The Crash, the Gold and the Man Who Sees the Crisis Coming

When Donald Trump unleashed a tariff war against the rest of the world and investors around the globe sought the safety of gold, Egon von Greyerz had already had his ducks in a row.

When von Greyerz, 79, Swiss by name but born in Sweden, talks about the yellow metal, there's a mystical note. For him, gold is the source of wealth. "Gold is beautiful, precious, and indestructible." Gold has been used as a currency for over 5,000 years—longer than any other.

Von Greyerz founded a Zurich-based financial boutique 25 years ago. It specializes in gold investments, more specifically, the storage of physical bars in secure vaults.

Customers seeking von Greyerz's services quickly pass by the patrician house in Zurich's Old Town. There's no polished metal sign on the facade; inside, only a discreet doorbell indicates the way to the premises.

Discretion is a top priority. The conference room is homely. On the wall hangs a work of art, a meter-high soup plate—gilded, of course—with a relief of the Matterhorn.

Von Greyerz heads toward another work of art. A jet-black piece of wood, part of a tree trunk, containing a gold nugget. About 10 centimeters long, heavy, and irregularly shaped. Greyerz takes the nugget and hands it to the journalist. It feels beautiful, a little rough, and surprisingly heavy. You automatically start to smile—and want to keep the gold.

The gold enthusiast has complete faith in the yellow metal. Gold, he enthuses, has maintained its purchasing power over millennia. One troy ounce of gold – that's 31 grams – is worth more than $3,335 today. "In ancient Rome, a wealthy man would pay for a toga with it; today he can buy a tailor-made suit with it."

Real estate also can't be compared to gold, von Greyerz explains. In 1920, a nice, detached single-family home in the USA cost around $5,000. Today, a house in the same range costs around $830,000. That's equivalent—then as now—to 250 ounces of gold.

Gold, he concludes, is immune to inflation.

Since the turn of the millennium – the time when the Swiss National Bank lost interest in its gold reserves – Egon von Greyerz has been betting everything on gold. For a long time, this was a niche investment because gold pays neither dividends nor interest. For a long time, it was therefore ridiculed as a return killer.

But times have changed. In 2024, the price of gold rose by almost 30 percent, outperforming most stock markets. The rally continued in 2025, with gold gaining another 20 percent compared to the beginning of the year.

Egon von Greyerz, as his name suggests, has Swiss roots. However, the 79-year-old was born in Sweden. His branch of the family emigrated from Switzerland in 1865. Today, he calls himself a citizen of the world. He began his career as a banker in Geneva, then spent 17 years as Finance Director and Executive Vice Chairman of the British Dixons Group. His three daughters were born in Great Britain.

Despite his focus on gold, it's not just material things that matter to him. "Remember: family and friends are the most important things in life," von Greyerz emphasizes. "This circle of supporters will be of utmost importance in the coming years."

He came to gold when the dot-com bubble burst around the turn of the millennium. A friend owned a tech company. Von Greyerz saw the crash coming and advised selling. He observed how the Federal Reserve responded to the stock market turmoil with a low-interest rate policy. This made him nervous; he feared inflation and the collapse of value. From then on, he consistently invested in gold. His philosophy: "Keep your money in a safe place, and it can't be taken away from you."

Of course, the treasure that von Gruyères safeguards for his clients isn't stored in the old town. We drive to the airport, where he stores his clients' gold alongside his own bars. His company doesn't operate the warehouse itself; it has outsourced the task to an independent logistics company. It provides additional security.

The safe is located in an inconspicuous building on the airport grounds. There are no armed security personnel in the entrance area. "People are the risk," explains von Greyerz, "they can turn against you." Cameras monitor the entrance area. In the event of an alarm, the cantonal police are dispatched immediately.

A staircase leads down to the duty-free warehouse. This is where the wealthy store their Rothkos, 1970s Porsches, and Bordeaux. At the end of the corridor is the high-security wing with a massive safe door. Only two employees can open it.

The vault door slowly swings open, revealing a room measuring approximately 130 square meters. Wooden pallets line the walls. Gold bars are stored in black and blue plastic boxes. Silver bars, however, lie unpackaged on the pallets. A thick red line on the floor marks the threshold to the storage area. It may not be crossed. From here, the entire room is not visible; counting the boxes is impossible.

Von Greyerz doesn't reveal how much gold is stored in the vault. When asked how much of it belongs to his clients, he simply replies: "A significant portion."

We enter the visitors' room. The white walls are bare, like a prison. On a table with a white plastic top are precision scales and a magnifying glass. The two employees roll some gold bars into the windowless room on a trolley.

The standard bar weighs 12.5 kilograms, more than a dumbbell in a gym. Value: 1.06 million Swiss francs. Customers store smaller bars more frequently than standard bars: one-kilo pieces or sets of ten 100-gram bars. "They're easier to transport in an emergency and better used as an emergency fund," explains von Greyerz.

The gold is stored directly in the vault in the customer's name. Each bar is uniquely assigned to its owner by a serial number. The Gruyères company has neither power of attorney nor any other access to these stocks. When a bar is removed from the box, the security band is cut. The word "VOID" then appears – an unmistakable sign that the container has been opened.

The terms and conditions state that the bars in the vault are insured not only against theft but also against "mysterious disappearance." An additional measure of trust for those with particularly high expectations.

If that's not secure enough for customers, von Greyerz also offers storage at a secret location in the Swiss Alps. Gold storage there is carried out according to military standards. The gold is designed to withstand earthquakes, nuclear and cyber attacks, as well as biological and chemical attacks.

Because the journey is longer and access is more complex with ten security levels, the minimum investment in the Alpine Safe is 5 million Swiss francs. At the airport, you can start with as little as half a million.

For von Greyerz, the traditional banking system is not one of these safe havens. Governments could confiscate gold, he says. This concern may sound exaggerated from today's perspective, but it has a historical background. As a representative of an older generation, this is likely more present to him than to many younger ones.

From 1933 to 1974, private individuals in the United States were prohibited from owning gold. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had decreed that citizens had to surrender their gold to the Federal Reserve at a fixed price per ounce. This was done to increase the country's gold reserves. "I don't think the Swiss government would confiscate gold; I wouldn't rule it out in the case of the United States," says von Greyerz.

He therefore relies on storage outside the banking system. Governments seeking to gain access to their citizens' gold would, at least in principle, have leverage through the banks. If the gold is stored in a bank vault, new laws or regulatory interventions could result in its release being refused.

That sounds like a conspiracy theory, or at least a strong need for security. But von Greyerz doesn't want to be considered a neurotic. "My philosophy is simply to hedge against risks as best as possible." Then you can sleep well.

That's why von Greyerz doesn't think much of gold ETFs, exchange-traded funds that track the performance of gold. "Completely useless," he says. These funds are nothing more than a piece of paper stating that an ETF owes you gold, which you may or may not have.

Banks that sell gold ETFs to their clients would certainly disagree with this assessment. But there may be more to von Greyerz's view than some would like. Just last June, the European Central Bank warned that banks could be at their limits if they were actually forced to deliver all the gold.

For real gold, however, von Greyerz is convinced that the best times are yet to come. Many Asian countries, especially China, are gradually trying to break free from their dependence on the dollar. This alone creates a constant demand for gold. "All Eastern governments are buying gold." The West, on the other hand, missed a historic opportunity.

Von Greyerz believes that the price of gold will rise many times over from its current level. Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," the law that will further increase America's debt mountain, is further undermining confidence in the dollar – and thus indirectly helping gold.

However, the businessman doesn't dare make a concrete prediction about where he sees the gold price at the end of the year or the end of the decade. He already anticipated a systemic collapse during the 2008 financial crisis, but it never materialized.

But the fear of the apocalypse has become the foundation of his business model. His goal is not to maximize returns, but to preserve wealth.

For gold in the vault, he says with a sideswipe at the banks, there is no need for an entire management industry, no need for an entire army of investment advisors who constantly try to maximize their commission income by constantly shifting client portfolios.

His distrust of the conventional financial system runs deep. The US, he says, accumulates the most debt, and the Federal Reserve is the largest buyer. "This is nothing but a fraudulent Ponzi scheme," he says. And: "The world would be better off if central banks were abolished and the markets were left to themselves." This, in turn, is a classic libertarian idea.

"Our customers are free thinkers," says von Greyerz. Wealthy entrepreneurs who don't flaunt what they own. Many hold unconventional views and challenge common social narratives.

With his criticism of the current financial system, the entrepreneur certainly seems to have found a golden niche. One thing is certain: He warned early. Perhaps too early, because the system has proven surprisingly robust in the many past crises.

Should the apocalypse come soon, von Greyerz will be seen as the man who saw it coming. One can only hope that he and his clients are wrong—and perhaps rethink their own gold strategy anyway. Just to be on the safe side.