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Democratizing Gold?
Submitted by Adam Taggart via Peak Prosperity,
What if you could carry and exchange gold in the exact same manner as you do with the dollar bills in your wallet?
I've recently been introduced to a technology that's making this possible.
In today's podcast, I speak with Adam Trexler, President of Valaurum, about this technology and the gold-infused notes it creates. Valaurum's mission is to democratize ownership of gold by converting it into a form affordable to anyone.
Democratizing Gold
In short, a fractional gram's worth of gold is affixed to layers of polyester, creating a note – called an "Aurum" – similar in dimension and thickness to a U.S. dollar bill. This gold (usually 1/10th or 1/20th of a gram) is commercially recoverable. So an Aurum offers similar potential as a coin or bar, in terms of providing a vehicle for storing and exchanging known, dependable increments of precious metals – just in much smaller (and more affordable) amounts than commercially available to date.
The big idea here? In a world where a 1oz coin of gold costs over $1,200, an Aurum will let you hold a few dollars' worth of gold in a single note. If you've got pocket change, you can be a precious metals owner.
And you don't have to change your behavior. You can store and transport an Aurum in your billfold along with your dollars.
Understanding the Aurum
As the saying goes, a picture's worth a thousand words. Here's a picture of an Aurum designed for Peak Prosperity that the Valaurum team produced for us:
You'll see that with even just 1/20th of a gram of gold involved, it's enough to make the Aurum appear to be "made of" gold. The characteristic luster, color, and shine of the 24-karat gold used is immediately apparent.
The Aurum is designed to be handled in the same manner as we do with our "paper" money. And, despite having a more 'plastic' feel to it (resulting from the polyester backing), it's as flexible, lightweight, and familiar-feeling as paper currency.
The big difference, of course, is that instead of being a claim on something else, it simply is what it is: a fractional gram of gold. It can be stored, traded, or melted down – just like a coin or bar.
Here's a brief video that gives an overview of the production process:
Implications
Being able to hold gold in this form is significant for several reasons.
First, it makes gold ownership available to all budgets. Many of the world's households have been priced out of gold to date. This changes that completely.
Second, it enables the potential for everyday transactions should we ever return to a precious metal-backed monetary standard. It answers the challenge: How will you pay for your groceries with gold? With an Aurum, it's now easy.
Whether Valaurum's product emerges as the winning horse or not, the world definitely needs this type of solution (i.e., convenient fractional physical metal) to go mainstream.
I'm very excited by this new innovation in the bullion industry, and I explore the matter in depth in this podcast. If you're similarly intrigued, it's worth the listen.
And for those of you interested in owning an Aurum of your own, you can learn how to purchase the Peak Prosperity Aurum pictured above by clicking here.
Click the play button below to listen to my interview with Adam Trexler (36m:59s):
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Yup. Screw the kids. We need to feed bankers.
If you buy 10 at a time or more, they are $8 a piece and not $10. Considering how much more fractional gold costs, a 1/2 gram bar being $30 retail, the cost is not really that unusual for such small standardized amounts. I wish they had a generic well made product available. No offense to Peak Prosperity, but I would rather have some of the other images I have seen than theirs.
The aurum has 1/10th gram ($4.00) of gold and costs $10.00. Still, they have their cost of production and the risk, etc. of doing this project.
Still, I bought one Aurum just to support the direction this is headed in. If combined with GoldMoney, this Aurum (foldable money) would be a good replacement currency after the big blow-out occurs on fiat money.
But as the cost (above) shows, one can still "dilute" even the Aurum. Gotta be careful on that.
silver bitchez.
junk silver bitchez
Where can I buy a Bitcoin T-shirt? I need somewhere that accepts PayPal.
BitGold
Gold backed by Bitcoin
What's the discount to compensate for the counter-party risk?
actually, bitgold was a "theoretical" precursor to bitcoin
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html
aside: note how the date on the post & the date on the url do not match.
my only issue with this is that 10 $ per 1/10 gram at http://shop.valaurum.com/ is equivalent to about 3110 $ per troy ounce
Yup. That alone will prevent me from buying any of them.
... but the outrageous premium also goes with the bill when you sell (i.e., spend) it. Real question then becomes: how do merchants price their goods if you can buy with either FRNs or goldnotes? How would Gresham's law apply?
I just hope I can get a few of these before the feds jump all over them for some lame excuse.
$3,100/ oz? I don't think so.
I prefer the Valcambi combi-bar.
This will never fly. Nor will you ever buy a loaf of bread with a one ounce gold coin. History has shown that you will convert your gold into multiple pieces of silver or copper and use them for daily transactions. It has been that way for centuries and because gold will always be scarce, it will continue to be this way.
And paper money is worth only the hopium or rather the criminal bankster force behind it , the metal value of coins is a fraction of what it is supposed to represent
Sheeple wake up, the emperor has NO CLOTHES... and to spell it out for those who can't think.... paper money and the coins to got with it are WORTHLESS, they are backed by nothing, nothing, nothing
So what stops me from restarting the algo on my own server?
Fractional Gold and Fractional Silver..?
Coin and a pair of Tin Snips, and a Druggie scale, god knows America has enough druggie scales, and you can even carry your own calibration weights in your pocket
Shut up and take my money!
There is actually a pretty important aspect about this product that wasn't mentioned in the article and was discussed only briefly in the interview. It's about verifiability. The other aspects of it don't look as interesting as the ability to check that the thing does indeed contain gold of the stated weight and purity.
In the interview Adam Trexler says that the 1/20 gram Aurum contains a layer of gold that is so thin that if you shine bright light through it you could actually see through the gold and see a characteristic turquoise blue-green color.
I don't know that this would be a strong enough security feature for verifying these Aurums with the naked eye alone, but in any case I think it would be very easy to make a very cheap sensor that can check for gold content and purity very accurately. Since it is so thin, you can directly measure all the atoms of gold in it. Even sophisticated analytical methods involving X-rays or lasers usually only work to a depth of several microns, so this product should work well with those and simpler methods (in that you wouldn't need to also do any other tests. One test checks all). Ultrasound devices could also become more practical though.
They are like Willy Wonka's golden tickets to access the chocolate factory.
What some people seem to miss is that the Aurum is an attempt to create a gold "backed" currency. It's not supposed to replace silver as a lower demonination of gold or even gold coins.
For those of you who are peddling Bitcoin - you buy one lately? Who knows what it's going to worth in a week, hell in an hour - you can lose your shirt as easily as make a profit.
Although the Aurum has a premium ($4+ worth of gold for $10) so do smaller denominations of gold and silver oz like 1/10 or 1/20 or 1/25.
Before shooting down the idea just because it's not the same as everything else, why not look at it as another route for people to protect their purchasing power.
Sorry, Chumba, but US notes (Federal Reserve Notes) are not valid debt instruments: they lack a presentation date, and they lack a promise to pay anything. They are fraud.
Fishhawk
No one in their right of left mind is going to pay 250% of spot for a piece of laminated vacuum deposited gold novelty.
I seldom get sticker shock on fractional gold (which I still think the premiums on any fractional are BS) but $10 for 1/10th GRAM?
This is analogous to the scam of the "gold stamps" that my grandparents fell for back in the 70's. Sure the stamps have gold in them, but the price paid was many many multiples of what they would ever be worth.
Laughable. If I want my doughnut punched, I'll go with the valcombi credit card wafer configuration first. At least they are a known brand name. At least you can't see through the gold.
I just picked up some gold via bitcoins and part of the order was that valcombi wafer since the idea is cool enough for the smallish increase of premium
my prediction is gold hits $1600 again before btc hits $1200... why? gold already had its latest round of profit taking and weak hands while btc is in slow motion on that since large sums is not very liquid and will take some time for all that consolidation to work itself out
but I do think btc would hit $2000 before gold does.. when? who the fuck knows
You just make it a convertable gold reserve note redeemable at your local bank backed by a central bank run by accountants, not economists, whose job is to make sure every bank is liquid. It's not that hard and it's been done before, in America, for 45 years and it worked pretty damn well. It's called the Suffolk Bank, created by New England bankers when the 2nd US Bank was chartered. I'm tired of this stupid shit that Tyler prints while refusing to print something that makes sense. He's a fucking plant.
click here to purchase
Oh, it's just 3'110 US$ per ounce. How nice, that must be a special offer, mustn't it?
Zerohedge is not just selling the book, zerohedge is also much closer to their advertisers than any serious news source in the world would dare to be. Is that good or bad? ;-)
The Aurum doesn't fit any purpose that can't be better served with copper, nickle, silver and gold coin. It suffers the risk of reduction of the amount of metals incorporated in the note because the vacuum sputtering process lends itself to widely altering the amount of metals included. The amount of gold can only be verified by destructive testing.
The ideal currency is a currency that does not cost any precious resources to produce, yet can not be counterfeited by a government or central bank at the drop of a hat.
Bitcoin does this rather well, except for the cost in electricity to keep the network secure, but as technology makes the kilowatt consumption of the network go down, the success of such a currency model will be a certainty.
Gold can still be counterfeited, in - fact the best currency is one that does not exist, but can-not be counterfeited.
Encryption solves the bulk of the problems, and makes the currency easily transportable, bridging the gap between economies, lets face it, those rich mega banker CEOS didn't get rich by working hard or earning a living, they were printing themselves money essentially or printing money to buy real assets (depriving the working class of productive assets ) this is why the economy has shrunk, the bankers have centralized all the real world wealth (stolen it) and there is not enough wealth left for the people (productive people) to improve upon/work with....so the economy shrinks.
Central Bankers have essentially stolen the last meaningful dollar, the rest of the dollars they steal from now on are pretty much going to be regarded as worthless.
If the system refuses to jail the criminal bankers, than the free-market economy will simply opt to EXCLUDE THEM from the economy by circumventing central banks AS A WHOLE.
Crypto-Currency, and the next iteration of such "coins" are the future, gold will just be another asset class, dollars will be wallpaper, and crypto-will reign as "the people's currency" in the not-to-distant future.
Gold is not ideal in today's society, because it inevitably requires warehousing, which means centralization and theft by...bankers.
People who promote a "gold standard" always tout that "FIAT has always failed", but they neglect to mention that Gold Standards-> ALWAYS TURN INTO FIAT in the end, when you go to deposit gold in a bank, they will inevitably either charge a huge storage fee, or they will fractionalize the gold to make loans and so begins the cycle of central bank slavery again.
Crypto Currency is just a public ledger its a bank "without the bank".
Why have people working as bankers? why not have those people just working productively like everyone else?
You don't need banks, people got around without banks for millions of years.
Governments will one-day operate on a "donations only" form of funding, if there are governments at all!
Crypto
-No Tax
-No Govt
-No bank
-No slavery
Gold
-Govt stealing your gold
-Banks stealing your gold
-Thieves stealing your gold
-People faking the notes/bullion/shaving coins/debasing the metal
Dollars
-Shit on a stick
There is no comparison on which one offers the greatest potential in financial freedom, and without a large government funded by theft and fraud, law enforcement will go out the window and the "trivial meaningless" laws that have been enacted for the past 50 years simply to stifle competition will go the way of the dino.
Note: Just because Crypto will be a huge success and probably endup destroying the system of institutional slavery that has grown up around us over the past 100 years, doesn't mean gold will do badly or that it will be worthless, it simply means that if you want to spend money to buy things crypto will be the medium of exchange, gold still offers the stability and store of value under such a system, all it means is, if you hoard gold when the dollar collapses, be prepared to exchange some for crypto in the new age economy.
Crypto is the revolution, Gold is the asset for the fearful and uncertain individuals who want to play it safe, I don't believe the government is so suicidal that it would opt to shut down society and the web, just to enforce its worthless dollars, because a simple gradual peaceful economic revolution would simply turn violent.
Buckle your seat-belts, because Kansas is going bye bye.
nice premiums on this crap!!! and so you are suppose to use these as spot price after paying shit hell premiums to get them??
solid scam
Nice idea, guys. But at $10/.1gram it's a little to rich for me.
No kidding! Talk about paying a premium! $4 worth of gold for $10? Nice racket if you can keep it going.......which I doubt very seriously.
Well - gratz to anyone who bought some of these. While I would like to, I cant until they accept BTC.
The premium is pretty high, but I think they look awesome - and the fact that its pure gold is a nice selling point. Its likely that they will always trade at a premium over spot, so I wouldnt be too worried about it. I think I could easily trade these things locally at $10 a piece - Im in SE asia, and the notes have a nice wow factor that will make them valuable. I wouldnt be investing my life savings, but they look attractive to me - worth buying a handful for the novelty.
it's a scam - and tylers are advertising them