Dan Oliver: Gold’s Real Bull Market Hasn’t Even Started: Why $8,400 Gold Is Just the Beginning
Gold always brings along her little sister named Silver. Silver will throw a temper tantrum and overshoot. $300 price target by 2026
source link: https://www.myrmikan.com/pub/Myrmikan_Research_2026_02_09.pdf
Warning From Dan Oliver: The Gold Bull Has Only Just Begun
Daniel Oliver of Myrmikan Capital has issued one of his starkest warnings yet: the gold bull market that began quietly in 2022 is entering a far more powerful second phase. In a research note published February 9, 2026, Oliver argues the world has only seen the accumulation period of the gold move — a prelude to the true mania phase that will begin once the U.S. dollar system encounters its inevitable internal and external crisis.
The Quiet Phase: Institutional Accumulation
Oliver traces the current cycle back to early 2022, when the United States wielded the dollar as a geopolitical weapon against Russia. That moment, he says, triggered a historic rethink among central banks and sovereign funds. Nations that once regarded U.S. Treasuries as the ultimate reserve asset began discreetly swapping paper for bullion, building positions away from Western custodians.
From late 2022 through early 2026, gold prices carved a near‑perfect parabolic ascent — rising persistently despite relentless Federal Reserve rate hikes. This resilience, Oliver notes, was no coincidence. It reflected not speculative exuberance but strategic accumulation by deep‑pocketed institutions repositioning for an eventual breakdown of confidence in fiat reserves.
For now, he says, we have witnessed no dramatic failures: no global banking collapse, no runaway fiscal panic, no Federal Reserve “panic pivot.” But such calm, he warns, is temporary. “They will come,” he writes — meaning the stresses are baked in, the detonators are set.
The Unfolding Crisis: The Fed’s New Dilemma
At the center of Oliver’s thesis is a paradox facing the incoming Federal Reserve leadership. The presumed new chair, Kevin Warsh, aims to engineer American reindustrialization through lower interest rates while simultaneously shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet. Both goals, Oliver argues, cannot coexist.
History, he points out, is merciless on this score. Whenever reserve scarcity appears — as it did in late 2019 and again in December 2025 — the Fed is forced back into the market to inject liquidity. The official terminology may shift, but the effect is identical to quantitative easing: new liabilities, new reserves, new dollars.
This feedback loop leaves the Fed trapped. “Printing is the only politically feasible path once financial markets tremble,” Oliver writes. “But each round of printing accelerates the loss of faith that sustains the dollar itself.”
Phase Two: The Domestic Dollar Crisis
The next leg higher in gold, Oliver contends, will not be driven by foreign accumulation but by a domestic dollar crisis. When private equity debt implodes or structured credit products start to fail, the Federal Reserve will again step in — not to protect Main Street, but to prevent a systemic freeze among financial intermediaries.
The difference this time is structural. In the last cycle, newly created liquidity flowed offshore as the dollar maintained its dominance in global settlement. In the next one, much of that liquidity will remain trapped inside the U.S. economy, while trading partners continue substituting gold, commodities, or bilateral currencies in place of dollars for settlement.
That internalization of QE, Oliver predicts, will send inflation soaring just as Treasury yields begin to rise. The Fed will have to buy even more bonds to suppress rates — effectively monetizing U.S. deficits. The result: gold prices breaking free of all traditional valuation anchors.
The Math Behind the Move
Oliver’s valuation framework harkens back to the classical gold standard ratios. If the Fed were to back just one-third of its balance sheet with gold at current asset levels, he calculates, gold would need to trade around $8,395 per ounce. A half‑backed system implies about $12,595, depending on reserve composition and Fed liabilities.
Those numbers, however, assume an orderly adjustment. In a scenario of full monetary panic — with impaired assets and unanchored expectations — Oliver sees no reason gold could not approach full parity with the Fed’s total balance sheet, implying multiples of current price levels. “We are confident,” he concludes, “that the U.S. financial system cannot continue to function as currently designed.”
Editors note:
The U.S. officially reports three main deep‑storage gold vaults holding roughly 245 million ounces in total.
Fort Knox, Kentucky – 147,341,858.382 troy ounces.
West Point Mint, New York – 54,067,331.379 troy ounces.
Denver Mint, Colorado – 43,853,707.279 troy ounces.
Total for these three vaults: 245,262,897.040 troy ounces of gold
In simple terms:
Let BB = total Fed balance sheet in dollars.
Let GG = total official U.S. gold held (in ounces).
If gold backs one‑third of the balance sheet, then required gold value = B/3B/3.
Implied gold price per ounce = (B/3)/G(B/3)/G.
If gold backs one‑half of the balance sheet, required gold value = B/2B/2, so price = (B/2)/G(B/2)/G.
Plugging current ballpark numbers for BB and GG gives a range of about 8,395 $/oz at one‑third backing and 12,595 $/oz at one‑half backing
Oliver is implicitly using a Fed balance sheet on the order of about $7.4–$7.6 trillion for his “cleansing price” framework.
Using our earlier U.S. gold figure of roughly 245 million ounces, a one‑third backing price of about $8,395/oz implies: B≈3×8,395×245,000,000≈$6.2 trillion and for $12,595 gold B≈2×12,595×245,000,000≈$6.2 trillion
But his letter also notes that in a panic, markets may treat impaired assets as worth less than face value, effectively shrinking the “real” balance sheet and pushing the required gold price higher. This adjustment plus updated balance‑sheet totals nudges his working BB assumption into the mid‑$7T range when he quotes the $8,395–$12,595/oz range for one‑third to one‑half backing
Miners: “Still Cheap and Ignored”
While large capital has quietly accumulated bullion, the mining sector remains under‑owned, Oliver stresses. Exchange‑traded gold mining shares such as GDX and GDXJ have seen persistent outflows even as gold hit record highs earlier this year. “That divergence,” he notes, “marks disbelief — and the best entry point.”
According to his analysis, valuations remain deeply discounted relative to net asset value. In past cycles, such discounts flipped into massive premiums during speculative surges, with some miners trading above 1x NAV in the final mania stages. Junior developers and smaller producers, particularly those in friendly jurisdictions, could see “explosive” rerating once capital floods back into the sector. Oliver even cites instances of juniors now declining financing offers, anticipating much higher equity valuations ahead.
The Bottom Line
Dan Oliver’s message is unambiguous: the gold bull market has only completed its opening act. The next phase — driven by domestic financial stress, mounting fiscal contradictions, and accelerating global de‑dollarization — will unfold faster and more violently than most investors imagine.
For those holding physical gold or positioned in quality mining equities, he suggests patience. For those still doubting that the world’s reserve currency can fail, his closing warning carries the force of conviction: phase two is coming fast.
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Buy Silver, while you still can
7 Reasons why
Global mine supply is roughly 820 million ounces annually while total demand has run closer to 1.3 billion ounces, implying persistent structural deficits rather than one‑off shortages.
There have been no world‑class, game‑changing silver discoveries in recent years, so supply growth is constrained even as demand pushes new highs.
Major demand drivers like robotics, drones, data centers, AI hardware and advanced photovoltaics barely existed in size during the last silver bull market, so most technical models still anchor to an outdated industrial profile.
Global debt loads today are many multiples of the 2008 crisis era, and the underlying leverage, moral hazard and imbalances were rolled forward, not resolved, increasing the eventual need for hard‑asset insurance.
Silver’s tightness is now so acute that China has reportedly shifted from a net exporter to keeping metal at home, while the United States has moved to frame silver within a “critical stockpile” mindset, underscoring its strategic importance.
Roughly 70–75% of silver production comes as a by‑product of mining other metals like copper, lead and zinc, meaning supply cannot easily respond to higher prices alone.
These dynamics mean traditional chart‑based analysis understates the upside, because it fails to account for simultaneous structural deficits, new tech‑driven demand, and a vastly more fragile, debt‑saturated financial system.
The paper empire is rotting in real time. Civil unrest in the streets, elections collapsing into circus acts, and the fiat establishment choking on its own corruption trials — these aren’t passing storms; they’re structural failure signals. The empire fights everywhere at once — Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, even glaring at Mexico — but the real war is inside the currency itself. Each bomb dropped, each bailout signed, each scandal hushed means another trillion conjured from nothing and poured into the abyss.
Money has lost its measure. The “overlords” who issue it now stand exposed, not as sober technocrats, but as addicts who can’t stop printing and predators who can’t stop lying. Inflation isn’t a glitch; it’s policy. Collapse isn’t risk; it’s trajectory.
In such a world, gold and silver aren’t “investments.” They’re escape hatches. They’re life rafts from the debt‑soaked hallucination that paper wealth still matters. Ounces, not digits, will buy safety when confidence vaporizes. Own what they can’t print, can’t censor, can’t debase. Hold your metal close — because the system’s collapse isn’t ahead of us anymore. It’s here.
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