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ATMs That Dispense Gold Bars Coming To America
tetrahedrassface writes "As the US economic woes continue unabated, a German company is bringing gold-bearing ATMs to Mainstreet America. The machines accept credit cards, and will dispense 1 gram, 5 gram, 10 gram and 1 ounce units, as well as various gold coins. The company hopes to install 35 bullion machines in the United States this year, and will hopefully have several hundred up and running by next year. The machines will be decorated like giant gold ingots and be over two meters tall. Physical gold has both pros and cons, but from a safety standpoint would it be fine to have a couple of ounces in your pocket while walking around the mall? The giant, gold-dispensing ATMs will monitor the market conditions for gold every 10 minutes in order to reflect spot price changes as they occur." We already covered similar machines installed in travel hubs across Germany.
Meanwhile, Slashdot is bringing apostrophe abuse to America.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It would be nice to not have to haul that entire bag of 2,000 coins back to town. I might run into a random encounter before then...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I bet Glenn Beck is pissed about this.
Living With a Nerd
will we win a trip to Glenn Beck's magical crazy factory?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
It's spelt billion. ;)
And 35 billion ATMs is rather much for a start-up, and more than current market demand...
oh gawd, there will be more of these than McDonalds and Starbucks...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"... will monitor the market conditions for gold every 10 minutes in order to reflect spot price changes as they occur... " So... all I have to do is hack the market price calculations, buy my gold for $10.00 an ounce, then sell it for $300 an ounce. I give these guys less than a year before they're hacked into bankruptcy. Incidentally, I thought when we went off the gold standard (and silver standard) that this sort of thing actually became illegal. Granted, I could be wrong... I haven't had my morning coffee yet...
Seriously, why? If people want to invest in gold, they're generally going to buy it in larger lots than this. What's the point of selling gold in a vending machine when no one is going to take a gold coin as currency? This seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Not to mention I fully expect these to become big, fat targets for thieves...
To put that in perspective, that's over a hundred machines per person, or 3.3 machines per square foot of land. Talk about agressive expansion!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
how much is "35 bullion"
Probably more than three Brazilian. (If you thought it was a typo for billion, see bulk precious metal.)
They did compensate people for seized gold. They just promptly devalued the dollars they paid for them with.
And considering the massive failure that was the last gold seizure (they only got 500 tons total), and the fact that we aren't on a gold standard, so they can devalue the dollar just fine as is, there is no need and little likelihood of future seizure of gold. Your retirement accounts will probably be nationalized long before your gold is seized.
The demand for bouillon has cubed.
I live in a state with a large number of concealed carry permits. Forceful robberies are becoming less common.
...I'm not interested.
All the goldbugs keep telling me that gold is money, regardless of what economists say or what governments decree. So if gold is money, why won't these machines work either way?
Your choice, put in fiat money and get a gold bar, or put in a gold bar and get some crisp green U. S. of A. "Cyberbit Certificates" (or whatever it is that backs the currency nowadays).
I'm sure the technical problems could be solved--it only accepts gold bars slabbed in polycarbonate with a barcode on them, or something. Methinks the real reason is that it would exposed the bid/asked spread.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Gold is only useful if you can hang on to it and survive the years between total collapse and the rebuilding of a new world.
Generally, gold is seized by whatever autocrats and strong-men are vying for power in the interim. In any case, during the hungry years, nobody has any use for gold.
But what's interesting this time around is that we're entering an age where canned goods are stable and good for years. We've never been through a societal collapse which has had access to high-quality, preserved goods.
Whatever. Skill sets are more important in the long run. Can you farm or make useful things? What value do you personally hold? Do people like you?
-FL
Exactly.
Don't be dumb and buy anything when it is near historically-high levels. You'll only be the "greater fool" that allows those people who bought near the lows and rode the price up to cash out just before the price collapses.
Gold is useful if the currency of your country collapses in value prior to your purchase and the world economy is still strong enough to buy your gold.
Economic collapse is not an all-or-nothing event, sometimes the economy in a limited number of countries collapses. An example of this would be Argentina in 1999.
Certainly that's common sense advice, but if you'd bought gold at the historically high level of $1000/oz last year, you'd be doing quite well now.
Sometimes prices really aren't cyclical, and sometimes the cycles are quite long.
That said, I'm not buying gold. And I certainly see no reason for gold prices not to be cyclical, aside from a possible impending total crash of the world's economies. In which case gold will go up a lot more shortly before euros and dollars become worthless -- but shortly thereafter, you'll be wishing you bought food and ammo instead, and if your gold was on paper rather than holding up your mattress, you won't have it anymore anyway.
If we're going mad max, farming is not where the money is. Subsistence is important, but you can always *trade* for food. Which is where gold comes in, as a near-universal currency. If you have enough of it, you can manipulate local markets to your benefit.
But anyway, the people who make out best in a mad max situation will be the merchants. Being able to supply many people with what *they* need is way more profitable than just being able to supply yourself (and family) with what *you* need for baseline subsistence.
So I say, rather than hoard gold or learn to farm, hoard farming tools and steel knives. And guns and ammo. And fuel. But don't neglect the high-profit luxury items and their inputs... someone needs to supply (at a profit) the local warlords and their mistresses. Hoard silk. Hoard glassware. Hoard dyes. Oh, and don't forget to make sure you have the resources to employ heavies to keep those warlords from taking your stuff for free.
And while you're at it, you might as well just become one of those warlords, and synergistically apply your brutal local enforcement methods to ensuring you are the *only* supplier of durable goods in your area. Then you can make sure to maximize your profits.
Wait, sorry, did I get off track with a libertarian fantasy?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What I mean is they claim that the US dollar is going to become worthless, that only gold will hold any value... Yet they are willing to take your worthless US dollars in large amounts and sell you valuable gold for them. That tells you something, specifically that they are full of shit.
If I honestly believed gold would be the only worthwhile currency I sure as hell wouldn't give you any for dollars.
They are just playing in to a craze they know to be false and, as you said, this is an ultimate form of it. These things allow people to purchase with nothing more than a credit card, and do so at a massive price premium.