The red state gold rush
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Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Some red state lawmakers are floating legislation that would make it easier to use gold and silver as currency and to establish gold stockpiles.
Why it matters: Lawmakers say that the commodities are a good option for dealing with the burden of rising inflation because the value of gold and silver has increased, while the dollar has not.
- "Recognizing gold and silver as legal tender promotes economic justice," reads a draft bill in Georgia. "By allowing citizens of every economic status access to the ability to preserve their wealth by hedging against inflation with precious metals."
State of play: The Georgia legislation would authorize "mechanisms" that would let you pay for things in gold and silver, possibly using prepaid debit cards like those offered by Glint, a small U.K.-based company that supports the laws. (It failed to pass, but backers plan to try again.)
- Similar "transactional gold laws," have been proposed in Arizona, Oklahoma and Iowa — to varying degrees of success.
- Utah passed a law earlier this year.
Zoom in: Lawmakers emphasize that they just want to give people more options. And no one is being forced to use gold or any gold-backed product instead of dollars.
- Most don't harbor any illusions that the U.S. is going back to the gold standard.
- "It's essentially just giving people another way of being paid," Utah state treasurer Marlo Oaks tells Axios.
- Utah also passed a bill in 2024 that allows the state to invest up to 10% of its "rainy day fund" in gold.
The big picture: The price of gold has been on a tear in recent years for a few reasons.
- First, the creation of gold ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, has made it much easier to buy and hold the asset.
- Gold has also gotten a boost from everyday investors.
- And central banks have increased their purchases of gold.
By the numbers: Gold is currently trading around $4,800 a troy ounce — that's less than where it was earlier in the year, but is still $1,000 more than it was this time in 2025.
Zoom out: That kind of price volatility is appealing to investors, but one of many reasons that gold doesn't make sense as a currency, as nearly any economist, or monetary and finance expert would tell you.
Between the lines: People have been obsessed with gold for centuries, says Jacob Goldstein, author of "Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing," a history of currency.
- "Gold is not money," he says. "It hasn't been money for many decades. It didn't work very well as money when it was money."
- But gold can feel like something outside of the government's control, he adds.
- "It takes the power of money away from the government to, you know, in some fundamental way, I think that is part of the appeal."
