Gold has nearly doubled in two years. Silver has outpaced it. For the commodity that backed money for most of human history and that central banks still treat as the final settlement asset, these moves should represent a clean signal about physical scarcity and monetary demand. Western gold prices no longer carry that information cleanly. The prices quoted in London and New York are increasingly detached from the physical reality of who owns what gold, where it sits, and whether it can be delivered on demand. What looks like a bull market is the early indication of a pricing system failure