Robert McEwen, one of the gold’s industry’s most unabashed bulls, is predicting prices could surge as much as 44 percent by the end of the year as confidence in the economy buckles.

The metal could trade in a range of $1,700 an ounce to $1,900 by the end of 2016 as uncertainty builds around the stability of global currencies and sovereign debt, said McEwen, who’s so enamored by bullion that he’s founded two producers: McEwen Mining Inc. and Goldcorp Inc. Record-low global interest rates will cause a “huge amount of anxiety” for investors, who will turn to gold as a store of value and an alternative asset, he said.

Gold “is a currency that doesn’t have a liability attached to it,” McEwen said Tuesday in an interview at a gold conference in Colorado Springs. “A store of value that has gone for millennia. And the big argument against gold used to be it costs you money to store it. Right now, it’s costing you money to store your cash.”