It is 2 a.m. and you are awake.
You are thinking about a company you have never visited, in a state you have never been to, holding the legal title to your gold.
What if they go under?
Fair question. Genuinely fair.
And the answer is better than you expect, for a reason that is almost elegant.
Your gold was never theirs.
Not on paper. Not in any sense that matters to a bankruptcy court.
Your custodian holds title on behalf of your IRA. The IRA owns the metal. The custodian is a caretaker with a filing cabinet and a fee schedule.
So when they fail, they do not fail holding your stuff. They fail holding somebody else's stuff that they were looking after.
Which changes everything about what happens next.