{"id":2648802,"date":"2026-08-24T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigntexas-and-florida-are-quietly-reviving-the-financial-stability-of-the-gold-standard\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T09:07:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:07:21","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigntexas-and-florida-are-quietly-reviving-the-financial-stability-of-the-gold-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigntexas-and-florida-are-quietly-reviving-the-financial-stability-of-the-gold-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas And Florida Are Reviving The Stability Of The Gold Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaigntexas-and-florida-are-quietly-reviving-the-financial-stability-of-the-gold-standard%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2648802&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Starting september 1, Texas will recognize gold and silver as legal tender, following FloridaS lead, with both states establishing systems that allow residents to hold metal and settle debts outside of Federal Reserve-issued currency. Texas\u2019s law, HB 1056, creates an electronic payment system backed by bullion stored in the Texas Bullion Depository, to be operational by May 2027, while Florida&#8217;s law permits licensed private custodians to hold audited, insured metal with electronic transfer capabilities. Several other states have passed similar laws, collectively representing over $5 trillion in economic activity.<\/p>\n<p>This move signifies a modern effort by states to provide an alternative to the dollar, especially <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/retirement-age-rise-a-tough-political-sell-despite-social-security-funding-scare\/\" title=\"Raising retirement age a tough political sell despite Social Security funding scare.\">amid rising national debt<\/a>, diminishing dollar value, and increased gold accumulation by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/japan-to-confirm-size-of-yen-buying-intervention-eyes-on-size-of-war-chest\/\" title=\"Japan to confirm size of yen-buying intervention, eyes on size of war-chest\">foreign central banks<\/a>. Historically, Americans faced many barriers to using gold as money, but these laws reduce friction and give individuals a genuine choice, echoing Friedrich Hayek\u2019s idea of competing currencies. The laws are rooted in the constitutional precedent that only gold and silver can serve as legal tender, reflecting a distrust of fiat currency\u2019s stability.While not establishing a true gold standard-participation is voluntary, and federal laws still favor the dollar-the laws aim to offer Americans independence from central bank decisions and aggressive monetary expansion, potentially influencing the broader monetary system even if only a few participate.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On Sept. 1, Texas will begin recognizing gold and silver as legal tender. Last month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2026\/1588\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Florida\u2019s own legal tender law took effect<\/a>. Neither state is minting coins with a governor\u2019s face on them. Neither is abolishing the dollar. What they are doing is stranger and more consequential: building a payment rail on which an American can hold metal, swipe a card, and settle a debt in something the Federal Reserve cannot print.<\/p>\n<p>Texas\u2019 law, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitol.texas.gov\/tlodocs\/89R\/billtext\/html\/HB01056F.HTM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">HB 1056<\/a>, is the more ambitious of the two. It directs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kxan.com\/news\/texas-politics\/gold-silver-become-legal-tender-in-texas-under-new-law\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the state comptroller<\/a> to stand up an electronic system, backed by bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository, that converts a holder\u2019s metal at the point of sale. Legal tender recognition begins Sept. 1; the transactional system is due no later than May 1, 2027. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Committees\/billsummaries\/2025\/html\/999\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Florida\u2019s HB 999<\/a> took a different route to the same destination \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Laws\/statutes\/2025\/215.986\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">licensed private custodians holding allocated, audited, insured metal<\/a>, with electronic transfer instead of coins across a counter. Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Utah have passed their own versions. Together, those six states <a href=\"https:\/\/www.visualcapitalist.com\/mapped-the-worlds-largest-economies-including-u-s-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">produce<\/a> north of $5 trillion a year, more than Germany and more than Japan.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a coin-collector story, and it is not nostalgia. It is a serious modern attempt by states to give ordinary people a usable alternative to the dollar \u2014 and it arrives at a moment when a great many serious people have concluded they need one.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Everyone Else Already Left<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Consider what has happened to the thing in your wallet.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usdebtclock.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">national debt passed $40 trillion this month<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pgpf.org\/programs-and-projects\/fiscal-policy\/monthly-interest-tracker-national-debt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Interest on that debt will exceed $1 trillion this fiscal year<\/a> \u2014 more than the federal government spends on national defense and the fastest-growing line in the budget. The dollar has shed roughly one-tenth of its value against major currencies over the past year. <a href=\"https:\/\/tradingeconomics.com\/commodity\/gold\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gold trades near $4,530 an ounce, up about 35 percent from a year ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign central banks noticed a while ago. They have bought roughly 1,000 tonnes of gold a year for four straight years, double the prior decade\u2019s pace. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gold.org\/goldhub\/research\/central-bank-gold-reserves-survey-2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">World Gold Council\u2019s June survey<\/a> found 45 percent of them planning to buy still more over the next 12 months. China has added to its gold reserves for 21 consecutive months while letting its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/19\/central-banks-offload-us-treasuries-china-holdings-at-18-year-low.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Treasury holdings fall to $652 billion, the lowest level since 2008.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So the professionals who manage other nations\u2019 savings have been quietly trading dollars for metal for years. Until this summer, an American who wanted to do the same thing faced a gauntlet: buy the coins, pay sales tax in most states, store them, insure them, and then \u2014 if he ever wanted to actually buy something with them \u2014 sell them at a 28 percent federal collectibles rate. Gold was available to Americans as an investment. It was not available as money.<\/p>\n<p>Florida and Texas just removed most of that friction. That is the whole story, and it is a larger one than it sounds.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Hayek Predicted This, Almost<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In 1976, in the teeth of the Great Inflation, Friedrich Hayek published <a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/book\/denationalisation-money-argument-refined\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Denationalisation of Money<\/em><\/a>  and made an argument most economists found eccentric: Money is a product like any other, <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >monopoly producers make bad products<\/a>, and the fix is competition. Let private institutions issue competing currencies. Users would abandon the ones that lost purchasing power. Issuers would discipline themselves because the alternative was irrelevance.<\/p>\n<p>Hayek did not expect governments to volunteer for this. He assumed the monopoly would have to be worked around rather than surrendered. He also guessed the winning currency would be anchored to a basket of raw material prices rather than to a single metal, which he thought would ride out shocks more smoothly. Gold and silver are a cruder instrument than the one he sketched. They have the advantage of existing.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the irony: Congress spent this past year running half of Hayek\u2019s experiment without much noticing. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/documents\/2026\/08\/18\/2026-16796\/genius-act-regulations-on-payment-stablecoin-issuance-offer-and-sale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The GENIUS Act<\/a> built a federal charter for private stablecoin issuers. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/119th-congress\/house-bill\/1919\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A separate statutory ban shut the door on a retail Federal Reserve digital dollar through the end of the decade<\/a>. Between them, Washington decided that America\u2019s digital money will be issued by competing private companies rather than by the central bank. That is Hayek\u2019s structure, almost precisely.<\/p>\n<p>But look at what those competitors are competing over. Every permitted stablecoin is pegged to the dollar and reserved in Treasuries. You may choose your issuer. You may not choose your unit of account. If the dollar loses a fifth of its purchasing power over the next decade, every stablecoin in the country loses it too, on the same schedule, together. That is competition among distributors, not among currencies \u2014 a choice of pipes carrying identical water.<\/p>\n<p>Gold and silver rails are the only entrants running on a different anchor. That is why they matter out of all proportion to how many people will use them.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The One Door the Founders Left Open<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It is no accident that this is happening in state capitals rather than in Congress. <a href=\"https:\/\/constitution.congress.gov\/browse\/article-1\/section-10\/clause-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Article I, Section 10<\/a> forbids states from making \u201cany Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.\u201d The clause was written to stop states from printing paper, and it did. But read it again. It is the one place in the Constitution where a government other than Congress is told what it may recognize as money \u2014 and the answer is metal.<\/p>\n<p>Texas and Florida have not found a loophole. They are walking through the only door the founders left open, for precisely the reason the founders left it open: distrust of a government that can pay its debts by devaluing them.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What This Isn\u2019t<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Honesty requires the caveats, and the states themselves supply most of them. This is not a true gold standard. Participation is voluntary in both states; no merchant must accept metal, and no citizen must hold it. Federal Reserve notes remain legal tender everywhere. Federal tax treatment of gold has not changed \u2014 yet. <\/p>\n<p>And gold is not stable in the short run. It ran above $5,500 an ounce in January, gave much of that back by spring, and sits above $4,000 today. Anyone selling this as a risk-free store of value is selling something. What metal offers is not stability over the next six months. It is independence from one issuer\u2019s decisions over the next 20 years.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why It Matters if You Never Touch It<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Here is the part that should interest the reader who will never open a bullion account.<\/p>\n<p>Money does not require mass adoption to be disciplined. It requires an exit. Bank fees fell when customers could switch banks \u2014 including for the customers who never switched. The existence of a credible alternative changes the behavior of the incumbent whether or not you personally take it.<\/p>\n<p>For half a century, Americans have had no exit from the dollar that was simultaneously legal, liquid, and usable at a cash register. Cryptocurrency was volatile and legally ambiguous. Foreign currency was impractical. Physical gold was taxed and illiquid. Beginning Sept. 1, in two of the largest state economies in the country, that changes. Whether 10,000 people use it or 10 million, Washington will be issuing currency to a public that has somewhere else to go.<\/p>\n<p>Hayek\u2019s argument was never that gold was magic. It was that no monopolist, however well-intentioned, has sufficient reason to protect the value of a money its users cannot refuse. Texas and Florida have just given Americans the ability to refuse. What happens next is up to Americans.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Kevin D. Freeman, D.Sc. (h.c.), CFA, is founder of Freeman Global Holdings, host of Economic War Room, and author of The New York Times bestseller &#8220;Secret Weapon&#8221; and of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/piratemoneybook.com\/\">Pirate Money: Discovering the Founders&#8217; Hidden Plan for Economic Justice and Defeating the Great Reset<\/a>.&#8221; Disclosure: He holds an investment in Glint, a gold-based payments platform.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Texas and Florida create new gold-silver payment systems<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4391,"featured_media":2648803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Gold-Bullion-Photo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[5113,84579,3694],"class_list":["post-2648802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-florida","tag-gold-standard","tag-texas"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Gold-Bullion-Photo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2648802"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2648806,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648802\/revisions\/2648806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2648803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2648802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2648802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2648802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}