Author: admin heyokha

How Tether quietly became one of the world’s biggest gold holders, and what it signals about the future of money

When we last wrote about stablecoins, we framed them as chips at a casino, and later as claw machine tokens in a rebuilt monetary arcade. They were becoming infrastructure quietly, steadily. But what happens when that infrastructure decides to hoard bullion?

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, has quietly become one of the most aggressive gold buyers in the world. Not a central bank. Not a sovereign wealth fund. A crypto company with a token named after a rope.

Gold purchases by quarter. Tether bought close to 12% of what the central banks were buying

Source: Financial Times

As of Q3 2025, Tether holds more than 116 tonnes of physical gold. That’s more than South Korea, Hungary, or Greece. According to Jefferies, that makes it the largest gold holder outside of central banks. Yes, probably bigger than your gold ETF. Bigger than most sovereigns. And with roughly $15 billion in projected profits this year, they’re just getting started.

It’s the most curious subplot in the financial system’s ongoing identity crisis: a crypto stablecoin company, built to track the U.S. dollar, is becoming one of the most aggressive buyers of the very metal that signals distrust in fiat.

It would be hilarious if it weren’t also brilliant.

That’s a Lot Of Gold

How can Tether afford to buy this much gold?

It starts with its business model. Tether issues USDT, a dollar-pegged token backed mostly by U.S. Treasury bills. The company earns interest on those bills but pays zero interest to USDT holders. In a world of 5% base rates and $112 billion in reserves, that spread is pure profit. We suppose they’re putting it to good use.

In Q3 2025 alone, Tether bought 26 tonnes of gold—nearly 12% of global central bank demand and about 2% of total gold demand. If Tether ploughs half its profits into bullion, that pace could double.

But it’s not just bars in a vault.

2025 net gold purchases, Tether vs select central banks

Source: Financial Times

Not Just Buying Gold but Building the Ecosystem

Tether has begun deploying capital across the gold supply chain, from streaming and royalty companies to talks with mining operators and refiners.

In June, it acquired a minority stake in Toronto-listed Elemental Altus for $105 million. Later in the year, it invested another $100 million as the firm merged with EMX Royalty.

Tether has also been in discussions with gold-mining investment vehicles such as Terranova Resources, although no deal has materialized yet.

The goal seems clear: Tether doesn’t just want to own gold. It wants gold exposure with leverage, cash flow, and upstream access. Think royalties, not just vaults.

This echoes what we’ve seen in recent years in China, where companies like Xiaomi and BYD began as consumers of critical materials, then became stakeholders in upstream supply chains. It’s all part of building resilience into the foundation of your business.

From Fiat Peg to Metal Peg?

Tether’s relationship with gold isn’t new. It launched XAUt, its gold-backed stablecoin, in 2020. Each token represents one troy ounce of physical gold, stored in Swiss vaults.

For most of its existence, XAUt was a side project. But that may be changing.

Despite gold price correction, Tether market cap increased by 0.54 billion indicating strong demand

Source: TradingView, Heyokha Research

Since August 2025, blockchain data suggests Tether added more than 275,000 ounces of gold to XAUt’s reserves. The token’s market cap has doubled over the past six months, now sitting between $1.5 to $2.1 billion.

XAUt and Paxos’ PAXG (another tokenized form of gold) together make up around 90% of the entire tokenized gold market, which is still small ($3–3.9 billion total), but growing. XAUt leads with about 49–54% market share.

Still, it’s early days. For all the hype, tokenized gold remains a tiny sliver of global gold markets, which settle over $60 billion daily.

But the use case is compelling.

Why Not Just Buy Gold Bars?

Good question. Here’s how XAUt stacks up:

Compared to physical gold, XAUt offers:

• 24/7 trading and near-instant blockchain transfers
• No need to arrange your own vault, insurance, or transport
• Fractional ownership—you can own 0.0001 ounces, not just 1 oz bars

But it also comes with:

• Counterparty risk (you trust Tether’s vaulting and audits)
• Tech risk (your wallet keys are your problem)
• Less “off-grid” resilience if you’re hedging against full systemic collapse

Compared to “digital gold” like ETFs or app-based gold accounts, XAUt:

• Gives you legal title to allocated bars
• Works natively with DeFi apps, DEXes, and crypto wallets

But:

• It lacks regulatory clarity and tax simplicity
• Wallet UX still scares off mainstream investors

It’s not better or worse. It’s built for a different user. If you already operate in crypto, XAUt feels like a natural extension. If your gold sits in a retirement account, it probably stays there.

The real question: will tokenized gold ever cross over?

We have explored this idea before in our blog,  “Stablecoins: Genius or Just…Stable?”. We warned that stablecoins could evolve from dollar mirrors into asset-backed financial rails with their own monetary dynamics. If you ever need a refresher on how Stablecoins work, we got your back:  “Stablecoins 101”.

All this to circle back on a thesis we have also explored and have been harping on – fiat debasement pushes the appeal of gold higher. You can read our thoughts in depth in our “Gold: The Return of Real Money” report.

Tether, it turns out, is acting on that thesis with alarming precision. A crypto company built on fiat liquidity is quietly becoming a force in the real-asset world.

Final Thoughts: The Digital Dragon Hoards Gold

This story is far from over.

Tether’s bullion buying already moves markets at the margin. If its 2025 profit estimates hold and the company keeps scaling gold exposure, it could soon rival the annual net purchases of more central banks.

Whether XAUt becomes a widely used digital gold standard is still uncertain. But that’s not the point.

The point is this: while most stablecoin players are debating compliance frameworks, Tether is quietly building a gold-backed war chest, a commodity lending book, and upstream access to the world’s oldest monetary metal.

And when the next currency crisis hits, the company that started by pegging to fiat might just be the one holding the hardest collateral in town.

As we like to say at Heyokha: in a world of soft money and harder choices, real money has a way of resurfacing.

 

Tara Mulia

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When people talk about artificial intelligence, the conversation usually drifts into abstraction including but not limited to models, tokens, algorithms, cognition. But underneath all that magic is a very physical reality: silicon chips, cooling fans, thousands of kilometres of fibre optic cables, and megawatts of electricity coursing through humming data centres.

In fact, as 2025 unfolds, AI is no longer just a story of breakthroughs. It’s a story of build-outs. And increasingly, the real competitive edge doesn’t lie in model architecture or training techniques, but in something much simpler: who can scale electricity, chips, and infrastructure faster.

When Data Meets Voltage

AI carried U.S. equities in Q3. The sector now accounts for nearly 80% of the S&P 500’s year-to-date gains. The capital intensity is staggering: AI-related investments contributed nearly 40% of U.S. GDP growth in 2025. Nvidia’s rally may get the headlines, but the unsung hero of this boom is infrastructure.

Global computing capacity is set to expand massively

Source: McKinsey

Data centres alone are projected to consume 1,600 TWh of electricity by 2035, which is the equivalent to 4.4% of global power use. That would make “AI” the world’s fourth-largest electricity consumer behind the U.S., China, and India.

Compute demand is now doubling every 100 days. Power, water, land, and transmission capacity are no longer cost inputs. They are hard constraints.

Gridlock vs. Greenlight: The U.S. Grid Struggles as China Powers Ahead

This shift is already causing cracks. Microsoft recently admitted that power has become “the biggest issue” for future data centre builds. Amazon is flagging grid shortages, even as hyperscaler capex is projected to jump from US$370 billion in 2025 to US$470 billion in 2026.

In response, U.S. tech giants are building their own generators just to keep expansion plans alive. But between fragmented state grids and a politicised permitting system, scaling energy capacity in America is looking less like innovation and more like improvisation.

China, by contrast, is turning its state-led muscle into an AI advantage. In the first nine months of 2025, China added 240 GW of solar power—more than the entire installed solar capacity of the U.S.

China and U.S. (utility scale) electricity generation capacity (stock). This is where the real power lies

Source: China Electricity Council, US Energy Information Administration (EIA)

According to OpenAI’s open letter to the White House, China added 429 GW of new power capacity in 2024 alone. That’s more than one-third of the entire U.S. grid, built in a single year.

And the state isn’t just expanding power. It’s subsidising it.

And it’s not just about keeping the lights on — it’s about rerouting the entire tech stack. With U.S. export controls choking access to Nvidia’s best chips, China is doubling down on homegrown hardware. That energy advantage is now powering a new playbook: build your own chips, subsidize their use, and cluster them like there’s no tomorrow.

Powering the Home Team

Beijing’s strategy is clear: if you can’t buy the best chips, out-build the system around them.

With Washington tightening export controls on Nvidia’s AI hardware, Chinese tech giants found themselves cut off from the gold standard. So Huawei stepped in with a workaround: not a better chip, but a bigger cluster.

Its new CloudMatrix 384 system links together 384 of its Ascend 910C processors, compensating for weaker single-chip performance with brute-force architecture and advanced networking. The result? A cluster Huawei claims outperforms Nvidia’s flagship NVL72 on compute and memory, even if it gulps far more power and demands more manpower to maintain.

Source: SemiAnalysis, Nvidia, Huawei

A full CloudMatrix setup now delivers 300 PFLOPs of dense BF16 compute. This is nearly twice the performance of Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72. With over 3.6 times the total memory capacity and 2.1 times the bandwidth, Huawei isn’t just catching up. It’s building an AI system that can go toe-to-toe with Nvidia’s best.

And here’s where the state steps in again not just with chips, but with cheap juice.

Local governments in provinces like Gansu, Guizhou, and Inner Mongolia are now offering power subsidies that slash electricity bills by up to 50%, but only if you’re running domestic chips. That’s on top of cash incentives generous enough to cover a data centre’s operating costs for a year.

The logic is brutal but effective: reduce Chinese firms’ dependency on Nvidia and make up for the efficiency gap with fiscal firepower. Huawei’s chips may consume 30–50% more electricity than Nvidia’s, but if the power is cheap enough, it doesn’t matter.

Crowd gathers to admire Huawei’s Ascend-powered CloudMatrix 384 system at the 2025 World AI Conference in Shanghai.

Source: South China Morning Post, Xinhua

And the power is, in fact, cheap. Thanks to China’s centralised grid and abundant power in remote provinces, average industrial electricity costs in these subsidised regions hover around 5.6 cents/kWh — a steep discount to the 9.1 cents/kWh U.S. average. Add a surplus of engineers, and the equation tilts further in Beijing’s favour.

CloudMatrix clusters are now being delivered to data centres serving top-tier Chinese tech clients. They aren’t just Plan B — they’re a parallel track. Built differently, powered locally, and scaled with state backing.

Final Thoughts: The Next Moat Is Physical

The Western narrative still sees AI dominance through the lens of software and algorithms. But the deeper we go, the more this becomes a game of logistics, power grids, and vertically integrated industrial policy.

China’s AI build-out shows what happens when you align energy strategy, chip design, and capital deployment. The result isn’t the most beautiful AI system. It’s the most deployable one.

For all the talk of exponential models and general intelligence, the ceiling of progress may come down to simple things: copper, electricity, trained labour, and land.

We’ve said it before in The Case for Copper: in a rewired world, it’s not software that limits us—it’s the metals behind the curtain. And AI is now hitting that same wall. Every model, every data centre, every breakthrough depends on the silent metals that carries the current.

As we like to say at Heyokha: When the world scrambles for intelligence, don’t forget who owns the grid.

 

Tara Mulia
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When most people think of copper, they picture something painfully mundane, whether it’s the loose change in their pocket, a rusty pipe under the sink, or those aesthetically pleasing heavy frying pans that’s always hanging in fancy restaurants.

But copper has quietly graduated from plumbing and pennies to something far more vital: the wiring behind the world’s biggest transformations. It’s in the electric car you’re eyeing. It’s in the AI data center streaming your kid’s favorite cartoon. It’s even in the defense systems supposedly protecting us from everything except inflation.

In a world of speculative bubbles and digital promises, copper is refreshingly real.

If gold reflects fear and silver mirrors doubt, copper is the metal of action. This is seen with shovels in dirt, cables in trenches, and electrons flowing through everything from EVs to AI data centers. It doesn’t glitter. It conducts.

Lately, that conductor is buzzing. Prices hovered near US$10,500 per ton in Q3, just shy of record highs, as the copper market reminded us how fragile its foundations really are.

A Market One Mudslide Away

The Grasberg mine has one of the largest reserves of gold and copper in the world, located in Mimika Regency, Central Papua

Source: Mining.com

Start in Indonesia. In September, Freeport-McMoRan’s massive Grasberg mine declared force majeure after a mudslide tragically halted ore shipments. The loss? Around 250,000 tons, enough to rattle global balances.

Next, over to the DRC, where Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula mine, touted as one of the world’s most important new producers, faced repeated power disruptions.

In Chile, state-owned Codelco can’t catch a break. Its El Teniente mine continues to battle geotechnical issues, with broader output targets repeatedly revised down.

Add it all up, and more than 500,000 tons of copper concentrate evaporated in months. That’s more than a week of global demand, and we’ve only talked about three sites.

Annual mine disruptions are now running at 6 percent of total global output, or about 1.3 million tons. That’s not a rounding error. It’s systemic stress.

At Heyokha, we’ve long argued that price-setting power arises when fragility meets indispensability. Copper now sits at that intersection.

Structural Demand, Not a Supercycle

While the supply side buckles, the demand story is shifting into overdrive.

Between now and 2035, copper demand is projected to rise 24 percent, hitting 43 million tons. And this time, it’s not the old industrial cycle. It’s the future coming online.

• Grid electrification will require about 3 million tons per year by 2035
• Defense and industrial reshoring? Add another 4 to 5 million tons
• Clean energy? Even the IEA’s conservative estimates say copper demand from clean tech will double by 2030

Copper demand in multiple sectors are seeing multi-year growth

Source: Wood Mackenzie

And let’s not forget the most quietly copper-hungry sector of all: data centers.

Every ChatGPT query, every AI model training run, every cloud-stored selfie you forgot to delete —  these are all powered by backend infrastructure that’s wired wall-to-wall with copper. Each megawatt of AI data center capacity requires 20 to 40 tons of it. Multiply that by trillions in projected AI infrastructure and you have a demand curve that doesn’t blink.

This is not a hype cycle. This is embedded, durable, electrified demand.

A Supply Chain That Can’t Keep Up

So where’s all the new copper coming from?

It’s not that easy. Global ore grades have fallen 40 percent since 1990. Capital intensity is up 65 percent since 2020. And permitting a new copper mine? You’re looking at a decade, if you’re lucky.

Rising copper shortage signals long terms risk ahead

Source: Wood Mackenzie

To stay balanced, the world needs:

• 8 million tons of new mine capacity annually
• 3 to 4 million tons from recycling
• Roughly 900,000 tons of new projects brought online each year, double the historical average

But the pipeline is thin, and investors know it.

That’s why we’re seeing consolidation instead of exploration. Anglo American’s US$53 billion merger with Teck isn’t just about synergies. It’s about locking in long-life assets before scarcity goes systemic.

Glencore, too, keeps sniffing around for scale. Because in a tight copper world, it’s not who finds the next deposit. It’s who controls the infrastructure to extract and ship it.

The Currency of Scarcity

With incentive prices creeping above US$11,000 per ton and marginal production costs approaching US$3 per pound, the copper market is entering new territory.

Not because demand is spiking suddenly, but because it’s changing shape. When copper demand is driven by nation-state priorities such as energy security, defense, and technological sovereignty, it’s no longer elastic.

This isn’t a boom. It’s a recalibration.

And the world may soon learn that it takes more than capital to produce copper. It takes patience, political coordination, and power grids that don’t collapse under strain.

Final Thoughts: The Copper Thread in Every Grand Vision

Copper might not be the headline-grabber in your portfolio. It hasn’t been memed to the moon or pumped on Reddit chats, but it will quietly underwrite every grand vision of a rewired, electrified, AI-enhanced future.

In an era obsessed with what’s virtual, copper reminds us that none of it works without something real.

Yes, the path to US$11,000 copper may be volatile. But volatility isn’t the enemy. Unpreparedness is.

When the lights go on, in factories, data centers, electric grids, and defense systems, copper will be there, humming in the background.

Conducting reality.

 

Tara Mulia
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Washington is inching toward ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Headlines will soon move on, analysts will breathe a temporary sigh of relief, and markets will pretend this was just another episode of political theatre.

But underneath that theatre sits a set of structural realities you can’t unsee — a deteriorating labour market, an accelerating debt spiral, policymakers quietly studying how to reprice national gold reserves, and a small Central Asian state launching the world’s first fully gold-backed, state-issued stablecoin.

Together, they reveal a simple truth:

When the old monetary order strains, the search for anchors begins.

Let’s walk through the signs.

1. The shutdown is ending, but the labour data you can’t unsee is only beginning

With official government data frozen during the shutdown, investors have had to rely on private sources. And the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas report landed like a brick.

• 153,074 announced job cuts in October
• A 183% surge month-on-month
• The worst October for layoffs since 2003
• 1.1 million job cuts announced year-to-date. This is the highest since 2009 (excluding COVID)

Source: Challenger

Two forces stand out:

1) Cost-cutting is back

Employers cited cost-cutting as the top reason for layoffs, responsible for:

• 50,437 job cuts (33% of October’s total)

After years of post-COVID labour hoarding: “don’t fire anyone, we won’t be able to hire them back”; CFOs have rediscovered spreadsheets.

2) AI is now officially on the layoff slips

Artificial intelligence was cited in:

• 31,039 job cuts (20% of October’s total)
• Nearly 50,000 AI-related layoffs year-to-date

Amazon alone has eliminated around 14,000 corporate roles as automation and restructuring accelerate.

This is the first real sign that AI is shifting from hype cycle to labour-displacing capital investment. This is something we’ve been expecting, but hadn’t yet seen at scale.

The twist?
We don’t fully know what’s happening in the broader labour market because the shutdown froze official data. When the government switches the lights back on, the picture may look very different from the soft-landing narrative investors still cling to.

2. Shutdown theatre vs a debt clock spinning out of control

Source: Peter G. Peterson Foundation

While Washington fights over weeks over extending spending, something far larger happened in the background:

U.S. national debt just crossed US$38 trillion and that’s only two months after crossing US$37 trillion!

The pace of debt accumulation has doubled compared with the long-term trend.

To put the scale in perspective, the U.S. has added roughly US$1 trillion in just 60 days, is running a US$1.8 trillion deficit in FY2025, and is projected to accumulate US$22.7 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade.

Interest expense is now the fastest-growing line item in the federal budget: the country spent US$4 trillion on interest over the past ten years and is on track to spend US$14 trillion in the decade ahead on top of that. With borrowing costs compounding at this pace, interest is increasingly crowding out public investment from infrastructure and education to research, defense planning, and even private-sector capital formation.

Source: Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Shutdowns, ironically, make it worse:

• 2013 shutdown → US$2B lost productivity
• 2018–19 shutdown → US$11B lost output, US$3B permanently lost
• 2025 shutdown → expected to shave US$7–14B off GDP

This isn’t fiscal discipline.
It’s fiscal erosion layered on top of political dysfunction.

All three major credit rating agencies have now lowered the U.S. below their top rating citing unsustainable fiscal trajectories and political gridlock.

This is the backdrop for what comes next.

3. The Fed’s hidden piggy bank: revaluing America’s gold

On August 1st, the Federal Reserve released a research note with a title that probably didn’t get enough attention:

“Official Reserve Revaluations: The International Experience.”

The note reviews how governments have used valuation gains on gold reserves to:

• plug fiscal gaps,
• recapitalize central banks,
• or create fiscal space without raising taxes or issuing new debt.

Countries cited:
Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Curaçao & Sint Maarten, and South Africa.

How much “extra money” countries got by revaluing their gold, and who got to use it.

Source: The Fed

But the real implication is for the United States.

The U.S. Treasury still values its gold at US$42.22 per ounce. (Set in 1973.)

It officially holds:
261.5 million troy ounces of gold (or so they say).

Book value at US$42.22 → around US$11 billion.

Now compare that to today’s gold price:

Gold is hovering around US$4,200 per ounce.

At market value, the U.S. hoard is worth:

261.5m × 4,200 ≈ US$1.1 trillion

That’s almost 100× the book value.

In other words: the U.S. has a trillion-dollar hidden fiscal asset.

And the mechanism to tap it is shockingly simple.

Source: Heyokha Research

How a gold revaluation works

The Treasury already issues gold certificates to the Fed at the outdated US$42.22 price.

A revaluation would:

1. Raise the official gold price
2. Issue new gold certificates at the new valuation
3. The Fed credits the Treasury’s account with the difference
4. No gold is sold
5. No debt ceiling is violated
6. Hundreds of billions to over a trillion dollars appear

A pure accounting maneuver.

But not a free one

A move like this:

• is effectively stealth money printing
• could undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar
• may add another inflationary tailwind
• signals desperation in fiscal mechanics

Historically, gold revaluation only comes during:

• 1934: FDR uses it to fund the New Deal
• 1971–73: Nixon ends gold convertibility, triggering a de facto repricing

The fact that the Fed is studying this now, as debt hits US$38 trillion and interest costs spiral, speaks volumes.

When a system starts looking at its gold like a pawnshop looks at a wedding ring, something deeper is happening.

4. Meanwhile in Bishkek: Gold 2.0 goes on-chain

While the U.S. quietly examines gold revaluation as a balance-sheet tool, a small Central Asian nation is doing something far more explicit.

Meet USDKG -> Kyrgyzstan’s state-issued, gold-backed stablecoin.

USDKG went live on October 31, 2025, with its public listing following in early November. It’s designed to be simple in form but radical in implication: a digital token pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, fully backed by physical gold, custodied and audited by the Kyrgyz Ministry of Finance, and recorded on transparent blockchain rails.

In other words: an old-world anchor meeting new-world plumbing.

Initial issuance: 50.1 million tokens
Initial gold reserve: roughly US$500 million, scaling toward US$2 billion

Kyrgyzstan is now the first country in the world to issue a state-backed stablecoin fully collateralized by gold.

Why they’re doing it

USDKG is meant to:

• modernize cross-border payments,
• attract capital seeking a hard-asset-backed digital alternative,
• hedge against dollar volatility,
• reduce dependence on U.S. banking rails,
• build economic sovereignty via blockchain.

For a region culturally anchored to gold, this offers a familiar foundation with modern infrastructure.

Risks

• credibility hinges on continuous audits,
• adoption must go beyond speculators,
• geopolitics may pressure its usage,
• liquidity must scale significantly.

But symbolically?

It’s a milestone.

In one part of the world, policymakers are quietly discussing revaluing gold to fill fiscal holes.

In another, a government is explicitly tokenizing gold to build a new monetary instrument.

5. The through-line: labour → debt → gold → digital gold

Put the pieces together:

• Labour market: layoffs are surging, AI is displacing jobs, cost-cutting is replacing labour hoarding.
• Debt: the U.S. is adding US$1 trillion around every 60 days, interest expense is exploding, and shutdowns only made it worse.
• Gold: the Fed is studying how to unlock US$1.1 trillion in unrealized gold gains via revaluation.
• Digital gold: Kyrgyzstan launches USDKG, the first state-backed gold-collateralized stablecoin.

These are not isolated events.
They’re signals of a monetary order under pressure and of societies reaching for anchors.

Corporates seek anchors in automation.
Governments seek anchors in asset revaluations.
Emerging markets seek anchors in tokenized gold.

For investors, the takeaway isn’t that the dollar collapses tomorrow or that gold-stablecoins replace SWIFT.

The message is subtler and more important:

In a regime where labour weakens, debt accelerates, and policymakers test non-traditional monetary levers, real assets and pricing power become the central pillars of portfolio resilience.

The shutdown may end.
The headlines will move on.
But the deeper story of a system inching toward a fiscal and monetary reset is just the beginning.

 

Tara Mulia

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If you thought the AI revolution was all about chips, code, and compute—think again. The unsung hero (or ticking time bomb) of this story might just be… private credit.

Welcome to the trillion-dollar question: who exactly is financing the infrastructure needed to power the AI future?

The answer, increasingly, is a shadowy constellation of non-bank lenders, structured products, and funds sitting outside the traditional financial system. And while that may sound efficient and exciting, recent cockroach sightings suggest we might want to turn the lights on.

AI’s $6 Trillion Appetite

Let’s start with the scale of AI’s infrastructure demand.

Whether it’s ChatGPT-5 or DeepSeek, one thing is clear: the “bitter lesson” of AI is that performance scales with compute. And compute needs data centers. McKinsey estimates $6.7 trillion will be needed for data center infrastructure by 2030. Morgan Stanley forecasts $2.9 trillion of AI infrastructure spending by 2028 alone.

Breakdown of capital expenditure for data center infrastructure

Source: McKinsey

These numbers dwarf the annual capital expenditures for AI investments of the entire S&P 500 this year at $1.2 trillion.

Where is all this money coming from?

• $1.4 trillion from hyperscaler cash flows (Amazon, Google, Meta, etc.)
• $800 billion from private credit
• $200 billion from corporate bonds
• $150 billion from securitized assets (ABS, CMBS)
• $350 billion from PE, VC, sovereigns, and banks

Source: Morgan Stanley

In short, roughly 40% of this spending will be debt-financed, and the largest slice of that debt is expected to come from private credit.

The Cockroach Problem

In October, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon dropped an eerie warning: “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”

He was referring to the collapse of Tricolor Holdings, a subprime auto lender that filed for bankruptcy after allegedly double-pledging collateral. The kicker? Big banks had lent hundreds of millions to Tricolor where some of it through opaque, off-balance-sheet channels.

It didn’t stop there. Soon after:

• First Brands Group, an auto-parts supplier, filed for bankruptcy due to short-term loan issues.
• Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance disclosed exposure to credit-related fraud.
• 777 Partners, a private investment firm, saw one of its co-founders charged with conspiracy for—you guessed it—double-pledging loans.

The sector may be labeled “private,” but the consequences are public.

This “cockroach chain” highlights a growing risk: as traditional banks get regulated out of risky lending, they’re increasingly funding the funds that do it anyway. The loop looks like this:

And we’re currently in the “Banks Lend to Private Credit Funds” section

 

Shadow Finance Lights Up AI

So how did private credit become such a major player in the AI buildout?

The rise of non-depository financial institutions (NDFIs) plays a key role. These are lenders that don’t take deposits like traditional banks — think private credit funds, specialty finance companies, and other “shadow banks” operating outside typical regulatory oversight. A decade ago, they accounted for just 3.6% of all U.S. bank lending. Today, that number is 10.4%, representing $1.2 trillion in loans, nearly half of which goes to private credit and private equity firms.

Share of U.S. bank lending to NDFIs has tripled since 2015

Source: Moody’s

Where do loans to NDFIs go? Nearly half goes to private credit and private equity

Source: Moody’s

Why?

Because AI infrastructure is uniquely complex, global, and capital-hungry. Building a GPU-loaded data center isn’t like building a mall. It requires:

• Customized, asset-backed financing structures
• Speed and scale
• Global reach
• A tolerance for regulatory grey zones

Private credit fits that bill. It’s fast, flexible, and invisible—until it isn’t.

From Bubble Watch to Regime Shift?

It’s tempting to warn of a bubble. High valuations. Accelerating capex. Shadow finance. We’ve seen this before.

But perhaps the better frame is this: private credit is not a flaw — it’s the vessel.

If AI turns out to be a tool rather than a revolution, the loans may look reckless in hindsight. But if AI continues to reshape compute, productivity, and power, then we may look back at this moment as the early days of a capital formation regime shift.

What used to be considered risky (opaque, unrated, bespoke debt) is being normalized, because the magnitude of the opportunity demands it.

Closing Thought: Trillions Don’t Tiptoe

We’re now financing the future in trillions, not billions. That changes the scale — and the stakes.

Whether private credit is a ticking time bomb or a necessary lubricant depends on what you believe about AI itself. If the promise materializes, the financing structure will be seen as bold and adaptive. If not, we’ll be picking through the ashes of another misallocated boom.

But either way, the financial architecture is evolving. Private credit isn’t just enabling the AI race. It’s being shaped by it.

Exponential ambitions require exponential mechanisms. And sometimes, those mechanisms are invisible—until they’re not.

 

Tara Mulia

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Would you book a factory tour for your next vacation? For a growing number of tourists, the answer is a very enthusiastic yes.

In a world where selfie spots range from natural wonders to theme parks, it’s China’s EV factories, humanoid robot plants, and chip-making floors that are drawing crowds. What seems quirky at first glance is telling us something deeper: China’s industrial confidence is becoming visible, emotional, and contagious.

China’s Machines Go Public

The rise of industrial tourism in China might seem like a novel travel trend, but it’s more than that — it’s cultural signaling.

Xiaomi’s EV factory has opened its doors to influencers and visitors alike, drawing waves of attention. But the excursion proved incredibly popular, and Xiaomi quickly began scheduling significantly more slots. In July, the company said it will offer one tour every weekday and six tours most weekends, accommodating more than 1,100 visitors in total. When July registration opened, however, over 27,000 applications flooded in overnight, according to the Xiaomi app, so the chances of snagging a ticket remain slim.

Tourists in a car manufacturing factory. Source: Asia News

It’s not just Xiaomi. Nio, another leading EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing one of its highly automated factories since late 2023. In 2024 alone, over 130,000 people visited the facility, where certain production lines like the body shop have achieved 100 percent automation.

What we’re seeing is the factory no longer being a black box — it’s a stage. And the audience is growing.

As we explored in Asia’s Factory Is Naming Its Price, manufacturing used to be about cost. Now it’s about control — over narrative and over price.

Xiaomi’s Strategy – Not Just PR, But Performance

All this industrial theater would ring hollow if it weren’t backed by real capability. But in Xiaomi’s case, it is.

With the launch of its SU7 electric sedan, Xiaomi is attempting to do to EVs what it did to smartphones: create high-spec, beautifully designed products at disruptive price points. The move wasn’t a pivot but a long game with years of ecosystem building, from user interfaces to IoT integration, which paved the way.

While Western automakers struggle with fragmented digital platforms, Xiaomi enters the EV market with native fluency in software, supply chain discipline, and a user base conditioned to expect more for less.

This evolution also signals a deeper truth: while the West often underestimates China’s capacity for reinvention, companies like Xiaomi are proving that innovation isn’t confined to Silicon Valley. The complacency of incumbents is being met with ambition, integration, and execution.

Just as sleek as a Porsche, but at a third of the price!

There was a time when brands like Porsche could command higher prices because they were much better cars — better engineered, faster, more reliable. The price premium was justified by superior performance.

That equation has flipped. Today, it is Chinese cars like Xiaomi’s SU7 Ultra that are not only better than Porsche on critical measures — range, technology, connectivity, integration — but also much less expensive. The performance gap has closed, and in some dimensions, reversed.

And this price difference is seen blatantly in phones too!

The most striking symbol of this shift: in July 2025, Ferrari, one of the most prestigious car manufacturers in the world, bought a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra to study and reverse engineer. What was once unthinkable is now reality: the icon of European automotive excellence looking to a Chinese upstart for lessons in how to build the future.

Xiaomi SU7 Ultra spotted at the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy

We called this shift in The Great Deflation Reversal: the return of pricing power—especially from Asia. Xiaomi’s EV play isn’t a detour. It’s the roadmap.

Policy as Engine – Strategic Scarcity

China’s rise in industrial confidence and competitiveness isn’t purely market-led — it’s policy-aligned.

The government’s “Made in China 2025” program has targeted strategic sectors such as semiconductors, green energy, and AI infrastructure, with an eye on capturing chokepoints and pushing domestic champions. This deliberate intervention has fostered vertically integrated giants capable of not just manufacturing, but shaping prices and standards.

In practical terms, this means engineered scarcity, whether through export controls on rare earths or encouraging homegrown substitution in critical tech. Lower-tier manufacturing may spill over into Southeast Asia, but the value-added layers — design, R&D, component monopolies — are staying onshore.

China is close to surpassing the U.S. in R&D spending and dominates in manufacturing production

This reshoring of strategic control flips the script. Rather than competing solely on price, Chinese firms now compete on indispensability.

We unpacked this in What’s the Price of Sovereignty?: in a world of fragmentation and friendshoring, the country that owns the blueprint, the supply chain, and the customer wins.

Closing Thoughts: Selfies Are Signals

Tourists don’t line up to see just any factory. They line up to see what they believe is the future.

What we’re witnessing is more than a PR stunt. It’s a shift in confidence and soft power. By making industrial capacity visible, emotionally resonant, and nationally celebrated, China is rewriting the rules of manufacturing prestige.

In a world of inflation, fragmentation, and geopolitical noise, this matters. The next economic era may not be led by who makes the loudest policy speech, but by who turns their production lines into aspirational experiences.

 

Tara Mulia

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First it was Indonesia. Then Singapore. Now Japan.

Gold is disappearing from shelves across Asia — and not in a metaphysical, “store of value” kind of way. We mean literally. Sold out. Bars gone. Retailers suspending sales. ETFs trading at massive premiums. Even banks issuing crowd control notices for gold counters.

It feels less like a market trend, and more like a regional treasure hunt.

So what’s going on? And why does this moment feel both absurd and deeply logical?

Let’s dig in.

Japan Joins the Gold Shortage Club

Just this past week, Japan’s top gold retailer, Tanaka, paused sales of small bullion bars, citing overwhelming demand. Bars under 50 grams? Gone. Websites? Out of stock. Ginza? Lined up.

Meanwhile, the Japan Physical Gold ETF has been trading at a wild premium — as high as 16% above its net asset value. That’s the kind of divergence you don’t normally see unless there’s a serious supply-demand mismatch. Or in this case, when investors are literally willing to pay more for paper gold just to secure the option of turning it into physical.

Source: Bloomberg

Mitsubishi, the fund’s backer, is scrambling to source bullion both domestically and abroad, but can’t keep up. And it’s not just retail buying: the yen’s continued depreciation has made dollar-based gold look even more attractive for Japanese investors.

Gold Rush Déjà Vu – Indonesia Did It First?

Let the record show: Indonesia was early.

Back in June 2025, Pegadaian’s Galeri 24 (one of the biggest gold retailers in Indonesia) temporarily suspended all sales of ANTAM gold bars across all denominations. Supply constraints, operational issues, and unrelenting demand collided. And like in Japan, the smaller bars disappeared first.

   

Notice of the temporary suspension in Bareksa (Indonesian financial marketplace) back in June alongside physical notice in one of UOB’s Singapore branch on the ground

Even UOB’s Singapore branch had to post notices about long queues, early closure of issuance numbers, and bar designs running out of stock. It was gold fever — with air conditioning.

In Jakarta, gold is everywhere, even underground. This ad for Pegadaian’s Tring! app was spotted in the Bundaran HI MRT station, featuring a queen-like figure on a golden throne, smartphone in hand, and a bar of gold in the other.

   

Pegadaian’s newest digital gold app ads all over the Jakarta’s MRT busiest station

It’s an intriguing development this digitization of gold. In Indonesia, platforms like these are gamifying and simplifying gold investing. Want to buy 0.1 grams on your lunch break? There’s an app for that.

It’s part of a wider fintech movement that blends tradition with tech. Young Indonesians may never buy physical newspapers, but they’ll happily stack digital gold grams in an app, especially when headlines scream “stagflation” and “rate cuts delayed.”

And while Japan’s retail boom is currently showing in ETFs and queues at brick-and-mortar stores, we wouldn’t be surprised to see digital gold apps take off there too, especially as younger investors look for easier ways to escape yen depreciation.

If that doesn’t scream “gold is mainstream,” we don’t know what does.

Everyone Wants Real Assets Now

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a consumer fad. It’s the continuation of a deeper, structural trend we’ve written about in “The Return of Real Money”:

In an age of debt saturation, geopolitical shocks, and currency debasement, gold isn’t an asset. It’s insurance.

Unlike tech stocks or AI tokens, you can hold it. Store it. Gift it. Hide it in your grandma’s rice cooker if necessary. And perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t rely on someone else’s cash flow or promises.

As central banks (especially in the Global South) continue to accumulate gold, retail investors are following suit. The difference? Central banks hoard by the tonne. Retail investors hoard by the gram. But the psychology is the same.

What About the Correction?

Let’s address the elephant in the vault: gold recently tumbled nearly 6% in a single trading day after hitting record highs — the largest one‑day percentage drop in over a decade.

But rather than spooking the market, demand barely flinched. In fact, good luck getting your hands on physical gold right now. Even after the dip:

• On the official ANTAM website, gold remains sold out across all denominations.

Completely sold out online

• When one of our team members tried to call a secondary market dealer, the quote was an eye-watering Rp3,000,000/gram — nearly 30% above ANTAM’s own retail price and a premium of 37% above global gold spot price.
• This isn’t new. Back in May, during another gold frenzy, we published “We Are All Prospectors” and shared this photo of Indonesians lining up at dawn to buy gold in malls.

So yes, this correction might be technical — but structurally? The gold rush never really ended.

Just take a look at this chart:

For the first time since 1996, foreign central banks are holding more gold than US Treasuries as a percentage of their reserves. That’s not a fluke — it’s a statement.

And if you’re wondering why, the chart below offers some answers:

Since 1999, major currencies have lost nearly 90% of their value against gold. And as history shows, no global reserve currency lasts forever.

Now, after all the retail queues, the stockouts, the ETF premiums, it might be tempting to think gold has become too obvious. That we’re at the top.

But here’s the contrarian reality:

Almost 75% of financial advisors still allocate less than 1% to gold in client portfolios.

Let that sink in.

Even with central banks accumulating more gold than Treasuries for the first time since 1996… even with physical retail demand breaking supply chains… gold still remains a rounding error in most formal portfolios.

That’s underexposure.

Which raises the question: if this much buying is happening with barely any institutional participation, what happens if that starts to shift?

Final Thoughts: The Wisdom of Crowds in Gold

It’s easy to dismiss long queues and app downloads as retail noise. But as Barton Biggs observed in his book ‘Wealth, War & Wisdom’, markets are ultimately voting machines — messy, emotional, but often clairvoyant.

He wrote that the collective intuition of investors has an uncanny ability to sense regime shifts before the experts do. “We should be very respectful,” he warned, “of the collective wisdom of stock markets.”

We’d go one step further: Don’t underestimate the public.

When thousands of people from Tokyo to Jakarta line up, buy out inventory, or pay 30% premiums for a gram of gold, they may be voting with something deeper than just greed.

They might be sensing what the data now confirms: central banks shifting reserves, currencies debasing in plain sight, and trust migrating from promises to physicality

No, gold didn’t glitter slowly. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to.

Because when belief is this widespread, persistent, and still under-allocated — we may be watching the first inklings of a regime shift, not the last breath of a rally.

 

Tara Mulia
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In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, the World Serpen, is so vast that he encircles the Earth, biting his own tail. He is a living embodiment of the Ouroboros, an ancient symbol of infinite, self-reinforcing cycles.

Legend says that when Jörmungandr releases his tail, Ragnarök—the end of the world begins.

The Ouroboros has long stood for cosmic balance, but in markets, it often points to something more fragile: circular, self-fueling systems that can turn on themselves.

And that brings us to today’s AI boom which is an ecosystem that much like the Ouroboros, seems to be feeding on itself. Let’s hope it doesn’t let go.

An illustration of Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree that connects all realms, with Jörmungandr, the world serpent, encircling Midgard at its base.

Trillions In, Productivity TBD

2025 has been a great year to be bullish on AI. But is it getting too great?

Once again, a single theme did the heavy lifting for U.S. equities: artificial intelligence. AI-linked companies accounted for 80% of all U.S. stock market gains year-to-date. And it’s not just stocks. AI investment has driven an estimated 40% of U.S. GDP growth in 2025.

It sounds like a miracle.

But scratch beneath the surface and the picture gets… weird.

Everything looks to be one big giant interlocking circle

Source: Bloomberg

The rally isn’t broad-based. It’s the opposite. Outside of the Big AI names, the U.S. economy is showing cracks: a softening labor market, sluggish consumption, and record-high debt. In short, this isn’t a rising tide lifting all boats. It’s a hydrofoil dragging a bunch of broken paddleboards.

So what’s keeping it all aloft?

A lot of capital. And a lot of circularity.

Everyone Buys Everyone Else’s Chips

Let’s talk about the AI money machine. According to Bloomberg, here’s what the current capital flow looks like:

• Nvidia agrees to invest up to $100B in OpenAI
• OpenAI uses that money to buy Nvidia chips
• Oracle inks a $300B cloud deal with OpenAI
• Oracle spends billions on Nvidia chips
• CoreWeave gets Nvidia investment → sells compute to OpenAI → gives OpenAI equity
• xAI (Elon Musk) raises $20B to rent Nvidia chips
• OpenAI gets AMD chips → receives 10% equity stake in AMD via warrants

If that sounds a little too tidy, you’re not alone.

Veteran short seller Jim Chanos called it out bluntly: “If demand for compute is infinite, why do the sellers keep subsidizing the buyers?”

All major firms are tied to OpenAI one way or another

Source: Financial Times

What we’re witnessing is a $1 trillion capex circularity, where everyone is simultaneously the customer, supplier, and investor.

The Return of Vendor Financing (With Trillions Attached)

This circularity isn’t new. We saw something similar during the dot-com boom, when companies booked revenue by buying each other’s ads and services. Back then, it was banners and buzzwords. Now, it’s multi-billion-dollar chip orders and GPU rentals.

The Mag 7 vs Dot com Leaders – the stakes this time are dramatically higher.

Source: Goldman Sachs, March 2025

According to JPMorgan, over $1.2 trillion in investment-grade debt is now tied to companies linked to AI making it the largest segment in the high-grade bond market, surpassing even U.S. banks.

That figure has surged from just 11.5% of the market in 2020 to 14% today, encompassing 75 companies across tech, utilities, and capital goods, including Oracle, Apple, and even Duke Energy. Many of these firms are cash-rich, low-leverage, and considered high-quality issuers, which helps explain why their bonds trade tighter than the broader market.

But it also means one thing: AI is now a credit story.

Oracle’s recent $18 billion bond sale, the second-largest of the year, drew a staggering $88 billion in demand. Investors and underwriters are piling into the space, viewing AI data center expansion as the next secular credit theme. Even Bank of America says AI buildouts could meaningfully boost corporate debt issuance volumes.

And here’s the vendor-financing twist: much of this debt is being used to fund infrastructure that then services the same AI companies issuing the debt or receiving equity investments from those infrastructure providers.

The logic is tight. The flows are tighter.

But that also means risk is tightly concentrated. If AI fails to deliver, the unwind wouldn’t just hit equity. It could ripple through credit markets too.

JPMorgan notes that while fundamentals remain sound for now, the tight spread levels leave little margin for error. If companies use cash from bond proceeds for aggressive capex or acquisitions without generating returns before redemption, the risks compound.

It’s not fake. But it is increasingly leveraged belief.

Belief > Balance Sheets

So far, the justification for all this capex is that AI will supercharge productivity.

But here’s the catch: it hasn’t yet.

In our blog The AI Curveball, we warned that AI is front-loading costs, not savings. Power demand, chip inflation, cooling infrastructure — all up. But labor productivity? Still flat.

And now, there’s more data to back it up.

A recent MIT study of over 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives found that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots have failed to deliver any measurable financial return despite $30–40 billion invested into GenAI initiatives. While tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are widely adopted (with 40% of organizations reporting deployment), they’ve mostly enhanced individual productivity — not corporate P&Ls.

Enterprise-scale solutions? That’s where the failures stack up. Of those evaluated:

• Only 20% made it to pilot stage
• Only 5% reached full production

Why? It’s not the models, or the regulation, or even the infrastructure. It’s the lack of contextual learning and integration. Most AI systems don’t adapt, don’t retain feedback, and don’t align with actual business workflows.

The more complex the task, the less willing people are going to use AI

Source: MIT

MIT calls it the GenAI Divide — a split between the 5% of companies extracting millions in value, and the 95% still stuck in pilot purgatory.

This is starting to feel less like a tech boom and more like a faith-based economy. The narrative has become:

Yes, debt is rising. Yes, consumption is fragile. But it’s okay, because AI will save us.

Let’s contrast this with another asset class we like: gold.

As we explored in The Price of Intelligence and The Return of Real Money, gold is also powered by belief — but it’s belief backed by restraint.

Gold supply is tight. Production growth is capped. Central banks continue to buy.

In short, it’s a real asset that doesn’t rely on everyone renting each other’s GPUs to keep the story going.

So What? A Market Built on Echoes

America has become one big bet on AI. And that bet is now funding:

• GDP growth
• Consumer wealth effects
• Investor inflows
• Even foreign demand for U.S. equities

But like any leverage cycle, it needs to work.

Because if AI doesn’t deliver the promised productivity gains soon, all those circular deals might look less like “strategic partnerships” and more like a trillion-dollar trust fall.

Final Thought: What Happens If Faith Gets Marked to Market?

We’re not anti-AI. But we are pro-questioning.

When a single theme drives 80% of the market and 40% of GDP, it becomes less a theme and more a theology. And theology, as investors know, doesn’t always translate into free cash flow.

So here’s the question: Is this still investing — or is it just narrative compounding?

If belief becomes the product, who’s left holding the faith?

 

Tara Mulia

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From stock market whiplash to gold’s glittering comeback, Art Jakarta 2025 somehow captured it all.

We came for the art and we left questioning our asset allocation.

A packed-filled exhibition hall with art lovers

We didn’t expect to find investing lessons hanging next to oil paintings. But here we are, because Art Jakarta 2025 offered something different this year. It was less “gallery wall” and more “mirror to the markets”, which was a surprisingly vivid meditation on investing, wealth, and what it really means to preserve value in a world full of volatility.

Across bright halls and even brighter installations, three moments stood out: a portrait series that captured the rollercoaster of stock trading, a pop-up gold rest area that felt more like a warm macro hedge than a lounge, and the story of an autistic artist whose sold-out show quietly reminded us of the biggest asset class of all: human potential.

Let’s unpack.

1. The Many Faces of the Market (Literally)

Agus Suwage’s latest series, “Portrait of Possibilities,” was the kind of artwork that stops you in your tracks. Sixty self-portraits, each with a surreal, often absurd twist: a papaya for a head, smoke billowing out of where a head should be, a parrot where a face should be.

We’ve all felt like this– ranging from manic euphoria to existential dread
Credit: Agus Suwage

This art series by Suwage felt like an eerily accurate representation of investing psychology. Want to know how it feels like to trade equities in 2025? You’d probably find one of Suwage’s faces showcase at least one emotion felt by the financial masses.

Some portraits showed anguish. Others, joy. Some looked like they’d just YOLO’d into an AI stock right before a 40% drawdown. And that’s the point: as Suwage puts it, “From each role we play, there are many possibilities. Good or bad.” There’s something oddly comforting about seeing the emotional chaos of investing laid bare on canvas.

It reminds us that volatility isn’t just about price. It’s about people.

2. Treasury’s Rest Area: Where Capital Meets Care

While the rest of the exhibition offered espresso and aircon, Treasury, a digital gold platform, built an entire multisensory rest area. The centerpiece? An interactive table installation titled “Reserve of Care” by artists Azizi Al Majid and Nuri Fatimah.

       

Treasury’s multi-media installation and the gold products they were showcasing for every life milestone
Credit: Treasury, Aziz Al Mahjid, and Nuri Fatimah

Each of the table’s four legs represented a foundational value: Shelter, Wealth, Care, and Love. Together, they grounded the experience in something we often forget in markets: that money, too, is emotional.

Gold, in this context, wasn’t just a shiny commodity — it was symbolic of all the things we seek to protect.

Source: Bloomberg, normalized with factor 100

And protect, it does.

• Gold is up 53% YTD, outperforming most asset classes.

• Central banks are still buying, adding 166 tonnes in Q2 alone.

• Indonesia launched bullion banks this year to keep more gold in-country.

• Supply? It’s still tight. Mine output is barely growing (only around 1%), and recycling’s flat.

In short: gold isn’t just having a moment. It’s having a regime shift.

This isn’t the first time Treasury has collaborated with artists to showcase Gold’s strength. Here is one by artist Naufal Abshar in his “Gold is King” artpiece for Treasury x Art Jakarta Gardens in 2024.

Which is why at Heyokha, we’ve long held conviction in gold. It’s not just a hedge against inflation. It’s a hedge against institutional fragility, geopolitical shocks, and even shrinkflation in chocolate bars (Read more about what we mean in our shrinkflation blog).

Want the receipts? We’ve got two special reports where we deep dived on these topics:

• Gold: The Return of Real Money

• De-dollarization: The Fall of the American Empire?

Gold may not change, but the world around it does. And in uncertain times, that constancy becomes priceless.

3. Oliver Wihardja and the Limitless Value of Potential

In a hall bursting with visuals, it was the story behind Oliver Wihardja’s work that left the deepest mark.

A 23-year-old artist with autism, Oliver (or Ollie, as he’s fondly known) began painting at six as part of his therapy. Fast forward to 2025, and his latest solo exhibition, “From Chinatown with Love,” was a complete sell-out.

Wiharja artistically captures the colorful atmosphere and warmth of Jakarta’s Chinatown
Credit: Oliver Wihardja

His works, rich in cultural memory and everyday scenes, carry a clarity of detail and color that speaks volumes. But it’s his journey that does the heavy lifting.

From art as healing to art as legacy. And isn’t that the essence of investing?

Not in the stock sense. In the human one.

Oliver’s story is a case study in what happens when belief meets time. When care is compounded. When possibility is nurtured.

We often talk about investing in companies, in commodities, in capital cycles, but this was a visceral reminder that some of the best returns come from investing in people.

And just like gold, that kind of potential never truly loses value.

Final Thought: Let the Market Be Your Museum

Art Jakarta 2025 didn’t offer financial advice. But it offered something better: perspective.

A series of surreal portraits showed us what it feels like to hold conviction in volatile times.

A gold platform showed us that care is as important as capital.

And a young artist reminded us that value isn’t always on a balance sheet.

Investing, like art, is about imagination. About what could be, not just what is.

So whether you’re holding cash, gold, or just trying to hold it together — know this:

The market, like a great painting, is open to interpretation.

And sometimes, that’s where the real return lies.

 

Tara Mulia
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