You do realize that if you take either the gold or the cash you’re still roughly a billion dollars away from being a billionaire? At $72m you still have about 93% of the way to go before you hit even one billion. Elon is currently somewhere north of $700bn.
I’m just pointing this out because many people don’t realize how excessively rich billionaires actually are. Many still seem to think we’re talking about cutting into people’s rainy day savings when we’re calling for billionaire’s fortunes to get taxed. FWIW, nobody earns that kind of money.
With all of the above said, if it is legit and comes with no strings attached, I will gladly take the ~$70m in gold (with approximately the dimensions of a microwave). Even if I have to pay taxes on it.
While gold does incur a conversion cost when putting it in a bank account, the same is true for a large amount of cash (especially when it is in a foreign currency). And gold has an intrinsic value which only increases over time. Thanks!
For context:
500kg cash in 100 USD bills (like on the picture) would be roughly 50.000.000 USD.
And 500kg of Gold would currently be 71,396,000 USD.
Hey please explain the microwave comparison. I didn’t understand that part.
Gold has a density of 19.283 kg/l, so 500kg of Gold would only be about 26l big
Gold is really heavy, so 500 Kg fits in a small space.
But gold is heavier than bank notes
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A lot of this question really hinges around one question. What do I have to tell the government?
Do I get this as a prize? A gift? An inheritance? Income? Magical Genie appearance? Do I have to launder it? Am I going to get audited?
It’s a lot harder to explain bundles of cash. Remove any identifying marking on the gold and claim it as marine salvage.
Except I dont own a boat, scuba gear and cant provide a lick of evidence that its marine salvage if even the most basic question is asked.
Its a lot easier to gradually introduce cash into my life without generating a paper trail.
So rent a boat and scuba gear and putter around the coast of Florida for a few days.
Buying groceries with cash is nice and all, but you will never put a dent in that much money doing it that way.
Lol what your local kroger doesnt take gold bullion for milk.
I like the way you are way overthinking this like a true adult who knows how the world works. But hey it’s just a silly meme with an ridiculous “what if” question, so let’s assume there are no strings attached, no stipulations, this is not taxable and you don’t have to report it to the IRS. Now you can let your imagination run wild, Which would you choose? Cash? Or gold? I think the question comes down to which equivalent weight of each is worth more than the other.
Is it 100 dollar bills? How much? Each weighs a gram. Gold is worth…145$ peer gram. So that means…gold will always be worth more, unless severely diluted.
Yeah, but what’s more liquid? I can take those 100s and pay most of my expenses in cash for the rest of my life.
If I take the gold bars, I would have to find a buyer or find a way to convert it into cash. I’m sure most people and places will have questions about how I got the gold bars.
It’s entirely plausible that the dollar could collapse to near worthless within our lifetimes. Inb4 Americans who think the world would be ending.
Bass boosted, reverb inshallah.
When you heat both sides up: one is liquid, the other is flammable.
Plus we may have a $250 bill coming soon to make the cash option even more attractive!
Everybody ITT
But I would have to pay taxes 😱
What are y’all doing complainig about billionaires not paying taxes, when you want to avoid them already talking about imaginary money?
ITT: having less limmy reference than expected and took it literally
Yeah, oh no I have to pay taxes on a massive windfall… Fuck off with that, I want my society to function. I get that it’s a big chunk, but it’s also free money.
I’ve heard numerous people complain about getting a raise because they would end up in a higher tax bracket and come out net negative…I don’t think most people understand how tax brackets work.
I learned about tax brackets when I went up a bracket.
Self education is seriously lacking for most people.
Literally just search “how do tax brackets work?”
Took me 15 min to learn everything I needed to know instead of making a false assumption.
Yeah anyone that thinks making more money means they’ll end up with less money because of taxes is just wrong. It’s crazy how so many people are that naive that they want to actively handicap themselves.
Having said that, you know what does work like that, our welfare system. It is possible to hit a point where you work too much and get xyz benefits taken away and the monetary value of those is larger than what your raise was. In particular, childcare/food stamp benefits are a hard one to lose and childcare can be a lot of money. So, that’s a valid complaint but if you are not receiving government aid any raise you get at work is a benefit to you.
It gets wonky with a non-cash windfall though. A couple of years ago my wife and I won game tickets valued around $3k which of course you have to pay income tax on which was ultimately around a thousand dollars (I don’t remember exactly, but it was something like 30-50% of the winnings) for just those tickets, which of course since they’re game tickets you then spend more money going to the game. Ultimately we could afford it and enjoyed the experience but I do not want to imagine how that goes for folks who win for example a $40k car and don’t take the cash equivalent option
That’s totally fair, and I think that taxes should be included as part of the prize in non cash prizes (and cash equivalent should include the taxes as well to avoid the incentive to make it difficult not to take the cash or for people to not take it).
And yeah, windfall taxation is tough because it includes large financial inheritance (which left unchecked results in nobility, at least according to the founders of my country), lotteries (which I see no reason not to tax like any other income), sentimental inheritance of small goods (like grandma’s jewelry), sentimental inheritance of real estate (yeah that needs taxed, but the taxation system should work with you on it), non sentimental inheritance of real estate (which will be claimed to be sentimental), and large winnings/gifts that while very nice may become a burden when taxes are applied. And the lines between all these are blurry enough that some people will be cheating it
You would have to pay taxes, and that’s fine. But how do you report a sudden windfall of fifty million dollars in cash?
Idk, but I am pretty sure it is possible to find a lawyer who will explain it to me, when I am sitting on 500 kg of 100$ bills ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Fair enough lmao
The weird thing is a) assuming you wouldn’t have to pay taxes on the value of the gold, and b) not understanding you’d still be a shitload richer yet complain about the taxes anyway. What are you all, instant Donald Trumps? Get a few bucks and immediately not want to pay taxes?
I would happily pay taxes on FREE MONEY. Like how are people such babies? The pay/effort ratio is still amazing even if the tax rate was 95%. Only slightly worse than the pay/effort ratio of a billionaire taking a shit on the toilet.
Homie flunked the pound of feathers riddle one too many times
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.
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.
Good luck liquidating 500kg of gold without someone taking a decent cut.
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.
Not to mention literally any gold dealer will happily take a gold bar off your hands at pretty much close to market price.
Yeah, I’ll still take it.
Over the 50 million in cash?
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
Gold increases in value. The dollar is decreasing in value.
Most of gold “increasing in value” is really just the dollar decreasing.
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?
Whussat, in single dollar bills, so about a grand per kilo? VS about a hundred grand per kilo?
Or we talking 100 dollar bills, so, about the same?
… Volume may be the deciding factor.
… Wait. Can’t we just skip to the end already, provision everybody with the emancipatory technologies, radically transforming our economy, obsoleting the need for money…?
You can see that they are 100s in the picture
If they’re worth about the same, I’ll still take the gold then. My logic being: 1. I’m not American. 2. I just think having a big pile of gold is cooler.
Gold is really dense. It wouldn’t be that big of a pile. Still worth a shitload, though.
Still a bigger pile of gold than I have now lol
I’ll take the gold, MAGA is royally fucking up the USD.
Cash, the value be dammed. Im not trying to sell fucking gold. Im not a fucking merchant
If the gold is in an accepted standard form, such as krugerrands, you just need to find a precious metals dealer. If it’s just a pile of gold, then there’s a lot of hassle. I imagine ingots of the sort national gold reserves hold would be somewhere in between.
Shifting a large quantity of gold may require a non-optional explanation of its provenance, with “I woke up and it was just there” or “a genie gave it to me after I did an online quiz” not being adequate, and an inadequate explanation resulting in its forfeiture if not more serious legal hassles. With a large pile of gold and no good explanation, you may be reduced to smurfing small pieces of it to different dealers, moving around a lot and avoiding the attention that such a pile would inevitably draw.
People like Al Capone would have a few things to say about unverified sources of wealth in any form. Pretty sure if I show up at a car dealer with a briefcase of bills it’ll raise a few questions too.
Yet another way society is biased against the poor. A rich guy shows up with a briefcase full of money and nobody bats an eye, it’s just another day. A poor guy shows up with a briefcase full of money and then suddenly everyone starts asking questions, and if he doesn’t have good enough answers he might get thrown in jail.
What if I mowed a rich guy’s lawn and he gave me a really big tip? No, I don’t remember his name. No, I didn’t keep the address. It was over there somewhere, go that way, it’s the big house with the mown lawn. You’ll find it, just keep looking…
US law requires any cash transaction of $10,000 or more be reported to the IRS/Treasury Dept. to include the federal tax ID # of both parties/entities, and the deposit accounts involved.
5002 $9999 transactions
Yup that looks very normal to me. Probably looks nothing suspicious to your FBI agent either.
Structurization.
I know someone who worked in a software company that developed algorithms and systems for banks and gambling to detect these.Yep.
Literally pulling out $9,999 instead of $10,000… that in and of itself is a crime, even if you’re not actually doing anything funny with it.
Not necessarily, it’s a crime to deposit 9999 instead of 10 and not report. When I worked at a bank anyone who knew what they were doing and deposited 8-9k in cash got the form. People who found out and then did anything else? You get a form. People who walk out? They get a surprise notice from the fbi later.
Basically if the bank thinks you might be close we just give you the form and you don’t get to say no anymore.
Depends on the dealership, heh
Same would be required for 50M in cash not to mention Taxes.
Btw cash is 50M gold is ~90M
(And yes the “M” dose mean Monopoly money)
a large pile of gold
That depends as well. Gold in specimen and nugget form can be worth considerably more than its value by weight and there’s plenty out there chasing these. These are not hard to move at all.
But yeah, there can be difficulties trading it and it’s generally subject to taxes. Quite often you need to be licenced as at least a fossicker if you’re selling unrefined gold as a prospector.
That’s without the pain in the arse process of separating it from impurities.
I wonder if i should pick the option that is going to make someone else rich off their commission, or just cash?
You don’t think you’ll be investogated for a massive gold transaction?
You don’t sell the gold. You take 10x loans of gold’s worth and use it as collateral. Like banks and billionaires do. Well maybe 100x…
I’d choose gold. AFAIK most all money laundering rules deal with cash.
Even if a geine were to give you 500 tons of cash or gold, some governments may have a problem with that and choose to redistribute it.
Choosing gold makes the value much more liquid in my opinion.
Not to mention that gold doesn’t rot (unlike USD). In today’s economy gold is probably more value-dense (as in, a pound of gold is worth more than a pound of hundered-dollar bills).
Currencies also come and go but gold stays. If you’re thinking long-term, gold is the vastly better choice.
If that works for you, fine. Im sticking with cash. The government doesnt know I have it, they wont know to look for it. And it wont start rotting in my lifetime.
you can visit my local pawn shop, they give cash for gold
70m in gold pls
Okay, here’s your five dollars. Thank you for your business.
Besides, you never know when the FBI might show up.
I could see FBI showing up if you try to do something with 500 kg of dollar bills as well.
Depending where you are you might not be able to put a that amount of cash in your bank, although it’s easier to use.
O, very little would actually get deposited. But all my groceries and eating out and booze and lots of video games and hobbie shit will just get paid for in cash.
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Gold: ~$145,000/kg
Dollar bills = about $1,000/kg
For reference.
Edit: didn’t tap the image to see $100 bills. Add a couple zeros to the $/kg amount.
It’d be $100,000 because they’re $100 bills
This right here.
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The photograph in the post depicts $100 bills.
Ah, thank you. My bad. Didn’t tap the image.
Not to mention the value of gold is not tied to how stupid the US president happens to be at that moment.
It probably had an impact though. As in the more stupid, the higher the price of gold, when people divest from dollars.
10 $100 notes weigh a kilogram?
That’s not what the meme math is.
1kg of $1 bills = $1,000.
where is it written?
The unit of mass: kg
The unit of currency: dollars
You do the math.
You sound so confident that I can’t tell if you are genuinely stupid, you are trolling or a dollar bill actually weights around one gram.
Highlighted. Just in case you have any difficulty finding the correct info before you say anything else.
Bills weigh 1g, and 1g of gold is >$100, so I’m going with gold.
Around $140/gram currently for those curious
So $70,000,000 in gold or $500,000 in dollars.
So then, however disgusting the thought, if they do make the trump $250 bill then that would be the only case where taking the cash is the better deal (putting ease of use for gold vs bills aside)
WWII killed the 500 bill (that was gold-backed at the time) so now ppl have to smuggle gold.
for a little while, yah ;)
Reminds me, that we are sadly phasing out €500
You’d think it would be popular with the drug dealers, but I guess crypto maybe has taken its place.
But the cash is more liquid. Selling $70M worth of gold is a hassle and would invite unwanted attention. $50M in cash you can spend right away.
IOUs based off of gold are a literally significant part of how many modern fiat currencies started.
What in the hell do you need to spend $50M on, right away?
Not to mention gold being around 1.4x more valuable per weight.
Those weights of either gold or currrency are going to require a vault or armored car and a crew of people with a forklift to either store or hold or move anywhere.
You’re gonna be bringing both to a bank.
Suddenly showing up with or trying to spend or sell those volumes of either gold or cash is going to get you a visit from the IRS, Secret Service, and FBI, and maybe CIA.
Cash in this day and age is a huge pain in the butt. Sure, you can get groceries and some tech. But buying a house or even a car or pay for services? Impossible to very inconvenient. Even just paying for everything in cash will be a problem if you ever get audited. You’d need to launder the money somehow and at that point you can also take the gold.
Another critical difference:
If you got a million dollars in cash you were obliged to pay taxes upon receipt, and if you did not do so and you try to deposit it, you are going to get flagged for a tax audit and subject to criminal charges.
If you got a million dollars in GOLD you don’t pay taxes until you sell it. So you can sit on it for years and then sell it and deposit it and you only pay taxes at that moment and have not broken the law in doing so.
Money is income, Gold is just gold until you turn it into money.
Good point, but after a while someone would still want to know where the gold came from. Unless you sell it so slowly that it’d be barely useful to you.
“after a while someone would still want to know where the gold came from”, five minutes after the cash has been exchanged, you’ll be quickly forgotten about. You don’t live in a damn csi episode
I do, however, live in the real world. Where anyone giving you a decent price for your gold is subject to AML laws.
Cash is honestly easier for your average person to deal with. Either way you’re either going to pay a ton of taxes or you’re going to hide everything. Gold is great if you have a trustworthy buyer that’s not operating legally, in which case you can… Turn it into cash. Woops.
You’re saying I should open a car wash?
The point of laundering is to wash money acquired illegally. Meaning you still have to pay the taxes.
If the 500 KG of cash lands on your lap legally and you can somehow prove that, you can just declare it as income and pay the taxes. If it’s drug money or something then you’ll have to launder.
On the advice of counsel, I decline to answer that question.
Cash in this day and age is a huge pain in the butt.
The initial deposit would be tricky, but after that it’s pretty straightforward.
Would it raise as many questions if you inexplicably receive a priceless painting as a gift from an anonymous benefactor and then sell it on the legitimate market?
$50M in cash you can spend right away.
Maybe the bank won’t be too curious, but the IRS will definitely notice.
Just pay taxes on $50M. Then you’re left with around $25-35M depending on how you report it.
And that’s more than enough to live comfortably on indefinitely
wolframalpha says the gold is worth about $22m more, but it’s a no-brainer. gimme the cash ($50m). the extra ‘value’ in the gold is not worth the extraordinary measures needed to deal with it.
So only go with bills if they’re in denominations >$100. I guess this would work better with euros.
Yeah by my calc a 1kg of $100 bills is about 100K, but the kg of gold is roughly $140k-150K (I just checked and its $144K)
But then I’d have to sell the gold…
I agree: you’d probably pawn the gold off to some billionaire for some nominal amount less than its face value. (Would the government let you as a private citizen just sell them like $70 million in gold?) I’m assuming this is legal and in-the-clear, and it doesn’t matter if we assume it was created out of thin air.
I say “less than” because the buyers know you probably lack connections and just want it gone ASAP so you’re not robbed or worse. Still, whatever percentage hit you take can’t be anywhere near the 40% difference between the cash and the gold, and you’d probably dump it so quick that the investment opportunity cost wouldn’t matter.
Edit: Although if we assumed this was secret but entirely legal (like I somehow had $50 million but nobody but the revenue service knew), then I could maybe stomach the $20 million loss in exchange for less attention. Still, you’d be drawing a lot of suspicion trying to get that 500 kg of $100 bills into an account (or multiple) before you get found out.
both are more than I can carry , I’ll take 30kg of gold
