JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – With Florida officially recognizing gold and silver as legal tender, many are left wondering—what does this mean for investors? On this episode of This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition, Luciano Duque of C3 Bullion helps us unpack that question. Duque, a financial expert with deep experience in international portfolio construction, offers unique insight into gold’s evolving role in the financial system—and a new model for investing in it.
Gold’s Traditional Role—and Its Challenges
“My background is in finance. I’ve been in finance for several years, building portfolios for clients, mostly international clients,” Duque explains. “As time passed by, I always put, like, gold in a portfolio. You know, gold is always a part of it.”
Duque notes, however, that gold has its limitations. “The problem with gold is that gold has no income unless gold goes up. So… just gold sits there,” he says. “The idea of having gold in a portfolio always makes sense. But always people say, ‘Yeah, but not doing much.’ You know, ‘Where’s the income from it?’”
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Why Gold Prices Are Soaring
Since September 2022, gold prices have more than doubled—from about $1,600 to $3,300. According to Duque, “Usually gold behave, inverted to a stock market, right? Stock market goes down, gold goes up… Now when you start having, uncertainty in the markets, that’s when Gold start to go up.”
But the biggest driver may be structural: “Something very interesting happened… with something called Basel III,” Duque says. “What happened a few years ago was that gold was turned into what’s called a tier one asset… So what happened was that now banks realized I’d need a goal. And as part of their assets, like the physical gold.”
That regulatory change prompted massive institutional demand. “Central banks broke every record of gold purchase, and they were not buying paper gold. We’re actually buying physical gold.”
Gold as Legal Tender in Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to declare gold legal tender in Florida has raised plenty of eyebrows—and questions.
“I think a lot of us are like, is I’m like 19th century and I got a, you know, a piece of gold. And I’m looking at the bartender. What’s what does that look like?” Duque says with a laugh.
Still, there could be implications for taxation. “Usually when you get gold, you hold gold… you don’t pay taxes on the increase in the price of gold unless you sell it,” Duque explains. “So you have a taxable event when you actually sell.”
But what if someone used gold to buy a house? “Has he created a taxable event when he gave that bar of gold to buy a house or not? I don’t know, but it’s a very interesting question.”
C3 Bullion’s Innovative Gold Lending Model
Duque’s company, C3 Bullion, aims to make investing in gold more dynamic. “We are a mining advisory firm… what we do is work also with investors. So the investors want to get a piece of the action that happens in the mine without actually owning the mine.”
Here’s how it works: C3 lends capital to smaller, already-producing gold mines. In return, those mines repay the loans in physical gold—at a discount. “We lend to the gold mines. We act as a mortgage… and when the mines start paying back, they have to pay back with physical gold.”
For investors, this means potential returns in actual gold. “We literally send gold to investors,” Duque says. “What happens is the money is paid back in full, with gold.”
De-Risking Mining Investment
C3 also brings mining know-how. “We have in our team five of those” Qualified Persons, or QPs, Duque says. “So we don’t go into a mine where we don’t know there is something on the road… we are not getting into exploration at all.”
Beyond due diligence, C3 provides hands-on operational support. “We are literally going like boots on the ground and actually helping the mine increase production.”
This minimizes the risk for investors and creates a win-win: “We don’t want ownership of your mine… we go in temporarily—only five years.”
A New Way to Add Gold to Portfolios
Duque says the goal is to give everyday investors better access to gold—with some income potential. “You don’t have to go into investing in gold thinking this is the one that is going to produce to me like 75% return… gold goes into the bottom of that risk part of the safety net.”
He recommends a classic allocation strategy: “I always suggest any sort of a traditional putting two and a half to 5%… of your portfolio in some exposure of gold.”
Through C3’s SEC-qualified Regulation A Tier 2 offering, even smaller investors can get involved. “We went live on May 28th… the minimum size investment is 500 bucks,” Duque says. “We are creating this management company to actually drive a new investor in gold.”
With legal and market shifts surrounding gold, and a unique lending model bridging mining and finance, Duque sees a golden opportunity for conservative investors looking to diversify.
“Something is going on with the gold,” he says. “Central bankers are buying… States are now using it as a legal tender… we think that is going to happen. A lot more things with gold in the future than what’s going on right now.”
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