Why Elon Musk’s Fort Knox Audit Matters for Bitcoin

In January 2019, a Boeing 777 flew 6,000 miles from Moscow to Venezuela to retrieve 20 tons of gold.

According to reports at the time, the plane carried a contingent of armed guards and was escorted to its destination by fighter jets.

Some speculated Russia was transporting Venezuelan gold reserves to the United Arab Emirates to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s government.

Where – and to whom – the plane transported over 40,000 pounds of gold remains a mystery to this day. The details have never been made public.

But when I first read this story, it was a “lightbulb moment.”

Despite its reputation as a store of value, when you start digging deeper, you realize gold isn’t as alluring of an asset as most people think it is.

As I read the report, all I could think about were the millions of dollars wasted on airplanes, armed guards, and fighter jets just to transport the gold from one location to another.

Besides the millions of dollars needed to transport the gold, the transaction itself was incredibly risky.

These questions led me to that lightbulb moment. And it highlighted how I’d never need to ask those questions if the asset in question was bitcoin. From that day on, I was buying hand over fist.

Just think about it… Settling that 20-ton gold transaction would be far less complicated if it were in bitcoin than gold.

For example, in February 2024 someone moved 26,137 bitcoins valued at roughly $1.3 billion for just $2.

Try moving $1.3 billion of gold through an airport or across an ocean. It’s virtually impossible unless you have an army or navy backing you.

But with bitcoin, you can carry billions of dollars in assets through an airport on a flash drive and no one would know.

This edge bitcoin has over gold is one of the most bullish reasons everyone should own some.

And the reason I’m telling you this story today is because I think millions of people are about to have their own “lightbulb moment,” too. And it involves a potential audit of one of the world’s most famous gold vaults: Fort Knox.

How Much Gold Is Actually in Fort Knox?

Late last month, presidential advisor Elon Musk urged the U.S. government to audit the gold at the Fort Knox military base in Kentucky.

President Trump has tasked Musk with eliminating wasteful spending in the government. As the president told reporters, “If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset.”

Congress passed the Deficiency Act in 1936, which established a bullion depository in Fort Knox to store the nation's gold. Since the gold was too heavy to fly in by plane, the government transported it to Fort Knox by train via the U.S. Postal Service.

According to the U.S. Treasury, there are over 147 million ounces of gold in Fort Knox. At today’s prices, that’s roughly $435 billion in gold.

Here’s the thing…

The last time the public got to see inside the famous vault was September 1974. A select group of journalists were granted 30 minutes to show the public that the gold was indeed there.

The group was only allowed to visit the smallest of vaults at Fort Knox. After the tour, some were satisfied with what they saw… Others weren’t and started asking questions.

Why did we only get to see Gold Vault 13, the smallest of all the vaults? And why were some of the gold bars underweight?

Questions about how much gold the U.S. stores at Fort Knox and its purity shouldn’t be a mystery. But they are. You have to take the government’s word for it.

Regardless of what a potential audit finds in the vaults at Fort Knox, gold’s lack of transparency will still come into question.

Even if all the gold is accounted for in Fort Knox, are Russia and China telling the truth about the size of their gold reserves?

What about every other national government and central bank? Are they on the up-and-up about the gold they hold?

On top of this, there’s no way to know the global supply of gold in circulation. Every year, the supply of gold increases as more is mined. And there’s no easy way to audit it all.

The value of the global gold market is estimated to be about $20 trillion. But ask yourself this: How can we know that for sure?

This figure is based on estimates of thousands of years of gold mining. There’s no way to know for certain how much gold is in circulation.

That’s one reason we believe the Trump administration wants to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve for the United States. The administration knows bitcoin is a better reserve asset for the future.

Remember, the blockchain is simply a decentralized ledger. Basically, it’s a network that records transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. The bedrock idea behind bitcoin is that there will never be more than 21 million coins. To change that rule, the majority of network participants would have to agree to rewrite the existing code.

However, because preprogrammed scarcity is what gives bitcoin its value… no rational participant of the network will ever agree to debase the value of their holdings.

Unlike gold, bitcoin’s supply is fixed. That means your portion of the pie isn’t diluted away each year. And you can audit it any time on the ledger.

Unlike gold, anyone can verify (audit) the circulating supply of bitcoin at any time, including how much each individual or entity holds anonymously in their wallets. That’s the beauty of holding assets on a public blockchain.

And unlike national governments, you don’t have to take anyone's word for it. You can verify every transaction from the creation of the first bitcoin to the most recent block on the bitcoin blockchain.

The Lightbulb Moment for the Masses

Look, if there is an audit of Fort Knox, we don’t know what it will uncover. The government’s numbers may or may not be accurate.

Regardless of the outcome, you will have to trust the government.

With bitcoin, you can see who holds the supply yourself. It may take some training, but anyone can do it. And you don’t need anyone’s permission to do so.

I believe the simple act of opening the vaults to the public for the first time in 50 years could prompt millions to have their own “lightbulb moment” just like I did back in 2019.

For the first time, they will wonder how “transparent” gold is as a store of value.

When people start asking “How much do central banks really have?” they’ll inevitably discover bitcoin’s straightforward answer…

A fixed supply, verified on a public blockchain, that people can transfer across borders without any intermediaries like cargo planes, armed guards, or hefty fees.

If governments around the world start buying bitcoin as a more transparent store of value, we could see bitcoin match the $20 trillion value of gold’s market cap over the next decade. That would put each bitcoin at about $1 million – a 10x gain from today.

That’s why you should see the current pullback in bitcoin as a buying opportunity.

And as more people understand the other use cases for blockchain technology – for instance, tokenizing real-world assets like real estate or collectibles and making these respective industries more transparent – we’ll see altcoins follow suit.

If you haven’t already, this is a great time to add bitcoin to your portfolio.

In a world of never-ending money printing and murky gold inventories, bitcoin offers a rare combination of transparency, portability, and scarcity.

By the time the rest of the world audits its gold and realizes what’s missing, you’ll be positioned in the hardest form of money humans have ever known.

Regards,

Houston Molnar

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