yankees60 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 7:48 pm
blue_ruin17 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:32 pm
For
physical (40% of my gold allocation) I order from
silvergoldbull.ca. Free, fast shipping; usually the lowest premiums I can find. Online dealers are pretty much the only way to go, IMO -- brick and mortar dealers just can't compete.
For
international storage (40% of my allocation) I use
Goldmoney Personal. For Canadians, it is the best service for allocated gold storage in its class. I researched the fine print of their services intensively before investing with them, and was sold on their strong commitment to ensuring that every single
gram of gold that a customer owns is absolutely, 100% fully allocated and accounted for. They even created and patented a ledger system specifically created for that purpose (Google: Aurum closed loop private ledger). They have public, detailed contingency plans for bankruptcy which are structured in such a way that keeps customer gold away from creditor or court pockets. Redemption for physical, delivered to your door, isn't a process that is buried in fine print, it is a main feature of the service. Overall, an excellent service, the best way to hold physical gold in an allocated account in an overseas vault, IMO.
HOWEVER... and here comes a huge caveat: Goldmoney Personal recently stopped accepting new accounts and has frozen the service to include only already existing customers. A new service, Goldmoney Holding, was launched...and it is terrible. So far, they have kept their promise to let Goldmoney Personal customers to continue using the platform, but inevitably, at some point they will surely for a migration to the Goldmoney Holding platform, and I will promptly take my business elsewhere, assuming the problems with Goldmoney Holding have not been eliminated by that point.
The last 20% of my gold allocation is held in my Tax Free Savings Account in the CGL.C.TO ETF (Canadian GLD, essentially), for tax-free balancing purposes.
Blueruin17!
I know you are also still active here.
Any updates on any of the above? I was completely impressed with your level of due diligence!
Vinny
I have 100% bailed on Goldmoney. Only in retrospect do I recognize that their
breathtaking decline in value, customer service, and integrity was not incidental, but rather likely by design.
With Goldmoney "Personal", the sheer ease and swiftness in which fiat currency could be converted into gold or silver was remarkable; you could use fund your account with bank bill payments for free, or even with credit cards if you covered the service fee. Redemption for physical was exceedingly easy, streamlined, and affordable -- even at amounts as little as 1/10th ounce of gold, shipped to your address within a business day or two upon demand. They had a debit card that you could use to spend your precious metal holdings at any POS that accepted debit. You could choose what vault to hold your allocated gold.
Out of no where, Goldmoney "Personal" was frozen, and all new customers where directed to Goldmoney "Holding". All the amazing features and potential of "Personal" were nuked. Only one, cumbersome, expensive method of funding your account: wire transfer. The process for taking physical delivery became very opaque and prohibitively expensive. For example, if you request redemption for physical now you get the message:
The Holding does not have a sufficient balance available of gold to take delivery of a bar, or the Goldmoney bar delivery facility is currently unavailable. Please contact our Relationship Management team.
Oh really...Before I could demand delivery of as little as 1/10th of an ounce of gold
on demand at 3am from my phone while drunk in the back of a taxi....but now I have to contact the "Relationship Management team" to "discuss" my desire to take delivery.
Ya, no thank you.
I now believe that Goldmoney has been essentially comprised. I suspect (though I cannot prove) that their service provided such an effective, frictionless "on-ramp" to DELIVERABLE gold and silver that the service was probably flagged as being a significant threat to the current monetary paradigm. For example, I personally have
multiple credit cards with $20,000+ limits. During the onset of a financial crisis in which the integrity and trust of the financial system itself were called into question, I could have had the ability to convert my credit card limits (i.e. "nothing") into dozens of ounces of deliverable physical gold, or thousands of ounces of deliverable physical silver... There is no way that ability could be allowed to persist going into the next financial crisis.
I don't know "who" compromised Goldmoney. I suspect that they were slapped with onerous government regulations in advance of the next financial crisis in order to ensure that average folks have no ability to "on ramp" their fiat dollars and credit card limits into physical precious metals.
All my gold is physical, now. No international holdings. No games. No risks.
When you have a good hand, keep it close to your chest.
