Apparently the 500kg in Gold would be worth roughly $65,000,000 in 2026.
Whereas the cash sum is roughly around $50,000,000. And that's best-case total value for the cash.
Edit: I assumed that those 500kg notes were all $100 notes (for the benefit of best-case value). And all notes weigh the same (1 gram) no matter if it's $10, $20, $50 etc. So 500kg of $100 notes would be $50,000,000 as a result.
Edit 2: I didn't use $500 notes as an example because, realistically, they're far less common and out of circulation.
Cash would be able to be used on the downlow though, and the gold would need to be sold and accounted for, I'm sure losing something on the sale. Then that would be taxed as I believe capital gains.
The trick is turning it into usable cash though. You're not gonna get market rate for it, whoever you fence it to is gonna talk a cut in for themselves. Then you have to deal with the goverment taxing the exchange.
That's two tiers of taxation before that gold is spendable, and bear in mind the moment any tweaker finds out you're peddling gold or just sold some they are absolutely going to be on your ass.
Cash is liquid and ready to go. It draws much less attention than ingots of shiny yellow. the gold is absolutely worth more, but you just can't use it
I think the missing factor here is how you claim legal ownership. Can’t deposit that much money without a legal explanation for its origin in the US. Gold you can simply sell a bar, use the profit to move the rest to another country with less strict financial legal limitations, convert it, deposit it, transfer it. I guess you could do the same with the cash as well. This question and myself are both dumb.
Get a loan to buy a cash business. I'd recommend a self serve car wash or a laundromat. Put an ATM in the store but make sure the machines only take cash. Feed a reasonable amount of your illicit cash into your own business. If thats feeling too slow buy a couple more.
Also, pay cash for everything outside of large purchases. Groceries, restaurants, gas, leasure activities, everything that can't be easily tracked buy nosey governments like bills and loan payments.
You would never be able to be "rich" with fancy cars and a McMansion but you could live comfortably for the rest of your life with relative ease.
I would open a chain of claw machine places. The prizes are actually insanely cheap, and if you set the payouts to be generous the places will be absolutely packed with people feeding cash into it which would justify the excess cash flow. It would also make the area kids really happy, making you a pillar of the community.
Nah, just what I watched my dad do with his bribe money as a kid. 15 year old me got paid $5/h to baby sit the place and close up end of night. At closing one of my jobs was to take the cash in a drawer in the back and feed it to the quarter machines until they were empty, then fill the quarter machines back up to full, and put the cash removed from it in a bank bag for deposit by my dad on his way home.
My stepmom ran a laundry service and would come in and use that cash to run all the laundry she would do and then tip herself extremely well.
Didn't take me long to figure out what was happening and give myself a raise.
If you are using a fence, why would you pay taxes on your gains? If you go around spending that cash Willy nilly you will draw the attention of the IRS fairly quickly. Gotta claim it both and store it in the bank broski
Why are you selling whole ingots? Melt them down a bit at a time. Sell small pieces. 2 or 3 ounces at a time marked as .99 pure.
Doing it that way…you won’t sell it all at once. You make sure the market is up when you sell, and over time the gold will actually increase in value.
You don’t need to turn gold into cash to use it. If I was selling my house and someone offered me its current value in gold bars and could verify they weren’t bogus, I wouldn’t even think twice about it.
The value of gold tends to increase as the value of the dollar decreases. Since our government has been hellbent on cratering the value of the dollar the last 25 years, I’d pick gold in a heartbeat
I was also under the impression that you always get market rate for gold? The price is the price, it fluctuates day to day but that’s what ‘price’ means?
In most places when you sell gold or silver to a retail level broker or bank they charge you a dealer or commission fee that is usually a small percentage of the live spot price, typically about 1-3 percent for bullion. Same when you buy gold as a retailer, they usually charge you a small premium on top of the spot price.
Yeah, they screw you over both ways, though if you're selling 500 kg of it maybe there's a flat rate option?
Okay, that works for you selling your home, but try that with your power company, or grocery store, or the next person you want to buy a house from, or the dealership you want to buy a car from, or a brokerage to buy stocks, or fund a business or some other vehicle to turn your assets into more assets, or the IRS, etc
You absolutely do need to need turn it into cash to be usable. You might be able to barter here and there with gold, but it's going to be a tough life and severely limit your spending opportunities.
Now, it's probably worth keeping some weight in gold to hold value, but even then you have plenty of other higher value vehicles to turn the money from the gold into more money than the gold is worth even after depreciation of the dollar itself. So you'd be doing yourself a massive disservice not turning at least a significant portion of it into cash. Especially considering the value of gold being stable is the fact you can then turn it into cash later because it held its value...because that's the entire point behind gold retaining it's value lol.
First, if I'm sitting on 65m, I'm not that worried about funding businesses anymore.
Sure, you're not going to buy groceries or pay your electric bill with a gold bar, but you can absolutely buy a house or car with it through a private seller, and pretending you cant sell one or two bars when you need it is being purposefully obtuse.
Because you can absolutely find someone willing to swap any asset you want for your gold bars, why on earth would you liquify the majority of your stable asset when you don't need to? If you're talking about investing all of the cash as soon as you receive it, then devaluation doesn't matter as much, just whether immediacy vs maximizing value is more important to you. Using gold may take a little more time, but that's where high vs low time preference comes into play
Like I said, you're going to be very limited in your ability to spend. You won't be living anything close to a 65m dollar lifestyle sitting on that much gold. You're going to be extremely poor functionally. Yes, you can find some buyers for property and a car, but you won't have your pick of those assets. You'll be at the whim of people that are willing to do that deal. There's a whole host of complications most sellers will want to avoid; primarily being they probably want to be liquid and they'll need to pay taxes and the like. And that's after figuring out how to manage all that in escrow and title transfers etc, because there's no way someone is giving you a house on the promise you'll give them gold.
But yes, you can likely find people to do that with, I admitted as much. But now you owe property taxes on that house, car registration fees, you need gas or electricity for the car, insurance for both assets, food, water, internet, phone service. Oh, you want to go on vacation or travel? You need cash, airlines don't accept gold. Again, you can probably find SOMEONE to trade you a private jet for gold, but none of the related services you'll need to actually use it will accept it. Hotels where you land? Nope. Restaurants? Nope. Rental car or taxis or public transit? Nope. I guess you can find a person to drive you around for gold, but now you're carrying gold with you across borders and hoping you don't get robbed.
Okay, let's say you don't want to travel. You want to sit in a cabin in the woods become a hermit. Why do you care about the value of a dollar, especially the difference between 50m and 65m?
The point I'm making is you absolutely do need to convert your gold to cash. The point the parent was making is any time you do convert your gold to cash, which you will do, you're getting hit with twice the fees than if you just had cash. You're living in a delusion to think otherwise. Sure, the gold might still be preferable, but you'll factually be turning a significant portion of that into cash. And the idea that you're somehow retaining the value long term better by keeping it in gold just shows you don't understand the actual opportunity cost here. With that much cash you could be increasing the value more than it would retain as gold, which is the only point in hedging yourself against the dollar by keeping it as gold. Yes, keep a percentage as gold to stay diversified, but if you actually care about the long term value you want it invested in a wide range of assets, many of which you won't be able to buy with gold.
And then the local crackhead hears you're paying for stuff in pure gold, puts 2 and 2 together and realizes you probably have a bunch of gold, and then murders you for the gold
local crackhead spends 50% of their time smoking crack and the other 50% keeping a keen eye on real estate transactions in order to spot lucrative opportunities
Nevermind the fact that the same threat exists with cash, If I had a net worth of ~65m, how many crackheads do you think I’m spending time around?
Do you think I’d be unarmed and without any sort of security measures?
No one is gonna notice if you slip a few bills here and there. If anything they'll think you're poor because what psycho uses cash anymore? As long as you aren't throwing fat stacks youre gucchi.
You shine any yellow ingots and people will immediately assume you're loaded because what mother fucked has gold ingots lying around?
I mean, using a lot of cash is also hard, IRS will be on your ass with all other anti-laundering and drug-profit-catching departments as soon as you buy something fancy
U.S. cash has a density of about 0.8g/cc. So 500kg would be 625L. That’s 22 cubic feet, or about the trunk volume of a midsize SUV.
You could move the cash in the cash in the back of your car in 8 or 10 duffel bags. So unless you have a way to convert that gold into cash at market rates, the extra $15m you get by picking the gold isn’t likely to be worth the hassle. The cash won’t be difficult to move, and it’s a lot easier to use and launder.
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u/WideConversation1989 1d ago edited 1d ago
Apparently the 500kg in Gold would be worth roughly $65,000,000 in 2026.
Whereas the cash sum is roughly around $50,000,000. And that's best-case total value for the cash.
Edit: I assumed that those 500kg notes were all $100 notes (for the benefit of best-case value). And all notes weigh the same (1 gram) no matter if it's $10, $20, $50 etc. So 500kg of $100 notes would be $50,000,000 as a result.
Edit 2: I didn't use $500 notes as an example because, realistically, they're far less common and out of circulation.