Bitcoin and Gold/silver coins as payment abroad

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by rbk

Go back and actually read my other posts as well, you're missing lots . . .
Go back and actually read my other posts as well, you're missing lots . .
Go back and actually read my other posts as well, you're missing lots . . .
Go back and actually read my other posts as well, you're missing lots . . .



Lastly...Go back and actually read my other posts, you're clearly missing something here . . .

Seriously?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

. .. Of course even with all that, pretty much no one is using gold directly as a currency. Mostly it's used as a hedge but unless you are good at picking the future, you are as likely to lose as to win (again different from land or stocks where there is some volatility but if you hold for several years, you are likely to gain value).

Indeed. Gold has significantly underperformed the stock market over the long term (like 3:1 underperformed). It shoots up when the soundness of fiat currency is doubted, so might be a good investment right now with unprecedented QE going on. But otherwise gold stagnates. And gold has the very significant disadvantage that it doesn't pay interest (unless you monetize and lend it, but that's a somewhat different operation). This is rather simplified and for laymen, but basically correct: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...-long-term.asp.

[Dockhead]

For those who believe in carrying significant amounts of cash or physical gold, this makes chilling reading:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/in...e-law-who-won/


It's not just banana republics where this kind of brazen theft takes place. LEO finds what seems to him to be a large amount of cash, which might be just a few thousand. By law and without proving or even asserting that the person carrying the cash has committed any crime, he has the right to seize it. All he has to do is to say that he suspected that the cash was somehow connected with some kind of criminal activity. The very fact itself of carrying more than a couple hundred bucks is often stated as the reason for the suspicion. LEO has strong incentive to seize whatever cash he finds, because his department can spend the seized money on whatever it wants, including bonuses for the officers. Gold is even more unusual and thus suspcious.


And that's in the U.S.!! Do you think it's any different, anywhere else? I don't think anywhere in the world, is it not considered an indicator of criminal activity, to be carrying a large amount of cash, and "large" may be a rather modest sum compared to month or few months of cruising expenses. I would fear customs agents and LEOs even more than criminals, I think, if for some reason I were carrying a lot of cash, which I would not.


If someone is just afraid of what can happen if some snafu of some kind makes his debit card not work (as opposed to some kind of irrational fear of the banking system in general), then I would suggest multiple redundant cards, maybe one of them in your boat safe or stored somewhere, from different banks and different countries. That's what I do. One or the other of them will always work. Add a mobile pay system (Google Pay, Apple Pay), and a Transferwise or Revolut account, and you're good to go and ready for anything. And you can get a multicurrency debt card from Transferwise or Revolut, too.


In Europe I don't carry cash at all. I normally don't have a single bill or coin in my pocket, and I think that's becoming pretty common. Nor do I insert my debit card into terminals or enter my PIN code anywhere. All my cards now, even my U.S. ones, are contactless, so all you have to do is wave the card at the terminal and you're done. This saves a lot of time which really adds up.


I'm not using mobile pay services much yet, although I have Google Pay, but this is the trending future. For that you don't need any card at all -- your phone communicates with the terminal by Bluetooth. I see younger people in Northern Europe using fewer and fewer cards and more and more mobile pay systems. Interestingly, China, of all places, has gone over almost entirely to mobile pay and is rapidly becoming a cashless society. 92% of people in Chinese cities use WeChat Pay -- amazing. https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/


This is a leap forward compared to cards -- you don't need anything physical at all other than a phone, just some phone. If you lose or break your phone, you just restore everything on a new phone -- takes a few minutes.


I think the time will come when cash is altogether abolished. It is an antiquated way to do payments. Sweden is already implementing a plan to eliminate physical cash, and ATM's are being dismantled. A sovereign digital currency, the e-Krona, is in testing. I think the whole world will go this way and pretty fast.

[Jdege]

Sweden is already implementing a plan to eliminate physical cash, and ATM's are being dismantled

The great advantage of a digital-only currency is that it allows the banks to impose a negative interest rate. The government can decide, for example, to just take a percent of two of everyone's balances, without the negative consequences of inflationary monetary policy.

Whether that is an advantage for the individual, now, is another question.

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

For those who believe in carrying significant amounts of cash or physical gold, this makes chilling reading:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/in...e-law-who-won/


It's not just banana republics where this kind of brazen theft takes place. LEO finds what seems to him to be a large amount of cash, which might be just a few thousand. By law and without proving or even asserting that the person carrying the cash has committed any crime, he has the right to seize it. All he has to do is to say that he suspected that the cash was somehow connected with some kind of criminal activity. The very fact itself of carrying more than a couple hundred bucks is often stated as the reason for the suspicion. LEO has strong incentive to seize whatever cash he finds, because his department can spend the seized money on whatever it wants, including bonuses for the officers. Gold is even more unusual and thus suspcious.


And that's in the U.S.!! Do you think it's any different, anywhere else? I don't think anywhere in the world, is it not considered an indicator of criminal activity, to be carrying a large amount of cash, and "large" may be a rather modest sum compared to month or few months of cruising expenses. I would fear customs agents and LEOs even more than criminals, I think, if for some reason I were carrying a lot of cash, which I would not.


If someone is just afraid of what can happen if some snafu of some kind makes his debit card not work (as opposed to some kind of irrational fear of the banking system in general), then I would suggest multiple redundant cards, maybe one of them in your boat safe or stored somewhere, from different banks and different countries. That's what I do. One or the other of them will always work. Add a mobile pay system (Google Pay, Apple Pay), and a Transferwise or Revolut account, and you're good to go and ready for anything. And you can get a multicurrency debt card from Transferwise or Revolut, too.


In Europe I don't carry cash at all. I normally don't have a single bill or coin in my pocket, and I think that's becoming pretty common. Nor do I insert my debit card into terminals or enter my PIN code anywhere. All my cards now, even my U.S. ones, are contactless, so all you have to do is wave the card at the terminal and you're done. This saves a lot of time which really adds up.


I'm not using mobile pay services much yet, although I have Google Pay, but this is the trending future. For that you don't need any card at all -- your phone communicates with the terminal by Bluetooth. I see younger people in Northern Europe using fewer and fewer cards and more and more mobile pay systems. Interestingly, China, of all places, has gone over almost entirely to mobile pay and is rapidly becoming a cashless society. 92% of people in Chinese cities use WeChat Pay -- amazing. https://daxueconsulting.com/payment-methods-in-china/


This is a leap forward compared to cards -- you don't need anything physical at all other than a phone, just some phone. If you lose or break your phone, you just restore everything on a new phone -- takes a few minutes.


I think the time will come when cash is altogether abolished. It is an antiquated way to do payments. Sweden is already implementing a plan to eliminate physical cash, and ATM's are being dismantled. A sovereign digital currency, the e-Krona, is in testing. I think the whole world will go this way and pretty fast.

The reason they are doing away with cash is about taxation and control. I'd like to see you pay out in the boonies with your Google Pay or whatever phone payment system one may have, so in the long run Gold and Silver may still have a place for currency, more so than today.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by UFO

The reason they are doing away with cash is about taxation and control. I'd like to see you pay out in the boonies with your Google Pay or whatever phone payment system one may have, so in the long run Gold and Silver may still have a place for currency, more so than today.

Exactly.

Plus negative interest, general forfeiture and seizure, a trace of everywhere you go and everything you do.

[rbk]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Exactly.

Plus negative interest, general forfeiture and seizure, a trace of everywhere you go and everything you do.

Or be required to have/hold a bank account. You can have and hold ‘funds’ with a $5 USB key and access with an internet connection. Worried you’ll lose your USB key? They come in three packs and you can copy your access keys and hide them anywhere.

[rbk]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Seriously?

Yes because you keep repeating the same bs and making assumptions.

[rbk]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Indeed. Gold has significantly underperformed the stock market over the long term (like 3:1 underperformed). It shoots up when the soundness of fiat currency is doubted, so might be a good investment right now with unprecedented QE going on. But otherwise gold stagnates. And gold has the very significant disadvantage that it doesn't pay interest (unless you monetize and lend it, but that's a somewhat different operation). This is rather simplified and for laymen, but basically correct: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/ans...-long-term.asp.

Absolutely agree...until the market takes a dive then gold tends to skyrocket*.It’s never been a long term investment, just a safe haven, has been for a long time. Don’t get me started on gold eft’s/future trading.

[Creedence]

Glad I popped my popcorn for this thread early on.

I particularly enjoy the vitriol thrown at folks who simply want to de-dollarize (de-fiat maybe?). The point should not be “why are you doing that?!”, the question to answer is, “why should I participate in your system?”... oh right, governments don’t care for me not participating. I should participate so that I can easily cross borders with a credit card or rely on bank transfers to fund my activities- because “trustworthy”... and robbers.

We’re wading into some very esoteric waters now, as this topic was sure to do, but cruisers by definition are not card carrying members of traditional financial media of exchange.

I see the question- what’s the deal with alternative currencies... and I see the response: use the banks because they carry no risk and are the best for transaction costs.

Yet we miss an opportunity - how can one effectively de-fiat themselves?

[rbk]

Originally Posted by Creedence

Glad I popped my popcorn for this thread early on.

I particularly enjoy the vitriol thrown at folks who simply want to de-dollarize (de-fiat maybe?). The point should not be “why are you doing that?!”, the question to answer is, “why should I participate in your system?”... oh right, governments don’t care for me not participating. I should participate so that I can easily cross borders with a credit card or rely on bank transfers to fund my activities- because “trustworthy”... and robbers.

We’re wading into some very esoteric waters now, as this topic was sure to do, but cruisers by definition are not card carrying members of traditional financial media of exchange.

I see the question- what’s the deal with alternative currencies... and I see the response: use the banks because they carry no risk and are the best for transaction costs.

Yet we miss an opportunity - how can one effectively de-fiat themselves?

Virtually impossible IMO.

But crypto and more importantly blockchain has a huge place in our future without a doubt.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by UFO

The reason they are doing away with cash is about taxation and control. I'd like to see you pay out in the boonies with your Google Pay or whatever phone payment system one may have, so in the long run Gold and Silver may still have a place for currency, more so than today.

If you want to evade taxes by avoiding the banking system, digital currencies will be far better than cash, far safer and more discreet. It's hard to get caught with digital currencies. Which is why the modern criminal now more and more is also giving up cash.

As to the boonies -- I've been to some pretty remote places and it's surprising where all you can find ATMs and use debit cards. Almost no place in Europe (except, curiously, Germany), even very remote parts of Europe like the Faroe Islands, do you need to ever have a single bill or coin on you. I do admit, however, to bringing a few thousand euros' worth of DKK to Greenland with me.

Germany is a weird exception where most marinas seem to require payment in cash and only in cash. Go figure.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

If you want to evade taxes by avoiding the banking system, digital currencies will be far better than cash, far safer and more discreet. It's hard to get caught with digital currencies. Which is why the modern criminal now more and more is also giving up cash.

As to the boonies -- I've been to some pretty remote places and it's surprising where all you can find ATMs and use debit cards. Almost no place in Europe (except, curiously, Germany), even very remote parts of Europe like the Faroe Islands, do you need to ever have a single bill or coin on you. I do admit, however, to bringing a few thousand euros' worth of DKK to Greenland with me.

Germany is a weird exception where most marinas seem to require payment in cash and only in cash. Go figure.

Existing outside the banking system is NOT tax evasion. Full stop.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Creedence

Glad I popped my popcorn for this thread early on.

I particularly enjoy the vitriol thrown at folks who simply want to de-dollarize (de-fiat maybe?). The point should not be “why are you doing that?!”, the question to answer is, “why should I participate in your system?”... oh right, governments don’t care for me not participating. I should participate so that I can easily cross borders with a credit card or rely on bank transfers to fund my activities- because “trustworthy”... and robbers.

We’re wading into some very esoteric waters now, as this topic was sure to do, but cruisers by definition are not card carrying members of traditional financial media of exchange.

I see the question- what’s the deal with alternative currencies... and I see the response: use the banks because they carry no risk and are the best for transaction costs.

Yet we miss an opportunity - how can one effectively de-fiat themselves?

To be fair, the banking system is not entirely risk-free. There are two main risks with banks -- the bank fails (and there's no deposit insurance), or you get in trouble over taxes or something else and the state freezes your accounts, or someone sues you and gets your accounts blocked. I have lost money both ways -- it happens.


But for most people, particularly honest people who pay their taxes (or avoid them legally ), those risks are vanishingly small compared to the very great risks of mucking around with physical cash or gold, not to mention the immense hassle, and the financial losses of the inefficient conversion of cash, and even more so gold, into local currencies.


"De-fiat" yourself?


Remember that there are two functions of currency and monetary instruments -- one is as a respository of value, and the other is as a medium of exchange.



You cannot "de-fiat" yourself out of the medium of exchange function. For that you simply must have local currency of the country you're in. The places where you will need to spend money who will accept anything else are vanishingly few. You can't get around local currency.


If however you are afraid of having your money in fiat currency and it suddenly loses its value, then that is a different question. I think that may be not even an unreasonable fear considering the amount of QE which is going on right now. The answer to that is to invest the money in inflation-resistent assets. Gold could be ok for that, but gold is a poor performing investment historically. If you are SURE that there is going to be a big blast of inflation and you are willing to bet the farm on it, then by all means -- gold does perform well in inflationary periods. But it's also quite volatile and so risky, so you might not want to put all your eggs in that one basket. Also I think you will not want to buy physical gold, but some gold equivalent security, or even a gold-backed cryptocurrency (just be really really careful how you store the key! ). It's always a good idea to diversify when you are trying to reduce risk, so you might think about some combination of inflation-resistent assets, certain stocks, but for God's sake no bonds. The best inflation-proof asset of all is mortgaged real estate, if the mortgage has a fixed rate. Inflation washes away the mortgage and raises rents. Great fortunes have been made this way. Get that fixed rate mortgage while you can, because rates are already going up, which I think is yet another sign of coming inflation.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by rbk

Yes because you keep repeating the same bs and making assumptions.

I beg to disagree. I posted good information based on considerable professional knowledge. If you disagree with something I said, engage the argument and say why, and make your own argument. If I turn out to have been wrong about something, which sometimes happen, I will thank you. But just calling something "bs" has zero weight, and is the sure sign of not understanding the subject oneself.