Hacker News Reader

Comment by divbyzer0 | Hacker News Reader

That would defeat the purpose of owning physical gold. Most physical gold owners do not want any third party dependancy, or couterparty risk. They would stronly prefer discretion.

I make the distinction with physical ownership over a gold-linked fund or future contract, sometimes refered to as paper gold.

View on HN

To fully validate your gold holdings yourself, you must determine that the metal is actually gold at the purity stamped on the coin/bar. Or you must trust the authority whose image appears stamped in the object.

Obviously most gold holders do not have metallurgical laboratories in their homes, so your assertion is half-wrong. Yes, there is no counterparty risk to the transaction: you hold the gold. But there is third-party trust that what you have is indeed gold.

Of course, I would be a bad Bitcoiner if I didn't mention that Bitcoin solves both of these problems. You can fully validate the quantity and validity of your bitcoin with your copy of the blockchain.

Unlike "blockchain people" though, I do not believe gold -- or any other physical object -- can be realistically tracked in a digital system. So I reject the "put gold on the blockchain" idea as a non-starter.

>most gold holders do not have metallurgical laboratories in their homes,

https://www.amazon.com/slp/gold-testing-kit/25dkrbmt9yxy6dd

Thanks, I was not aware of these. I'll have to research. I suspect they're somewhat desctructive, but could be justified with more than 1000USD worth of metal.

Will those be able to differentiate between 99.99% and 99.90%? Because that's the difference in purity for these fakes.

It’s not like individuals are going to care. In fact the only people who would care are the government and the refineries who’s brand is being stolen.

Yes, there is trust when purchasing precious metals. The idea to to deviersify. A little gold, some silver, and perhaps some digital currency.

We cannot eliminate risk, but we can reduce and mitigate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com