500kg of gold is $72.6 million as of current market value.
The image shows 100 dollar bills, so let’s assume the 500kg consists of just that. That would add up to ~$50 million (~1 gram each, adding up to 500.000 bills).
Gold increases in value. The dollar is decreasing in value and Trump is making sure it’s going to tank as soon as possible.
Gold is worth more and is a wiser investment over time so I pick gold, with delivery please and thank you.
Good luck liquidating 500kg of gold without someone taking a decent cut. Gold doesn’t always increase in value, it’s a highly volatile commodity and atm is highly over speculated. More than likely whenever trump dies or leaves the office the market will correct itself to pre-pandemic pricing.
When people who don’t understand what fiat currency is get scared by geopolitical instability they buy gold. Whenever those geopolitical instabilities absolve themselves they sell.
You’d probably be better off taking cash and investing it into index stock then taking the time and money to store, transport, and sell that much gold. There’s a reason why billionaires are building Scrooge McDuck vaults and swimming in bullions.
I would just lock it all up in a vault. Why would I need to liquidate it? I can take loans from the bank indefinitely, as I have the gold as insurance. That’s what billionaires do as well, to avoid taxes. They use their wealth in stock as insurance to take out loans, because on loads you don’t pay taxes. But in my case I would pay taxes for the value of the gold, like a decent person.
There is such a thing as a gold loan, but it’s not really a good deal compared to even something like a HELOC loan. The interest rates are much higher, and they’ll usually only loan out 50% of the value of the gold, and you’ll have to hand it over to the bank for storage.
The main problem with this is that you don’t have an income or a way to make more gold like billionaires can with stock. So you would have to eventually sell some of the gold to pay the loan. Which would entail not only paying interest on the loan, but a 28% tax on the gold. You don’t have a skeem like capital gains to lower your tax burden with a physical commodity.
Take out the loan. Invest it into stock. Get another loan to pay off the previous loan and living money. Continue indefinitely. Problem solved. Make more money, without touching the gold. Invest everything extra you make into more stock.
Right, but for the loan amount you are going to lose 50% more than you borrow in gold. So if you want a million dollar loan, you’ll have to give the bank 2 million in gold to hold as collateral. You’re also going to be paying 10-30% apy on your short term loan.
If you start with let’s say 80 million in gold, you will only have enough collateral to secure 40 million in loans in total. Which at a 10% apy would occur 4 million in interest a year without accounting for any compounding interest.
If you did this perfectly and did not spend any of the money you borrowed for anything other than paying loans, you would only be able to do this for 10 years…not indefinitely. And that is giving you the lowest interest rate available.
Even if you invested in stock that you made money on, that earnings would be taxed at 20-30% depending on how long you had it for. So you are paying 10- 30 percent in interest to invest in a profit that gets taxed an addition 20-30%… It would be better to just have the cash.
Ok, but… what if the bank asks where you got the gold? Or they ask if you have proof you came by it legally, and then the IRS notices you have a bunch of outstanding loans collateralized with an asset they have no record of you obtaining or paying taxes on the income used to obtain it.
Like… with the cash, you just… spend it on stuff. If you need to pay for something not in cash, then just open a cash based business and overstate your sales.
Or you could… just… list those things as unspecified income and pay taxes on it and not worry about slipping up and going to jail.
Where would you use all that cash? In my country you’re not allowed to make purchases over 3k. Payments bigger than that are rejected and authorities are notified.
I was assuming the prize was legit, which would also mean you’d have to pay taxes over it. Than you have it legally and you can use it to take out loans.
I mean fair point… But to be honest, it’s more likely that another fiat currency replaces the dollar than it is for gold to become a standard again. Gold doesn’t have any inherent value outside of some electronics, and it’s incredibly inconvenient to actually trade with.
I think if the dollar does fall off the map and the euro or yuan successfully replaces it as top dog, it’d probably be the actual death knell that kills off peoples gold obsession.
I think actually in the US you could file the gold under capital gains and get a better tax rate if you’re willing to hold onto it for years.
Though outside the US the USD are probably a wiser choice. Also if you plan on liquidating the gold immediately its likely subject to sales tax where they exist making it a much worse value proposition.
Nah, in the US gold is considered a “collectible” and is taxed at the maximum federal rate of 28% when sold. Capital gains would only apply to something like stock in gold index funds or mining companies.
Could be that only the outer ones are 100 dollar bills while the inner ones are 1 Dollar bills because they are the same size.
Fun Fact: This is bad for accessibility, thats why the Euro has three indicators for blind people to find the right bill: different sizes, a feelable line structure on the side and different colors for those that can are legally blind but still can see some rough colors.
Those features you mentioned are actual quite widespread: the EU, Norway, Poland, the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, and more all have them. It’s really just the US that insist on having basically indistinguishable sludge-coloured notes. I used to handle international currently regular and hated dealing with US dollars.
The US has one of the most easily forged currencies in the world you would have thought they’d done something about it by now. You just bleach low denomination bills and then print hire denomination bills on the resulting blank paper. It’s such an utterly stupid hack that absolutely should not work.
That’s how Trump is planning to make his $250 bill. He’s just going to print them on bleached $1 bills. It’s the sort of thing he would do.
So if Musk had 500kg of gold lying around in some vault and I’d manage to steal it in some heist of the century, he’d be only left with 99.99% of his wealth. Imagine: a whopping 0.001% of his wealth gone in an instance, how would he ever recover from that?
500kg of gold is $72.6 million as of current market value.
The image shows 100 dollar bills, so let’s assume the 500kg consists of just that. That would add up to ~$50 million (~1 gram each, adding up to 500.000 bills).
Gold increases in value. The dollar is decreasing in value and Trump is making sure it’s going to tank as soon as possible.
Gold is worth more and is a wiser investment over time so I pick gold, with delivery please and thank you.
Good luck liquidating 500kg of gold without someone taking a decent cut. Gold doesn’t always increase in value, it’s a highly volatile commodity and atm is highly over speculated. More than likely whenever trump dies or leaves the office the market will correct itself to pre-pandemic pricing.
When people who don’t understand what fiat currency is get scared by geopolitical instability they buy gold. Whenever those geopolitical instabilities absolve themselves they sell.
You’d probably be better off taking cash and investing it into index stock then taking the time and money to store, transport, and sell that much gold. There’s a reason why billionaires are building Scrooge McDuck vaults and swimming in bullions.
I would just lock it all up in a vault. Why would I need to liquidate it? I can take loans from the bank indefinitely, as I have the gold as insurance. That’s what billionaires do as well, to avoid taxes. They use their wealth in stock as insurance to take out loans, because on loads you don’t pay taxes. But in my case I would pay taxes for the value of the gold, like a decent person.
There is such a thing as a gold loan, but it’s not really a good deal compared to even something like a HELOC loan. The interest rates are much higher, and they’ll usually only loan out 50% of the value of the gold, and you’ll have to hand it over to the bank for storage.
The main problem with this is that you don’t have an income or a way to make more gold like billionaires can with stock. So you would have to eventually sell some of the gold to pay the loan. Which would entail not only paying interest on the loan, but a 28% tax on the gold. You don’t have a skeem like capital gains to lower your tax burden with a physical commodity.
Take out the loan. Invest it into stock. Get another loan to pay off the previous loan and living money. Continue indefinitely. Problem solved. Make more money, without touching the gold. Invest everything extra you make into more stock.
Right, but for the loan amount you are going to lose 50% more than you borrow in gold. So if you want a million dollar loan, you’ll have to give the bank 2 million in gold to hold as collateral. You’re also going to be paying 10-30% apy on your short term loan.
If you start with let’s say 80 million in gold, you will only have enough collateral to secure 40 million in loans in total. Which at a 10% apy would occur 4 million in interest a year without accounting for any compounding interest.
If you did this perfectly and did not spend any of the money you borrowed for anything other than paying loans, you would only be able to do this for 10 years…not indefinitely. And that is giving you the lowest interest rate available.
Even if you invested in stock that you made money on, that earnings would be taxed at 20-30% depending on how long you had it for. So you are paying 10- 30 percent in interest to invest in a profit that gets taxed an addition 20-30%… It would be better to just have the cash.
Ok, but… what if the bank asks where you got the gold? Or they ask if you have proof you came by it legally, and then the IRS notices you have a bunch of outstanding loans collateralized with an asset they have no record of you obtaining or paying taxes on the income used to obtain it.
Like… with the cash, you just… spend it on stuff. If you need to pay for something not in cash, then just open a cash based business and overstate your sales.
Or you could… just… list those things as unspecified income and pay taxes on it and not worry about slipping up and going to jail.
Where would you use all that cash? In my country you’re not allowed to make purchases over 3k. Payments bigger than that are rejected and authorities are notified.
I was assuming the prize was legit, which would also mean you’d have to pay taxes over it. Than you have it legally and you can use it to take out loans.
If that decent cut is 95%, you’d get only 5%. Sounds bad. 5% of 72.6 million is … 3.63 million.
Yeah, I’ll still take it.
Over the 50 million in cash?
That’s my secret Mr. Stark… I’m always geopolitical instabilities
I mean fair point… But to be honest, it’s more likely that another fiat currency replaces the dollar than it is for gold to become a standard again. Gold doesn’t have any inherent value outside of some electronics, and it’s incredibly inconvenient to actually trade with.
I think if the dollar does fall off the map and the euro or yuan successfully replaces it as top dog, it’d probably be the actual death knell that kills off peoples gold obsession.
I think actually in the US you could file the gold under capital gains and get a better tax rate if you’re willing to hold onto it for years.
Though outside the US the USD are probably a wiser choice. Also if you plan on liquidating the gold immediately its likely subject to sales tax where they exist making it a much worse value proposition.
Nah, in the US gold is considered a “collectible” and is taxed at the maximum federal rate of 28% when sold. Capital gains would only apply to something like stock in gold index funds or mining companies.
Could be that only the outer ones are 100 dollar bills while the inner ones are 1 Dollar bills because they are the same size.
Fun Fact: This is bad for accessibility, thats why the Euro has three indicators for blind people to find the right bill: different sizes, a feelable line structure on the side and different colors for those that can are legally blind but still can see some rough colors.
Those features you mentioned are actual quite widespread: the EU, Norway, Poland, the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, and more all have them. It’s really just the US that insist on having basically indistinguishable sludge-coloured notes. I used to handle international currently regular and hated dealing with US dollars.
The US has one of the most easily forged currencies in the world you would have thought they’d done something about it by now. You just bleach low denomination bills and then print hire denomination bills on the resulting blank paper. It’s such an utterly stupid hack that absolutely should not work.
That’s how Trump is planning to make his $250 bill. He’s just going to print them on bleached $1 bills. It’s the sort of thing he would do.
They did something about that several versions ago. The dollar bill doesn’t have the same security features as higher denominations.
Pretty much only the us has such terrible currency design.
But I’m lazy and would just leave the gold in a closet rather than having to deal with selling it. And $50 mil is more than enough for me.
You could pay someone to deal with all that for much less than the ~$20 million difference.
Nah, I need the gold. I need to build myself a mid-range gaming PC.
Get me one of them sweet $28 O’Leary lunches
To do normal groceries I need at least 54m
So if Musk had 500kg of gold lying around in some vault and I’d manage to steal it in some heist of the century, he’d be only left with 99.99% of his wealth. Imagine: a whopping 0.001% of his wealth gone in an instance, how would he ever recover from that?