The claim (JoshPhilipPhair, 08/2026, and a hardy perennial): Basel III made gold a “Tier 1 asset” as of July 2025, on the same footing as cash and government bonds, and only physical gold qualifies. It is muddled: “Tier 1” is a category of bank capital (equity and retained earnings), not of assets, and no Basel text puts gold there.
What did change, from memory: physical gold held in a bank’s own vault or on an allocated basis has carried a 0% risk weight for years; Basel III’s Net Stable Funding Ratio, phased in from 2021 (UK/EU) with US implementation around 2025, treats unallocated gold — the paper claim that the bullion-bank system runs on — as an asset needing 85% stable funding, which makes holding paper gold expensive for banks and allocated metal comparatively cheap. So the true part is the physical-vs-paper distinction; the false part is the “Tier 1” label and the implication that regulators elevated gold to money. The likely effect is narrower and slower than the meme: less unallocated inventory, more allocated, a thinner paper layer — a structural push toward deliverable metal that lines up with the vault-building in The central-bank gold bid and the fragmentation in Two gold markets. Check the regulation before quoting the slogan; the slogan has been “just happened” since 2019.