Well, let me first of all deal with GoldMoney, and then I will deal with the ETF. All the gold and silver stored in GoldMoney is allocated. What that means is VIA MAT has one account—the account is in the name of the customers of GoldMoney. VIA MAT doesn't know who those customers are, but they know it is the customers of GoldMoney, and it's allocated.

There are bars with refinery serial numbers specifically allocated sitting in the VIA MAT vault, clearly distinct from other gold and silver sitting in the VIA MAT vault.

And we report those bar serial numbers on the GoldMoney website, so that if you have enough gold or silver in your account to take up a whole bar, you can go to the GoldMoney website and say I want this bar with this serial number.

It will be taken out of your account for free, and then VIA MAT, at your expense, will ship it to wherever you want in the world. So, all the gold and silver is allocated, and it is allocated on behalf of GoldMoney's customers.

With ETFs, on the other hand, because of the absence of the audit, you don't really know that it's allocated, and I have some serious reservations about whether it is, particularly with the silver ETF. I have read the custodial agreement, and it is not an allocated bullion storage agreement; it's a metal account.

A metal account is a depository relationship that the ETF would have with the custodian. That's very different from an allocated bullion storage account agreement. So I have some serious reservations as to whether the silver in the SLV ETF is allocated or not.

There's a lot of uncertainty about storage when you're involved in storing metal, as I discussed earlier in regard to the banks, and there's still a lot of uncertainly with ETFs whether the gold and silver really are there. But even if they are there, you don't own gold or silver with an ETF.

You own shares in a fund that supposedly owns the gold and silver.

That's different from owning the gold and silver yourself. With GoldMoney, you own the gold and silver; you have access to it 24/7 through your account on-line, and you can have that gold and silver sent to you, if you want, if you have enough gold and silver in your account to take delivery of a bar. Or you can use that gold and silver and go to KITCO and buy small bars or coins with it if you want to have something in hand. But you cannot do that with an ETF.

Image: An Indian woman checks gold ornaments in a shop in Hyderabad ahead of the Hindu Akshaya Tritiya festival. | Photograph: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images