Counterparty risk is the chance that a company you depend on fails to pay or deliver what it owes you, and a gold IRA depends on 3 such companies. Gold itself cannot go bankrupt, so who can? The dealer that sells the metal, the custodian that keeps the account and the depository that stores it can. A counterparty is the other side of a contract. The custodian is the bank or trust company that legally holds your IRA, and the depository is the vault business.
This entry is part of the SafeOunce precious metals IRA glossary; it adds the cases and numbers a short definition cannot hold. It covers the definition, the real failures of all 3 counterparties, unallocated accounts, gold ETFs, digital gold and 6 checks.
Every case below links to the court or regulator record. The 5 key figures are listed below.
- 3 counterparties in every gold IRA: dealer, custodian and depository.
- 2,102 accounts at the failed First State Depository, 90% of them held by IRAs.
- 5.6% surcharge paid by First State customers whose metal was all present.
- 11% paid on approved claims in the Metals.com receivership, per the receiver's report of May 4, 2026 (Doc 1022). The fraud is alleged and the case is pending.
- $0 of FDIC or SIPC cover for the metal in an IRA.
What Is Counterparty Risk?#
Counterparty risk is the risk that the other party to a contract cannot or does not do what it promised. The promise can be to pay you, deliver your metal or return what it holds for you. A contract is a binding agreement, and failing to keep it is called a default.
The CFTC Glossary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines counterparty risk as "The risk associated with the financial stability of the party with whom one has entered into contract." It adds that forward contracts "impose upon each party the risk that the counterparty will default". Futures on a regulated exchange, it says, "are guaranteed against default by the clearing organization".
A gold IRA purchase has no clearing organization standing behind the dealer. The term comes from banking and trading, but it applies to any company that holds your money or your metal. Who counts as a counterparty?
What is a counterparty in simple words?#
A counterparty is simply the other side of a deal: the person or company that owes you something under a contract. The CFTC Glossary calls it "The opposite party in a bilateral agreement, contract, or transaction, such as a swap." Your everyday counterparties include your bank, which owes you your deposit, and your insurer, which owes you a claim. A coin dealer you have paid owes you the coins.
What is an example of counterparty risk?#
A bank deposit is the everyday example: your balance is a debt the bank owes you. If the bank fails, you depend on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures deposits up to $250,000 per depositor.
A gold IRA example came on July 2, 2026, when the dealer Rosland Capital filed a liquidating Chapter 11 case (Bankr. C.D. Cal. No. 2:26-bk-16650-BB). Chapter 11 is a bankruptcy case, and here the company is being wound up. Its chief restructuring officer put paid-but-undelivered orders at about $49 million. The case was pending as of September 29, 2026.
What are the sources of counterparty risk?#
Counterparty risk comes from 4 sources: insolvency, fraud, operating mistakes and contract terms that let the company act against you. Insolvency means owing more than the company can pay. The 4 sources are listed below, each with one real instance.
- Insolvency: the company runs out of money, as the dealer Rosland Capital did in 2026.
- Fraud or theft: the company takes what it holds, as at First State Depository and American Pension Services.
- Operating failure: orders go unfilled, such as the "months-long gap" between payment and the dealer's own purchase in the Rosland declaration.
- Contract terms: a custodian may "liquidate your precious metals assets" for unpaid fees (Equity Trust Precious Metals Risk and Fee Disclosure, read September 29, 2026).
Does Physical Gold Have Counterparty Risk?#
A gold coin in your own hand has no counterparty, but gold in an IRA always has at least two, because the law makes a trustee hold it. The two are the custodian and the depository, and the dealer makes three while it still holds your money. The trustee is the bank or trust company that legally holds your IRA; most people call it the custodian. Bullion means coins and bars valued for their metal.
Taking IRA metal home ends the tax shelter. The Tax Court treated coins kept at home as a taxable distribution of their cost in McNulty v. Commissioner, 157 T.C. No. 10 (2021). A taxable distribution is a withdrawal that counts as income for the year. Why a home storage gold IRA turns physical gold into a taxable distribution is explained with the court ruling.
What does physical gold remove, then? Issuer risk. An issuer is the company behind a bond or a bank balance, and it can fail to pay. A gold bar is nobody's debt, so no issuer can default on it.
Physical gold does not remove price risk or the companies that sell, administer and store it. The sales line that gold has no counterparty risk describes a coin in your hand, not a coin in an IRA. So the useful question is not whether, but who.
The 3 Counterparties in a Gold IRA: Dealer, Custodian and Depository#
A gold IRA has 3 counterparties: the dealer until your metal is delivered, the custodian that keeps your account and cash, and the depository that stores the metal.
Each has failed in the real cases below. A gold IRA is only as sound as the weakest of its three counterparties.
1. The dealer: from your payment until delivery#
The dealer is your counterparty from the moment the custodian wires your money until the metal is booked into your depository account. In that window you own a promise, not metal. If the dealer fails then, you are an unsecured creditor: someone the company owes money to, with no claim on any specific asset. Such creditors are paid last, usually in part.
Metal already delivered is different. Rosland's own filing, the Declaration of Michael Hogan (Doc 5), says IRA products "would be deposited in the customer's separate and individualized account" at the depository. Metal booked there is not the dealer's property.
How long can the window last? The American Hartford Gold Shipping and Transaction Agreement dated September 2026 answers in paragraph 2A. IRA delivery is "within four to eight weeks after confirmation that the Purchase Funds have been received from the third-party custodian".
The second dealer exposure is the buyback, the dealer's offer to purchase your metal back later. None of the 6 dealer contracts SafeOunce read as of September 29, 2026 guarantees a repurchase, and 5 say the law prohibits such a guarantee. How to check delivery and what to do if the metal never arrived is covered step by step.
2. The custodian or administrator: the records and the cash#
The custodian is the legal holder of your IRA: it keeps the records, moves the cash and signs the contract with the vault. Its errors or its failure reach everything in the account.
The documented loss came from an administrator, a company that runs accounts in front of a separate custodian bank. American Pension Services was such an administrator, and First Utah Bank was the custodian of record, the bank legally named on the accounts. In SEC v. American Pension Services (D. Utah No. 2:14-cv-00309, filed April 24, 2014), about $24 million of client money was misused. About 5,500 IRA holders were affected, an average of about $4,360 each (SafeOunce computation). They shared the recoveries pro rata: each got the same share of each dollar lost.
Some custodians are not banks. A nonbank trustee needs an initial net worth of only $250,000 (Treas. Reg. 1.408-2(e)).
A custodian also does not guard the vault. The Entrust fee disclosure (Rev. 12-4-2025) says: "Entrust is not and cannot be held responsible for the actions or inactions of these depositories". In CFTC v. First State Depository (D. Del. No. 1:22-cv-01266-RGA), the CFTC alleged that the IRA custodians "did not physically possess or hold the assets" (complaint, paragraph 38).
FDIC insurance covers only your uninvested cash at the custodian, never the metal. Charters, fees and roles of the gold IRA custodians are compared one by one.
3. The depository: the metal itself#
The depository is the counterparty that holds the metal, so its honesty, its records and its insurance decide whether your coins are there when you ask. At First State Depository in Delaware, a court appointed a receiver on September 29, 2022. A receiver is a person a court appoints to take over a company and return what can be found.
The receiver's accounting firm checked 2,102 accounts (Doc 78, January 9, 2023). It found discrepancies in 1,006 of them, or 47.9%. Another 1,044 (49.7%) had none, and 46 held more than recorded.
A surcharge is an extra fee, charged here to pay for the receivership. Customers whose metal was missing became claimants for dollars, shared pro rata. The dealer (Argent Asset Group) and the vault had the same owner, and the CFTC alleged the vault's insurance fell far short of its holdings (check 4).
Allocated metal that is present is designed to stay outside a vault's bankruptcy. Delaware Depository told the SEC in a letter of September 8, 2016 that customer metal would not "become property of the Company's bankruptcy estate". "Designed to" is the right strength: expect delay and cost. Ownership, insurance and audits of the main gold IRA depositories are set out vault by vault.
The table below lists 6 real counterparty failures as of September 29, 2026, the day SafeOunce last read the court dockets. Chapter 7 means the company is closed and its assets are sold.
| # | Counterparty | Company and court record | What failed | What customers got | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dealer | Rosland Capital LLC, Bankr. C.D. Cal. No. 2:26-bk-16650-BB, filed July 2, 2026 | About $49 million of paid orders not delivered and about $11.8 million of buybacks not paid, owed to about 617 customers | Cash on hand of $212,661.60 on August 6, 2026 (Doc 60) = 0.35% of about $60.8 million owed. No distribution reported | Liquidating Chapter 11, pending |
| 2 | Dealer | Oxford Gold Group, Inc., Bankr. C.D. Cal. No. 2:24-bk-16947-NB, involuntary Chapter 7 filed August 28, 2024 | Customers who had paid petitioned the company into bankruptcy; the total owed is not public | Outcome not found: no distribution reported; the claims deadline was March 12, 2026 | Chapter 7 liquidation, pending |
| 3 | Dealer | Midas Gold Group, LLC, Bankr. D. Ariz. No. 2:24-bk-04587-DPC, filed June 7, 2024 | Metal on hand of $634,210 at filing fell to $59,867 of metal and cash 62 days later, a 90.6% drop during the case (Doc 90) | 3 customers whose money was held in trust got $19,600.00, $10,195.00 and $24,615.60 back by court order. The Subchapter V trustee (the trustee before the conversion) reported no distribution; the Chapter 7 outcome was not found | Converted to Chapter 7 on September 25, 2024 |
| 4 | Dealer | TMTE, Inc. (Metals.com), CFTC v. TMTE, N.D. Tex. No. 3:20-cv-02910-X, filed September 22, 2020 | Alleged fraud in coin sales to retirement savers; a receiver holds the assets | $8 million interim payment mailed about May 1, 2025 = 11% of $72,260,999 approved claims, according to the receiver's 20th report (Doc 1022) | Allegations, not proven; civil trial set for March 1, 2027 |
| 5 | Administrator | American Pension Services, Inc., SEC v. American Pension Services, D. Utah No. 2:14-cv-00309, filed April 24, 2014 | The IRA administrator misused about $24 million of client money; about 5,500 IRA holders; the custodian of record was First Utah Bank | Pro rata shares of recoveries; on March 9, 2017 the Tenth Circuit upheld an order barring holders from suing the bank separately | Receivership; settlement approved |
| 6 | Depository | First State Depository Company, LLC, CFTC v. First State Depository, D. Del. No. 1:22-cv-01266-RGA, restraining order September 29, 2022 | 1,006 of 2,102 accounts had discrepancies; $56.8 million to $110.4 million of customer metal missing (receiver's accounting firm, January 2023); IRAs held 90% of accounts | Intact accounts: metal returned by November 30, 2023 after a 5.6% surcharge (7.5% if late). Missing metal: pro rata dollar claims | Owner Robert Leroy Higgins convicted October 24, 2024; sentenced June 17, 2025 to 65 years, restitution of about $76 million (receiver's site) |
Sources are linked in each row. "Alleged" means a court has not ruled. Figures are from court filings and receiver reports; SafeOunce computed the percentages.
The table below shows what came back on $100,000 at each failure point, as of September 29, 2026.
| Where your $100,000 sat | Case (linked above) | What came back |
|---|---|---|
| Paid to a dealer, metal not delivered | Rosland Capital | Nothing yet. Cash on hand equals about $350 per $100,000 owed (0.35%); the case is pending |
| Paid to a dealer, alleged fraud | Metals.com | About $11,000 per $100,000 of approved claim so far (11%); allegations not proven, case pending |
| Held through a failed administrator | American Pension Services | A pro rata share of what the receiver recovered |
| Intact metal at a failed vault | First State Depository | All the metal, after a $5,600 surcharge (net $94,400) and up to 427 days |
SafeOunce computation from the figures in the table of 6 failures.
Six failures, three kinds of counterparty. No federal insurance fund covers these losses. Every case of this kind is logged in our tracker of gold and precious metals IRA enforcement actions.
Unallocated Accounts Make the Holder an Unsecured Creditor#
An unallocated metal account gives you a claim against the institution, not title to any bar, so if it fails you are an unsecured creditor. More than 1,000 customers of Goldcorp Exchange learned this in a ruling of May 25, 1994 (Re Goldcorp Exchange Ltd, 1994 UKPC 3). Title means legal ownership.
The SPDR Gold Trust's annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the SEC on November 25, 2025, uses the same words: "The account holder is an unsecured creditor of the bullion dealer, and credits to an unallocated account are at risk of the bullion dealer's insolvency."
The LBMA's guide to the London precious metals market agrees. In an unallocated account "the account holder has a contractual claim against the clearer" and carries "credit exposure to the institution where the account is held". An allocated account is backed by "a specific bar", and its holder "does not have a credit exposure".
Goldcorp's bank appointed receivers on July 11, 1988. The Privy Council, the final appeal court for New Zealand at the time, ruled against the non-allocated customers. Lord Mustill wrote: "There never was a separate and sufficient stock of bullion in which a proprietary interest could be created."
The bank was a secured creditor, a lender with a claim on specific assets, so it was paid first. If the bank is paid first, the court said, those customers "will receive nothing at all". One group, the Walker & Hall claimants, kept the remedy the trial judge had given them. The wait from receivership to ruling was 5 years and 10 months (SafeOunce computation).
What does the common version get wrong? It adds that unallocated accounts are "only partially backed". No primary source read for this page states a backing ratio. What is documented is the legal position: a claim, not title. How much metal backs unallocated accounts is not published, so we do not state a figure.
The table below places 4 account types on one spectrum, from owner to creditor. Fungible means interchangeable, like identical coins.
| Account type | What is recorded as yours | If the institution fails, you are | Used for IRA metal? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Segregated (allocated) | Your exact coins or bars, stored apart; "the exact material deposited is returned" (Delaware Depository) | An owner collecting your own items (delay and cost possible) | Yes |
| Commingled or non-segregated (still allocated) | A stated quantity of a stated product, stored with identical items; "fully allocated ... on a fungible basis" (Delaware Depository, letter to the SEC, 2016); you "may not receive the same brand, year, or condition" (Equity Trust) | An owner of that quantity, as long as the vault's records and stock match | Yes |
| Unallocated | A credit of ounces on the institution's books; "a contractual claim against the clearer" (LBMA) | An unsecured creditor (SEC filing; Goldcorp) | No: no IRA custodian reviewed offers it |
| Pool account | A share of a pool; "Each individual coin or bar is not specifically titled" (IDS) | A creditor or pool participant, depending on the contract | No: it must never hold IRA metal |
Custodian and vault wording read September 29, 2026. Commingled is not the same as unallocated.
The full definition of allocated storage, with each custodian's wording, has its own entry.
Where IRA metal sits: segregated or commingled, never unallocated#
IRA metal sits in the first two rows of the table: it is either segregated or commingled, and both are allocated. Segregated storage keeps your exact items apart, and commingled storage keeps them with identical items.
The label protects you only if the vault's records are true. At First State, 47.9% of accounts had discrepancies, which is why audits and independent ownership matter. Price and practice of segregated vs commingled gold IRA storage differ by custodian.
Why Some Investors Prefer Owning Metal Outright Over a Gold ETF#
Some investors prefer owning metal outright because a gold ETF adds a chain of companies between them and the gold. The largest fund's annual report of November 25, 2025 says shareholders "cannot be assured" that the vault carries any insurance for it. An ETF is a fund whose shares trade like a stock. The source is the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2025, which also states: "The Trust will not be a beneficiary of any such insurance".
The same filing says: "The liability of the Custodians is limited under the Custody Agreements." Recovery "may be limited, even in the event of fraud, to the market value of the gold at the time the fraud is discovered". And "the Custodians do not have written custody agreements with the subcustodians they select". Here the custodian is the bank that vaults the fund's bars; a subcustodian is a second vault it may use.
The common version says ETF shareholders are unsecured creditors who own no gold. The filing says otherwise. Shares are "units of fractional undivided beneficial interest in and ownership of the Trust", meaning a share in what the trust owns.
Does GLD actually hold physical gold? Yes, by its own filing: "at the end of each business day only gold bars, and no gold in an unallocated form, is held in the Trust's accounts". Unallocated gold is capped by an overdraft of "up to 430 fine ounces" per custodian. The filing puts the trust's holding at 32,528,200 ounces on September 30, 2025. The cap equals 0.0013% of that, or 0.0026% for the two custodians together (SafeOunce computation). An outside firm, Bureau Veritas, counts the bars twice a year.
So the documented risks are insurance, limited liability and the custody chain, not missing gold. Retail shareholders also cannot swap shares for bars. The fund redeems shares only in "Baskets" of 100,000 shares through authorized participants, large firms allowed to trade baskets for gold.
The table below compares the counterparty chain in 3 ways of holding gold. The sponsor is the company that set up the fund.
| How you hold gold | Companies between you and the metal | What you legally own | Backstop if one fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold ETF share (GLD as documented) | 6: sponsor, trustee (The Bank of New York Mellon), custodian bank (HSBC Bank plc or JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.), subcustodian (temporary), authorized participant, your broker | Shares of a trust that owns allocated bars | SIPC (the Securities Investor Protection Corporation) covers the shares at a failed broker up to $500,000 (securities only); nothing insures the gold for shareholders ("cannot be assured") |
| Gold IRA | 3: dealer (until delivery), custodian, depository | Specific allocated metal, held by the IRA trustee for you | No FDIC or SIPC cover for metal; the vault's own insurance, which pays metal value and has exclusions |
| Coins at home, outside an IRA | 0 | The coins | None; theft and loss are your risk. The standard homeowners form caps money, bullion and coins at $200 (ISO HO-3 special limit; policies vary). Not an option for IRA metal (McNulty) |
Counts are SafeOunce's reading of the SPDR Gold Trust 10-K (filed November 25, 2025) and of a standard gold IRA; other funds differ.
Owning metal outright inside an IRA does not end counterparty risk. It swaps the fund's chain for the dealer, custodian and depository above. Gold ETFs are also allowed in IRAs. Costs and taxes are a separate comparison: gold IRA vs gold ETF.
Digital Gold: What Providers Disclose About Reserves and Audits#
Digital gold is a claim on its issuer, and what issuers disclose about reserves has ranged from nothing to monthly accountant reports. On July 21, 2008, e-gold agreed in a US plea deal to hire an auditor to verify its gold backing. The US Department of Justice reported the plea in release 08-635. E-Gold Ltd. and Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. They agreed to "hire an auditor to verify the companies' claims that all transactions are fully backed by gold bullion".
Digital gold is an online account or token (a digital unit) said to be backed by stored gold, called the reserve. A current example is PAX Gold, a token issued by Paxos. Paxos states on its transparency page, read October 2, 2026, that it "publishes attestation reports each month". Reports dated on or after February 28, 2025 "are issued by KPMG LLP" under standards of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
The table below shows who checks that the metal is there in 4 ways of holding gold.
| Way of holding gold | Who checks | How often | What the check covers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital gold token (PAX Gold) | Outside accounting firm (KPMG LLP since February 28, 2025) | Monthly | An attestation report under AICPA standards (company statement) | paxos.com, read October 2, 2026 |
| Gold ETF (SPDR Gold Trust) | Outside inspector (Bureau Veritas) | 2 counts a year, one of them a full count | The trust's bars at the custodians' vaults | 10-K filed November 25, 2025 |
| COMEX registered bars at a licensed depository | Independent auditor, at the depository's cost | Yearly | "Registered metal" only (large exchange bars), not retail IRA coins | Delaware Depository letter to the SEC, 2016 |
| IRA coins and bars at a depository | The depository's own controls; a SOC 1 Type I report where one exists (design of controls on one date); state bank examiners about every 12 to 15 months at Delaware Depository (as of 2016) | Varies; no vault reviewed publishes a Type II report | Controls, not a count of your coins | Same letter; depository pages read September 29, 2026 |
A check of design on one date does not test whether controls worked all year.
Tokens and crypto IRAs are outside what SafeOunce covers. The point is only that a token is an issuer's promise, which is counterparty risk by definition.
How to Reduce Counterparty Risk in a Gold IRA: 6 Checks#
You cannot remove counterparty risk from a gold IRA, but 6 checks cut it. The 6 checks below cover delivery, shared ownership, storage type, insurance, the real account holder and yield programs.
- Confirm delivery within about 28 days. Federal law uses 28 days as the test for financed retail metal sales (Commodity Exchange Act section 2(c)(2)(D); CFTC release 8215-20). It is a benchmark here, not an IRA deadline. Ask the depository or the custodian for the holding statement, not the dealer. Ask whether the entry reflects the depository's own receipt. The 28-day test of actual delivery comes from the Commodity Exchange Act.
- Ask whether the dealer and the depository share an owner. At First State, they did. A dealer-run vault puts seller, buyback desk and storage in one company, which removes the independent check.
- Get the storage type in writing. It should say segregated or commingled. Refuse "unallocated" or "pool" storage for IRA metal. Ask whether your metal is off the vault's balance sheet. Delaware Depository told the SEC in 2016 that customer metal is "excluded from being listed as an asset on the Company's balance sheet".
- Compare the vault's insurance limit with what it holds, and ask who is the insured. The CFTC alleged in its complaint (paragraphs 75 to 82) that First State advertised about $400 million of cover. It alleged the real limit was $100 million against more than $176 million of recorded inventory in March 2021, at most 57%. The insurer was shown about $48.4 million, or 27.5%. Customers were only "Memorandum Holder and Loss Payee", parties the insurer may pay but who do not control the policy. Even sound insurance pays metal value, not the premium you paid. Delaware Depository's FAQ, read September 29, 2026, lists $1 billion of all-risk cover (every loss the policy does not exclude) plus $100 million contingent. It excludes war, terrorism, cyber events, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events, and government confiscation. FDIC and SIPC never cover the metal. Limits, exclusions and loss payees are covered in how gold IRA storage is insured.
- Learn both names behind your "custodian". Some firms are administrators in front of a separate trust company or bank, as American Pension Services was. You should also keep little uninvested cash in the account.
- Refuse lease, "income" or yield programs on stored metal, and keep your address current. A lease program lends your metal out for a fee. At First State, the receiver ranked silver-lease customers behind others because they "elected to take the risk". Owners who filed no claim risked forfeiture, the loss of their property. There, 266 owners of intact accounts, holding about $4.1 million, had not filed (Doc 120).
Next: allocated storage, the term that decides whether you are an owner or a creditor.
Which Gold IRA Risks Are Not Counterparty Risk?#
Counterparty risk is only one of 5 risks in a gold IRA; price swings, dealer markups, claims by your own creditors and government seizure are different risks with different fixes. A markup is what a dealer adds over the metal's market value, and the LBMA PM price is the London afternoon benchmark. The table below lists the 4 other risks and the page that covers each.
| Risk | What it is | Counterparty risk? | Where it is covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price risk | Gold fell 26.1% from the LBMA PM record of $5,405.00 on January 29, 2026 to $3,993.55 on July 16, 2026 | No: nobody failed | Price risk applies either way: gold IRA vs physical gold |
| Markup risk | You pay more than the metal is worth on day one | No: it is a cost you agreed to | A cost, not a failure: gold IRA markups and spreads |
| Your own creditors | A lawsuit against you or your own bankruptcy | No: this is about people you owe, not people who owe you | Your creditors, not theirs: is a gold IRA protected from creditors |
| Government seizure | An event that vault insurance excludes | No: the government is not a contract party | Not a contract party: can the government confiscate your gold |
What is settlement risk vs counterparty risk?#
Settlement risk is counterparty risk at the moment of exchange: you have paid or delivered your side, and the other side has not yet done the same. Settlement is the step where money and goods change hands. In a gold IRA, that moment is the dealer window above, and no clearing organization guarantees it.
What happens to your IRA gold if the depository fails?#
Metal that is present and allocated is meant to be returned to you through your custodian, usually after a delay and a fee. Missing metal makes you a claimant for money, as at First State.
The step-by-step answer to what happens to your IRA gold if a depository fails has its own page. The full record of First State Depository is told case by case. What happens when the gold IRA company itself fails is covered in our guide to failed gold IRA companies.
Do FDIC or SIPC cover the metal in a gold IRA?#
No: FDIC insurance covers only uninvested cash at the custodian's bank, up to $250,000 per depositor. SIPC covers securities at a failed broker, up to $500,000 including $250,000 of cash. Neither covers physical metal. What SIPC does and does not protect is defined separately.
Is a gold IRA company your fiduciary?#
Usually not: a gold IRA dealer is a seller, and custodians state in their own agreements that they are not fiduciaries for your account. A fiduciary is legally bound to put your interests first. GoldStar Trust's terms say "GoldStar is not a 'fiduciary' with respect to your IRA or ESA under applicable state law". Provident Trust's say "the Custodian, is not a 'fiduciary' for my account" (both read September 29, 2026).
A counterparty with no such duty is one you must check yourself. Who is a fiduciary in a gold IRA, and who is not, has its own entry. The gaps become clear once you see who regulates gold IRA companies.