence, over most of the largest oil supplies on the planet, Iran, Venezuela, the US, most of the Gulf states, America would be able to reestablish the US dollar’s dominance. Here is where he is 100% wrong. Every country, he says, that wants to buy oil, which is pretty much everyone, would need to own and hold US dollars to pay for it. This means that foreign countries must continue buying vast quantities of treasury bonds, helping to finance America’s deficit and keep interest rates down.

But there are other outcomes as well. If the remaining military campaign does not go well, if the Iranian regime manages to suppress the protesters, survive the bombings, and maintain their government power, then the US could be in trouble. And here he continues by saying that if that happens, if the US unfriendly end to this war happens, then the dollar will suffer much faster, and it will collapse, and then the empire will go away. My contention is that whatever the outcome of this war, the dollar is going to die anyway. And just because the US would force countries to use the dollar to buy oil that it controls, doesn’t give the dollar itself any value.

The gold value of the dollar is what gives the dollar value and the ability to purchase oil in the first place. Look at the countries that are hyperinflating. Both Venezuela and Iran are hyperinflating countries. They are both countries with destroyed currencies, and they both have huge amounts of oil. It doesn’t make a difference. To argue that the dollar has value because it is backed by oil is cart before the horse logic. The truth is, it’s a currency’s gold value that gives a military its power, not military power that gives a currency its value. Hickman goes on to say that if America loses this war, then China will organize a new Bretton Woods system under its own auspices or teaming up with Russia that would create a new Bretton Woods system that would destroy the dollar.

But that is impossible because you cannot create credit out of nothing. Credit draws its value from money itself, from gold. The way the US was able to convince countries to take its dollar is because it was trustworthy and it was backed by gold when it started to spread all over the world. That’s what makes it a reserve currency. But if the dollar has no gold value, it doesn’t matter how much oil the empire controls because it is the currency that allows that control to happen. It’s the gold value of the country that allows that control to actually work.

And if the dollar is hyperinflating and the only choice countries have is to abandon it and to use gold instead. There is no other alternative. The dollar is the premier credit vehicle of the world. Every other credit system is based on it. But if you want to get around the dollar, you’ll have to use gold directly. And countries can do that. They would have to give up the ability to inflate their own currencies. That’s true. But they can get around the dollar only with gold itself. And that is what is already happening. Here’s an excerpt from an article by Daniel Oliver, my favorite gold and silver analyst, and he’s right about this.

This is my research February 9th, 2026, an article called Just the Beginning. The key paragraph that I want to review here is this one. The difference, however, he says, is that during previous episodes of QE, he’s talking about the QE money was dispersed throughout the globe, sparing the US the full brunt of the inflationary effects. If gold is replacing the US dollar as the international settlement asset, which seems to be ongoing, then the new QE money will mostly stay right here in the US. As inflation kicks up again, the bond investors begin demanding a yield premium to protect against inflation.

The Fed will find it has to buy ever more bonds to affect interest rates. This will be the second phase of the gold bull market, a move that has not yet begun, the move to reflect the market realization that the Fed is powerless to save private equity or control interest rates without buying the entire bond market. This process will play out regardless of what happens with the war. This happens in every endgame that has ever happened in history. As an empire crumbles, you have more and more wars on the edges of the empire, and eventually the currency collapses and the empire goes away.

It doesn’t matter how much of the world they control at the time. It doesn’t matter how much influence they have. The currency is what gives them the influence. It’s not the influence that gives them the functioning currency. Once you understand that, you understand there is no replacement for the dollar except for money itself. Because the dollar is a derivative of money. It is not a derivative of oil. So whether or not America wins the war, however you want to define that, what matters is the gold price of the dollar, whether the dollar can acquire any money at all.

If it can’t, America might have conquered the entire planet, and the dollar will collapse anyway, and then it will all disintegrate. And we will go back to square one using gold and silver as money. And whoever is able to do that honestly in a free market way without stealing, they will be the ones with the privilege of creating the next credit system. It’s not going to be China. It’s not going to be Russia. It’s not going to be any government today. It’s going to start from the free market sprouting up from the bottom and moving higher, and that process will take many decades at least.

Remember, it took a thousand years post collapse of the Roman Empire to rebuild society as it once was in the Renaissance. This time I don’t think it will take a thousand years, but it’s not going to be an immediate transition into a new currency credit system run by China or Russia or any other regional or superpower today. We’re going back to gold and silver. There is nothing any country can do about it. And once we do, we will be a decentralized human race again. And from there, the free market can sprout and thrive. And perhaps we can go back to a more sane planet and finally live in balance with our surroundings again.

This is Ralphie, the in-game investor, and I’ll see you guys tomorrow with the silver report. [tr:trw].

See more of Rafi Farber on their Public Channel and the MPN Rafi Farber channel.