Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thailand as a gold trading hub; I have talked about this for a number of years. I did a lot of videos on my personal channel which now we are calling it Integrity News Service. I am going to kind of retool that - we may turn that into something - but I talked a lot about the issues associated with mBridge and the creation of mBridge that is the initiative of People’s Bank of China, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Bank of Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates Monetary Authority to create this platform for trade between these different regions and how that thing was playing out; the Bank for International Settlements had a hand in that and they kind of spun it off. 

Meanwhile, as I discussed at the time when all that was kind of percolating up, I view Hong Kong, Bangkok and the UAE as sort of the nodes if you will on what I would call the rim land of Halford Mackinder's World Island hypothesis on how Eurasia would integrate economically. These nodes are where there will be interaction between the so-called periphery i.e. the maritime countries: the US, South America, even Western Europe to an extent, Great Britain and how they will interact with East Asia especially, and even the global South through these various nodal hubs on mBridge. I think Thailand's big part to play in this is likely to be as a gold trading centre.  

For those who are interested, I go into deep dive analysis of these issues in our paid news service. If you are interested in that, you can email us, [email protected], and we will get you on the mailing list for that. Also while I am mentioning that, my better half and I set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok. Pancake Palace, as the name implies and we will put some photos up: breakfast anytime, as well as American Diner style food like hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chilli bowls, amazing buffalo wings, even glass bottled Coke. If you are interested, come on by, links are in the description below, we'd love to see you.

That said, back to this issue. It looks to me like Thailand is becoming or fast going to become a gold trading hub. Quoting directly from a recent article in the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the title is: Gold traders yearn for Thai regional hub. Quote: Major gold traders have joined the Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX) to launch a Thai benchmark gold price, aiming to turn the country into Southeast Asia's gold trading hub by 2026. The benchmark, set to launch in the first quarter of 2026, will serve as a regional reference for wholesale transactions and future gold related products, said Rinjai Chakornpipat, managing director of TFEX. The five participating companies -- Hua Seng Heng, MTS Capital, YLG Bullion International, Ausiris, and Gcap Gold -- are the biggest gold dealers in Thailand. Together they accounted for more than 4 trillion baht (US$110 billion) in Gold trading value in 2024, covering more than 60% of the domestic market and ranking as the largest group in Southeast Asia. The initiative introduces a standardised and transparent pricing mechanism. The reference price is published twice daily: at the market opening and close in the evening.

Now I think this is pretty big news and I think we are seeing Thailand stepping into the foreground more and more as an Economic Centre for both finance and trade that she really always has been, but it's not the Thai style to really "flex", to use a term the youth are using these days to sort of flex your pedigree or whatever you want to call it, to sort of be arrogant, to be boastful: it's not really the Thai way of doing things. But that said, the fact of the matter is what it is. As we have seen with these developments with mBridge, as we are increasingly seeing with the increasing dynamism of both Eurasia as well as the global South - places like Southeast Asia as well as India more and more - and the BIMSTEC countries as we have  discussed in other videos, we are seeing more activity in these regions around the Indian Ocean. I just think the only way is up, really in many ways economically here in Thailand, and I think Thailand becoming a hub for gold trading is very much a good thing, and we will certainly be keeping you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.