Right, I get that scarcity is what makes it a good store of value, but is what I said not a risk worth considering? Is that why price keeps going up? Let’s say an entity decides to dump gold, does the US have any say in whether that can happen or not? Could they?
Sorry for the questions, I’m just genuinely curious/concerned. This is all so complex for my brain.
No, but with the dollar there is the dual risk of dumping and printing. Gold is not ties to any nation or political ideology. If your gold is located in a particular country, it is subject to the risk on the ground, of course, but it can be moved or exchanged relatively easily. Some gold has been doing just that as people shuffle their wealth around.
If the gold isn’t in your physical hands then it still has ties to the nation that it’s stored in and is subject to its politics.
When people buy gold, they buy certificates of ownership. They don’t buy literal hunks of bullion. The gold is still physically in a vault, and a lot of that gold is stored in the US itself. So, what happens if the US says “actually, that gold is ours now”?
The size of $500 worth of gold - about 3.5g - is a small coin or a thin gold ring.
(Thinking of it, it’s actually funny that we’re back to the times of being able to buy a house with a bag of gold coins)
Regular people definitelly buy gold in physical form because it’s such a concentrated form of storing wealth, though in the West this was a lot more common in the old days and currently is a lot more common in countries like China and India.
Oh, and if you buy gold certificates and the certificate issuer goes bankrupt (like so many companies go during Economic Crashes and Depressions), then in the eyes of the law that gold is not yours and you’re just another creditor of the assets of that company, so forget all about getting most of the value of that gold back: you might want to reconsider gold certificates for value safe-keeping outside of the dollar in case of a major economic crash in the US since if the gold isn’t actually in a legal structure were you own it (i.e. you legally have direct ownership of a chunk of gold and pay somebody to store it or store it yourself), you remain totally exposed to whatever economic upheavals happen where that company is based.
Yes, but some have transferred the bullion to holdings in the uk and Germany. And those countries have too.
A lot is in the USA, but not all. Holding an asset, even in a failed country (which is highly unlikely, by the way) is still a viable asset.
The fact that you think the USA could claim privately held assets as government property is precisely why some people want to hold gold rather than cash in an account which can be seized digitally.
What do you mean “holding” an asset? If they aren’t holding it within their borders in their own vaults then it’s just paper. The US can just say “that’s ours now” and steal it, it’s no more a viable asset than the oil being stolen from Venezuela.
Worse, if they pull their gold out too fast it might cause the US to react by locking the vaults anyway.
It’s a rock and a hard place. They fucked up by ever trusting the US.
Are you talking about individuals or states at this point? Or varies for each and I agree, outside their borders, for states, it is riskier. However, they are shuffling their hokdings to manage that risk. As are people, which was my point.
I don’t think they messed up by trusting the US. It was safe and stable for a prolonged period. They fucked up by not recognizing the risk once trump term 1 started.
Right, I get that scarcity is what makes it a good store of value, but is what I said not a risk worth considering? Is that why price keeps going up? Let’s say an entity decides to dump gold, does the US have any say in whether that can happen or not? Could they?
Sorry for the questions, I’m just genuinely curious/concerned. This is all so complex for my brain.
No, but with the dollar there is the dual risk of dumping and printing. Gold is not ties to any nation or political ideology. If your gold is located in a particular country, it is subject to the risk on the ground, of course, but it can be moved or exchanged relatively easily. Some gold has been doing just that as people shuffle their wealth around.
If the gold isn’t in your physical hands then it still has ties to the nation that it’s stored in and is subject to its politics.
When people buy gold, they buy certificates of ownership. They don’t buy literal hunks of bullion. The gold is still physically in a vault, and a lot of that gold is stored in the US itself. So, what happens if the US says “actually, that gold is ours now”?
The size of $500 worth of gold - about 3.5g - is a small coin or a thin gold ring.
(Thinking of it, it’s actually funny that we’re back to the times of being able to buy a house with a bag of gold coins)
Regular people definitelly buy gold in physical form because it’s such a concentrated form of storing wealth, though in the West this was a lot more common in the old days and currently is a lot more common in countries like China and India.
Oh, and if you buy gold certificates and the certificate issuer goes bankrupt (like so many companies go during Economic Crashes and Depressions), then in the eyes of the law that gold is not yours and you’re just another creditor of the assets of that company, so forget all about getting most of the value of that gold back: you might want to reconsider gold certificates for value safe-keeping outside of the dollar in case of a major economic crash in the US since if the gold isn’t actually in a legal structure were you own it (i.e. you legally have direct ownership of a chunk of gold and pay somebody to store it or store it yourself), you remain totally exposed to whatever economic upheavals happen where that company is based.
Yes, but some have transferred the bullion to holdings in the uk and Germany. And those countries have too.
A lot is in the USA, but not all. Holding an asset, even in a failed country (which is highly unlikely, by the way) is still a viable asset.
The fact that you think the USA could claim privately held assets as government property is precisely why some people want to hold gold rather than cash in an account which can be seized digitally.
What do you mean “holding” an asset? If they aren’t holding it within their borders in their own vaults then it’s just paper. The US can just say “that’s ours now” and steal it, it’s no more a viable asset than the oil being stolen from Venezuela.
Worse, if they pull their gold out too fast it might cause the US to react by locking the vaults anyway.
It’s a rock and a hard place. They fucked up by ever trusting the US.
Are you talking about individuals or states at this point? Or varies for each and I agree, outside their borders, for states, it is riskier. However, they are shuffling their hokdings to manage that risk. As are people, which was my point.
I don’t think they messed up by trusting the US. It was safe and stable for a prolonged period. They fucked up by not recognizing the risk once trump term 1 started.