BATON ROUGE, La. (April 27, 2025) – A bill filed in the Louisiana House would establish a 100 percent gold and silver-backed transactional currency.
Last year, Louisiana recognized gold and silver as legal tender in the state. House Bill 386 (HB386), filed by Rep. Raymond Crews, would build on that foundation.
The legislation would require the state treasurer to “issue specie and establish a currency as determined practicable,” as authorized by Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution of the United States.
Specie is defined in the bill as “a precious metal stamped into coins of uniform shape, size, design, content, and purity, suitable for or customarily used as currency, as a medium of exchange, or as the medium for purchase, sale, storage, transfer, or delivery of precious metals in retail or wholesale transactions.”
Currency is defined in the proposed law as “the representation of actual gold and silver, specie, and bullion held in a depository account by a depository account holder. Such representation shall reflect the exact unit(s) of physical specie or gold and silver bullion in the pooled depository account in its fractional troy ounce measurement as provided in this Chapter.”
Under the proposed law, this currency would be considered legal tender in the state.
In establishing the currency, the treasurer shall establish a means to ensure that a person who holds the currency may use the currency as legal tender in payment of debt or readily transfer or assign such currency to any other person or state by electronic means.
Specie gold and silver bullion backing the currency would be stored in an “approved” bullion depository, which could include a state bullion depository, the Texas Bullion Depository, or a similar depository established in another state, or a private vendor located in Louisiana.
In practice, the passage of HB386 would allow any person to conduct business transactions using gold or silver.
IMPACT
The passage of this bill would create a sound money alternative to U.S. dollars in both physical and electronic form.
Using gold and silver-backed transactional currency, any person or entity would be able to do business using a debit card that seamlessly converts gold and silver to fiat currency in the background. Private individuals and businesses would be able to purchase goods and services using assets held in the Texas Bullion Depository in the same way they use dollars held in a bank today.
Gold and silver-backed transactional currency would give people a way to shield themselves from the rapid loss of purchasing power inherent in the fiat dollar.
BACKGROUND
The United States Constitution states in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” Currently, all debts and taxes in most states are either paid with Federal Reserve Notes (dollars), which were authorized as legal tender by Congress, or with coins issued by the U.S. Treasury – very few of which have gold or silver in them.
The Federal Reserve destroys this constitutional monetary system by creating a monopoly based on its fiat paper currency. Without the backing of gold or silver, the central bank can easily create money out of thin air.
This not only devalues your purchasing power over time; it also allows the federal government to borrow and spend far beyond what would be possible in a sound money system. Without the Fed, the U.S. government wouldn’t be able to maintain all of its unconstitutional wars and programs. The Federal Reserve is the engine that drives the most powerful government in the history of the world.
State laws that facilitate and encourage the use of sound money create a playing field where people can push back against the Fed’s monetary malfeasance. Ultimately, it could create a scenario where people can drive out the “bad” fiat money with “good” sound money.
WHAT’S NEXT
HB386 was referred to the House Committee on Commerce where it must get a hearing and pass by a majority vote before moving forward in the legislative process.
