77% Report Rising Trust in Gold, 64% Falling in Cash

Key Takeaways

• Gold recorded the strongest rise in trust of any asset in the survey.
• Cash went the other way, with most respondents reporting falling trust.
• Cost of living ranked as the number one fear over the next five years.
• Investors ranked gold first as an inflation hedge and cash last.
• Stocks were seen as most exposed to AI disruption, gold the least.

The 2026 Australian Hard Assets Report is a collaborative study across three hard-asset specialists: Ainslie Bullion on gold, Block Earner on Bitcoin, and Century 21 Home Loans on residential property. It collected 2,081 survey responses between August and September 2026, 1,575 from the Ainslie Bullion investor base and 506 from Block Earner, with Century 21 Home Loans contributing property market expertise rather than survey responses. Respondents answered the same ten questions on building wealth, protecting it, and whether their trust in gold, Bitcoin, property and cash had shifted. The sample is not nationally representative and reads as the view of active investors rather than the country as a whole.

Gold tops the trust rankings and cash sits last

Gold recorded the strongest trust profile in the survey: 77% of respondents said their trust in gold had risen, against 4% reporting a fall. Within that, 39% said their trust had increased significantly and 38% somewhat, with 19% unchanged.

Cash sat at the opposite end. 64% reported falling trust in cash, including 38% who said it had fallen significantly, against 11% reporting a rise. On a net basis, subtracting falling from rising, gold scored +73 percentage points and cash scored -53.

Those two results point at the same concern. Australian consumer prices rose 3.8% in the year to June 2026, and roughly 24% cumulatively over the five years from the June quarter 2021 (ABS, Consumer Price Index, Australia, June 2026). On the report's figures, A$100 held since June 2021 without earning interest has the purchasing power of about A$81 in 2021 dollars. Money held in cash keeps its face value through that, but not what it buys.

What investors said they fear most

Cost of living took the largest share of weighted ranking points at 27%, ahead of geopolitical instability at 24%. Sharemarket volatility (17%), job insecurity (16%) and falling property values (16%) followed. These are ranking shares rather than the percentage of respondents naming each as their top fear.

The pressure shows up in household budgets. A separate Finder survey of 286 Australian mortgage holders in July 2026 found 55% spending more than 30% of take-home pay on repayments, the traditional stress threshold. The RBA cash rate is 4.60% (Reserve Bank of Australia).

Confidence held up anyway. 63% of respondents said they felt confident about their financial position over the next five years, against 16% who did not. Household buffers are part of why: RBA data to June 2026 shows the median variable-rate owner-occupier borrower in the lowest income quartile holding around 12 months of scheduled repayments in offset and redraw, rising to 20 months in the top quartile (RBA, Statement on Monetary Policy, August 2026, Graph 1.12). Economic worry and personal optimism were not mutually exclusive in this sample.

Which asset did investors rank first as an inflation hedge?

Gold took the top spot with 29% of weighted ranking points, ahead of real estate (23%), Bitcoin (18%), stocks (17%) and cash (13%). Gold, property and Bitcoin together captured 70% of the ranking weight.

The report frames gold's ranking against a decade of currency debasement: A$10,000 bought 5.8 ounces of gold in September 2016 and 1.7 ounces in September 2026, a 71% fall in ounces purchasable. That measures gold's appreciation against the Australian dollar rather than general inflation.

Official buyers have been moving the same way. Central banks bought 863 tonnes of gold in 2025 and 289 tonnes in the June quarter of 2026, a second-quarter record, accelerating as the price fell (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends Q2 2026, 30 July 2026). China's central bank has added gold for 22 months in a row, lifting monthly purchases from about one tonne to 20.

Ainslie Chief Economist Chris Tipper, quoted in the report's gold deep dive, points at the bond market rather than the central bank calendar: "Watch bond volatility, not the next Fed meeting. A sustained rise in the MOVE Index, the bond market's fear gauge, together with falling yields would tell you the liquidity cycle is turning. That is when gold stops consolidating and starts working again."

The next-generation question produced the clearest result

Asked which strategy would give a 10-year-old the best chance of owning a home by 35, 56% of respondents chose investing A$1,000 a month into gold and 17% chose Bitcoin, meaning 73% picked a hard asset over shares, property or cash. A stock portfolio took 15%, a second mortgage 7% and a savings account 5%.

The report sets that against five-year asset performance in Australian dollars to September 2026: gold returned +146%, ahead of Bitcoin (+108%), savings modelled at a flat 5% (+28%) and the ASX 200 price index (+20%), with gold and Bitcoin from monthly AUD closes (XAUAUD and BTCAUD, Pepperstone). The comparison is capital return only and excludes dividends, rent, fees and tax, so it is historical context rather than a like-for-like test of the question.

Context for why the question lands: saving a 20% deposit nationally takes nearly 12 years (Cotality Housing Affordability Report).

Property and Bitcoin split the room

Trust in property fell for 37% of respondents and rose for 18%, with 45% unchanged. Yet property still ranked second as an inflation hedge, which is the survey's sharpest internal tension: falling confidence in the near-term economics, retained belief in the long-term asset.

The near-term numbers explain part of it. National dwelling values fell 1.1% in September 2026, a sixth consecutive monthly decline, leaving values 5.2% below the March 2026 peak, with Sydney down 8.6% from its February peak (Cotality Home Value Index, published 1 October 2026). Capital-city homes are taking 39 days to sell against 23 a year ago. "It's a buyer's market and sellers are struggling to attain the same robust buyer turnout and favourable selling terms," says Sam Panebianco, Senior Credit Advisor at Century 21 Home Loans.

The report also puts the current downturn in sequence: it is Australia's fifth national property decline in 20 years, and at 5.2% it remains shallower than the 9.1% fall through the 2022 to 2023 rate-hike cycle or the 8.4% APRA squeeze of 2017 to 2019. Dwelling values are still up 19.9% over the five years to September 2026.

Bitcoin sentiment was close to evenly split, with 25% reporting rising trust, 28% falling and 48% unchanged, after a drawdown from the October 2025 high near US$126,000. More than 330 days past that peak, Bitcoin retained about 62% of its peak value, against previous bear-market lows of 30% or less. "Bitcoin's resilience through this drawdown suggests the market is maturing, with institutional demand helping soften the cycle," says James Coombes, Chief Commercial Officer at Block Earner. US spot Bitcoin ETFs held 1.29 million BTC, worth about US$107.2 billion (Bitbo, 12 October 2026), roughly one in every 16 Bitcoin mined, a structural feature that did not exist in the previous cycle.

A separate question found 69% would borrow against some or all of a Bitcoin holding to fund a home deposit rather than sell the lot, with 44% borrowing against the whole position. Galaxy Research puts outstanding CeFi and DeFi crypto-backed borrowing at US$43.41 billion at the end of Q2 2026, down 19% on the quarter but still substantial (Galaxy Research, The State of Crypto Leverage Q2 2026). Borrowing against a volatile asset carries interest costs, and a falling price may require additional security or repayment.

Where investors put AI risk

Stocks drew the largest share of perceived AI disruption risk at 27% of ranking points, and gold the smallest at 11%. Cash and Bitcoin sat at 22% each, real estate at 18%.

Index concentration gives that view something to stand on. The Magnificent Seven accounted for approximately 34% of S&P 500 market value as at August 2026 (Charles Schwab), so one in every three dollars in a broad index fund sits behind seven companies closely tied to the AI investment cycle.

The other side of the data

This is a sentiment survey, not a measure of flows, returns or positioning. Respondents were recruited through partner audiences, which makes them more engaged with investing than the general population and a strong gold reading less surprising. The report says so plainly.

Recent price action cuts against the mood as well. Gold returned +53% in AUD in 2025 after +40% in 2024, set 53 all-time highs and peaked above US$5,400 in January 2026, then traded near US$4,180 in late September, about a quarter below that high, for roughly -7% in AUD year to date. Trust rising while the price falls is worth noting rather than celebrating: sentiment and performance can diverge for extended periods, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

What it means for investors

The practical signal in the report is direction of travel, not timing. Falling trust in cash as a long-term store of value, combined with elevated inflation and a 4.60% cash rate, is the backdrop against which Australian investors are reassessing what the defensive part of a portfolio looks like.

For anyone acting on that, the mechanics matter more than the sentiment. Ainslie Bullion covers physical gold and silver, with allocated and unallocated storage and buyback for exiting a position. Scheduled accumulation through Ainslie Saver is one way to handle a market where 56% of surveyed investors favour a monthly contribution over a lump-sum call. Ainslie Crypto and Gold Silver Standard cover the digital and tokenised ends of the same hard-asset thesis, and live levels sit on the Ainslie Bullion charts page.

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This article is general information only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always conduct your own research or consult a licensed financial adviser before making investment decisions.

Check out Block Earner’s Hard Assets Report here - https://blockearner.com.au/hard-assets-report/