Cache in Utah wilderness is said to be enough to sustain his 1,500 staff

Byrne says he doesn't trust financial system so is hoarding food and cash

The boss of online marketplace Overstock.com has revealed he has stashed away $10million in gold and silver in the Utah wilderness as part of a back-up plan to survive any collapse of the U.S. financial system.

CEO Patrick Byrne has also amassed three months' worth of food and other supplies for his staff so that the website, based in Salt Lake City, can keep functioning should the nation's major institutions collapse.

Byrne revealed his doomsday scheme this week, which he said would look after all of the company's 1,500 employees should the worst happen.

Paranoid? Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, pictured above outside a company warehouse, said he has no faith in U.S. monetary policy and expects a collapse - for which he has made preparations

Wilderness: Byrne said his company has stashed away a huge quantity of gold, silver and food somewhere in Utah in case the world financial system collapses. Pictured is Bryce Canyon National Park in Southern Utah - the actual location of the cache is a secret

He also plans to keep a stash of the digital Bitcoin currency so that the company can keep functioning online if the dollar and other major currencies collapse.

In the past Byrne has expressed serious doubts about the economy, saying that observing U.S. monetary policy is 'like watching a junkie kill himself'.

Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Byrne said: 'I want a system that can survive a three-month freeze. If the whole thing collapses I want our system to continue paying people, we want to be able to survive a shutdown of the banking system.

'In the 1930s there was a two-week freeze on the banking system - in 2008 we came perilously close to banks not knowing who could accept counterparty risk.'

He said the company wasn't 'rubbing its hands together' hoping for collapse to strike, but he believes there is a 5 per cent chance it will happen.

The food, silver and gold are stored in an undisclosed location in Utah.

'Survive a freeze': Overstock, the home page of which is shown above, is apparently in a position to care for its 1,500 employees in the event of a financial catastrophe

An investors' call from 2013, archived by the Securities and Exchanges Commission, shows Byrne being questioned on his decision to store some of the company's wealth in precious metals.

When asked by the company's executive vice-president about the policy, and its relation to the economy as a whole, Byrne said: 'I think that there is no recovery - there has been no recovery.

'The Fed is creating $85billion a year, it is creating a financial asset bubble, and people see their 401(k) going from $300,000 to $500,000 and they think they made $200,000 and they go out and spend $50,000 of it and that extra $50,000 spending gooses the economy.

'And I think it is bad, bad for our Republic, bad and we think we have a recovery going on, but it is just another bubble.

'And I have been watching them do this for much of my life and for the last 14 years with wild abandon, and each one gets worse, and it is like watching a junkie kill himself. So that is why we hold some precious metals.'

He continued: 'We are determined to make Overstock robust in the face of that fragility and that includes owning some precious metals and maybe some Bitcoin.

'It is all about making - it is not a big directional bet, we aren't trying to goose our income statement or something by trading in precious metals - it is that we have acquired enough and probably will acquire a little bit of Bitcoin enough that it will make us more robust in the face of a severe downturn.