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Garrett Baldwin's avatar

NOTE: In the email version of this letter I called Bitcoin a capital efficient asset - and gold as well. There was an edit that removed a few words. BTC is simply a hedge against monetary inflation, while gold and silver act as stores of value. Thank you.

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Mike's avatar

I keep untold millions of Au hidden in the rivers of my mining claims, as well as other more readily accessible amounts in other places....

Come on out and get you some too !

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Garrett Baldwin's avatar

Are you Tom Waits?

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Mike's avatar

No, I don’t know much about Tom Waits, other than occasionally hearing a song or a reference to him .

Im not much of a singer either…

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Garrett Baldwin's avatar

He’s the gold prospector in the Ballad of Buster Scruggs…

Great short film within a film

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Mike's avatar

Thanks, I'll check that out!

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Richard Page's avatar

Garrett, so I am sure that gold bars would be great... but in a collapse (Mad Max) what would be the the best form to hold it for the economy that might result? One prepper site suggests gold ear rings or something else that does not indicate you have more if you need to buy food or fuel, etc.

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Garrett Baldwin's avatar

Silver in my opinion.

One ounce at a time

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Nutty Professor's avatar

Great article. Much appreciated.

Googling PHYS turned up a 2010 Seeking Alpha rant about it being a dog crushed by 28% precious metals capital gains tax of OTHER PEOPLES sales. Article claimed ETFs dodge this. Somehow I am not able to find it now but I do see lots of other articles. I normally get pretty good reproducibility of Google search so I don't bookmark so this puzzles me.

Not wanting to spend hours researching when I suspect Garrett knows the answer so lazily tossing this here. Does PHYS track spot gold with reasonable accuracy or does it get diminished by a requirement to pay precious metals (still 28%?) tax on all sales that distribute across all holders of the fund?

In my case it is IRA funds that, I would only touch in < 10 years if the a dollar collapse made that a necessity but preparing for the worst is no longer the province of conspiracy theorists.

Darker (hopefully longer odds) concerns about paper gold relates to ability to get those assets in a dollar collapse (which of course is why you discussed the personal holding options). As you say, nothing is without risk but this is true for all of time.

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Garrett Baldwin's avatar

PHYS is a spot gold trust - so it's effectively a pile of gold - but disconnected from its NAV because it's a closed end fund. The thing about this fund is that it allows redemption at very high levels of investment - meaning you can get physical gold.

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