Thursday 30 June 2016



The GoldMoney

 Revolution 

 

Free For All


 

 

  What if there was a way for 'We, The People' globally to acquire pure physical gold easily, cheaply and securely utilizing the power of the web. Well, GoldMoneys’ stated mission is to democratize global access to real physical gold for stable savings, and to make gold useful in transactions (from micro up) using the Internet or mobile phones, and at point of sales with a free MasterCard debit card.


Folks, it’s free to join, easy to fund in any amount, secure, offers the lowest price to buy/highest price to sell, actual allocated 99.95% plus pure physical deliverable gold, with 24/7 liquidity, a free MasterCard debit card for purchases, and all this with the lowest fees in the industry!

If that's not truly 


then I don't know what is.

 


“We are excited to unveil the GoldMoney platform, an architecture and technology that’s taken years of careful planning and execution, which now allows users to seamlessly use gold again as a store of value and medium for payments,” said co-founder and CEO Roy Sebag.

“As a global asset, gold is recognized in nearly every culture as a long-term protector of value, but has been a poor medium of exchange compared to the advances in money technology,” Sebag said. “We felt that gold needed the modernization and mobilization that’s now happening in the global payments revolution. We have built a financial services platform that is as close to being counterparty-free as possible, enabling economic transactions within the existing global financial system to be settled in full reserved gold bullion.”




Hello Everyone,

I'm sure you're wondering what in the world is 'The GoldMoney Revolution’, and how is it ‘free for all’, right? 

This looks to me to be important, (nothing is for sure about the future, of course) so giving good attention should be very worth your while. 

I feel strongly, as I hope you do also, that the current global financial system is monstrous, in that an impure, debt based ‘fiat’ system like the one we have necessarily encourages widespread over-indebtedness (essentially debt slavery) of the 'common' people, to the great financial advantage of the power elite. 

The key issue in this situation that is not well understood happens to involve GOLD at its centre, which is what we will be addressing here.



Background

For a system like our current one to function it needs the ‘debt based fiat' currency to be accepted, not just as a means of exchange, (which is the only true role of a currency), but also as the markets 'store of value' (SOV), which historically has been the role of gold. (a means of saving ‘value’ for longer term future use) To accomplish this the ‘elite’, through the misuse of gold paper derivatives (futures, gold certificates, hedges, etc), both suppresses and makes volatile the gold price. This destroys the critical trust that Gold will be able to hold its value over time, which a SOV needs to do. That effectively blocks gold from acting as the store of value, which opens that role up to ‘fiat’. (which is of course the whole point of the exercise)

Those same elite know this whole situation is a con job which greatly distorts natural market structures, and is therefore destined to eventually fail, so while they themselves hold plenty of gold secured quietly away in vaults and have their private banks (so called central banks) hold lots of gold as reserve assets, they at the same time discourage physical gold ownership for the common people, both with propaganda (it doesn't pay a dividend, is useless, etc) and physically by making sure it is not widely easy to acquire and outlawing its use as a means of exchange, while at the same time encouraging paper gold which they easily control (which also sets the physical gold price).

So what does this have to do with this GoldMoney, thing, you ask? Lets find out;

There have been a number of attempts to provide a net-based physical gold purchase, storage, and digital trading platform for the modern era, but none of them were really successful. They all had some major weakness; like they were kind of 'fly by night', or had clunky relatively expensive wire transfer account funding good only for large players, or didn’t provide for taking delivery, or that the gold delivery was only available in large quantities. And none of them provided a means to make point of sale consumer purchases. 

Well, folks, I’m happy to be able to say, (drum roll) - its finally arrived - I’m very pleased for you to meet:





“We are excited to unveil the GoldMoney
platform, an architecture and technology that’s taken years of careful planning and execution, which now allows users to seamlessly use gold again as a store of value and medium for payments.”
 Co-founder and CEO Roy Sebag








- Well financed? - check

- Strongly backed? - check

- Publicly traded transparent company? - check 

- Officially registered Canadian precious metals dealer? - check

- Pure allocated physical gold? - check

- Secure? - check

- No counter party/bail-in risk? - check

- Free and easy online account setup? - check

- Lowest fees? - check

- Free gold storage? - check

- Multiple act. funding options (bank/Interact/credit/debit cards etc)? - check

- Multiple free international insured gold storage locations? - check

- Buy/sell/send any amount of gold with 24/7 liquidity? - check

- Deliverable pure physical gold in small or large amounts? - check

- Free debit card for global point of sale transactions? - check 

- No currency conversion fees? - check

- Frequent physical gold audit by major accounting firm? - check

- Make and receive instant payments of any size? - check 

- Free Affiliate program available? - check







QUICK GoldMoney FACTS:

- GoldMoney is a very secure, officially certified, Canadian government regulated, digitally based, precious metals dealer and financial platform where your money is denominated in physical gold. It’s like any other bank account in that you can deposit money that is converted at the current rate for gold, and you can spend it in any currency or transfer/take delivery of it as gold. 

- GoldMoney is not some fly by night operation. It is a strongly funded and backed (Soros, Sprott, Sandstorm, Dundee, Clarus etc) publicly traded company.


- GoldMoney is not a pseudo, cloud, or crypto currency. It is real, allocated physical 99.95% + pure gold securely stored, individually allocated and reserved in your name, in insured Brink’s vault depositories located at your choice in Zurich, Hong Kong, London, Singapore, Toronto or Dubai. It is 100% insured.

- The gold belongs to you. GoldMoney does not re-hypothecate, hedge or otherwise pledge your gold for any reason at any time. It’s your gold, period.

- You can think of GoldMoney as like PayPal but denominated in grams of gold. You can transfer or receive gold with any other BitGold user. You can spend it in local currency anywhere with a free MasterCard debit card.

- Due to American financial regulations, GoldMoney cannot be used for transactions by US residents. (but they can buy/sell/take delivery)

- GoldMoney is issuing free MasterCard debit cards for account holders. 

- GoldMoney offers the most competitive rates in the industry for buying and selling gold (new 0.5%), and is the only platform that allows users to purchase point of sale merchandise from their gold account (free debit card) wherever credit/debit cards are accepted. (not available in USA due to anti gold regulations)

- GoldMoney maintains a stock of gold in their own account. When an account holder wants to buy or sell gold, they buy from or sell it to GoldMoney at the current official spot price of gold. GoldMoney charges a very low 0.5% fee for either buying or selling gold or receiving payments. That’s how they make their money. GoldMoney doesn’t charge anything for sending/receiving from one account holder to another or for storage.  For the account holder GoldMoney offers the lowest price available anywhere to buy gold, and the highest price to sell gold with 24/7 liquidity.

- GoldMoney account holders may deposit money into their account via Bank Wire transfers, bank account, credit or debit cards, China UnionPay, Interac or SEPA. Accounts offer the highest military grade security. The gold is purchased with U.S. dollars (because that’s how physical gold is traded globally) but note that GoldMoney charges no currency conversion fees. 

- The company’s financial statements and stored gold are regularly audited by major international accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers.

- GoldMoney account holders may sell gold and transfer money back out of their account at any time based on the current price of gold. Should account holders want physical gold, they can take delivery in either 10-gram cubes or 1-kilo bars. There is a small, about $25 CAD, redemption for either the 10-gram cubes or 1-kilo bars (plus shipping fee for cubes only).
             
- GoldMoney has no counter party/bail-in risk. You own the gold. It’s yours. Every gram of gold in your account is your property: fully reserved, allocated, and redeemable under Bailment Law in Canada as per the Customer Agreement.

- There are no gold bullion storage or insurance fees. (zip/zilch/nada)

- The only fees for physical delivery are the $25 CAD redemption fee (plus shipping for gold cubes).

- GoldMoney is not a securities dealer or financial institution. It is a registered precious metals dealer and provides many valuable advantages/services available nowhere else, at very low cost. When the banking system crashes, your gold is safe. No bail-in is possible and there is No counter-party risk.

- The safest way to own gold is to hold it in your hands. GoldMoney is the second safest way to own gold.

- Governments around the world have declared a war on cash. With GoldMoney you have the benefit of having access to your money in the form of gold. You effectively have cash without having cash. Very cool.



I feel certain that GoldMoneys’ unique and valuable service is going to be very successful.

 Why would anyone who learns about GoldMoney not sign up? After all, it’s free to join, easy to fund in any amount, completely secure, offers lowest prices to buy/highest price to sell/transfer actual allocated 99.95% + pure physical deliverable gold, 24/7 liquidity, and all this with the lowest fees in the industry! 

Meet the ‘new Paypal’, folks. 
  

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Monday 27 June 2016

More GoldMoney


GoldMoney OVERVIEW



A new public company called GoldMoney has launched an international net based software digital payments platform that connects personally allocated and insured physical gold stored in real-world secure, insured vaults with online payment networks, and soon a free debit card for global point of sale purchases. 
GoldMoney is a TSE-V (xau.v) listed Canadian corporation with offices in Toronto and Milan. It offers a global network of secure vaults for gold storage, operated in partnership with The Brink’s Company, a global leader in security-related services for banks, retailers and a variety of other commercial and governmental customers. Users have multiple choices where in the world they want their gold physically stored. 
The company’s financial statements and stored gold are regularly audited by Price Waterhouse Coopers. GoldMoneys' stated mission is to democratize global access to real physical gold for stable savings, and to make gold useful in transactions (from micro up) using the Internet or mobile phones and soon at point of sales with a free debit card.

ACCOUNTS

Customers can fund their accounts with local-currency by bank account, debit card, SWIFT, Visa, MasterCard, Interac, SEPA, UnionPay, Discover, American Express and others, even including Bitcoin, and also using a network of ATMs.

New users are provided with an easy to use, secure vault account to;

  • purchase/sell/receive any amount of physical gold at current official spot price (plus 1% fee) globally 24/7,
  • the ability to make and receive instant payments, from micro on up, globally 24/7
  • a free debit card now available for normal purchases at traditional points of sale in local currency,
  • provided choices for free international secure, insured vault storage provided by Brinks
  • importantly, users can even take delivery of physical gold at any time (nominal $25 redemption fee. Shipping fees apply for 10 gram cubes, free for 1000 gram bars)
  • gold can be delivered in 10 gram cubes, 1000 gram bars, and even by the ton (for the biggies - you know who you are)



GENERAL
GoldMoney is now partially available to U.S. residents.

Though GoldMoney emphasizes that it is not a crypto currency,  there are some similarities. The GoldMoney platform allows for the quick settlement of gold trades so that a users gold is easily acquired and accessible across various payment networks such as bank account, debit card, SWIFT, Visa, MasterCard, Interac, SEPA, UnionPay, Discover, American Express and others, even including Bitcoin. 
The GoldMoney payment fees for buying, selling physical gold and receiving payments, at 1%, are lower than other alternatives. Sending payments and all gold storage are free. Thus, GoldMoney provides some of the advantages of Bitcoin payments – faster and cheaper digital cross-border transactions – combined with the advantages of physical gold as a store of value, and could be seen as a ‘Paypal like’ system for gold. 
The GoldMoney website states that the company views its gold transactions as a modern secure payments option for a world that is increasingly digital, and it has implemented high security features to protect users’ accounts and identities, such as commercial grade vaults secured by Brinks, full insurance with Lloyds of London against theft or loss, military-grade encryption (RSA 4096 and AES256) to secure users’ accounts and personal information, and bank level multi-factor authentication measures.
GoldMoney offers the most competitive rates in the industry for buying and selling gold, and is the only platform that allows users to purchase point of sale merchandise from their gold account (free debit card) wherever credit/debit cards are accepted.




From the GoldMoney website:

9. WHAT IS A BAILMENT?
9.1
A "bailment" occurs when a person (the "bailor") delivers personal property into the possession of another person (the "bailee") for safekeeping but retains legal title to the property. The bailee (the person who has possession of the goods) holds possession of the property on the understanding that the property will be returned to the bailor (you) once the bailment relationship is terminated according to the bailor's (your) instructions.
9.2
In the case of your BitGold account, the gold in your account is held by BitGold as bailee, which means that you retain legal title to your gold but that you have asked BitGold to maintain possession of your gold on your behalf until such time as you redeem your gold.
9.3
Since you retain legal title to your gold, if, due to unforeseen circumstances, BitGold were to become insolvent or bankrupt, the insolvency or bankruptcy of BitGold would not affect your property rights with regard to your gold in a BitGold account.


What’s not to like here, folks? Why would anyone with a heart beat who learns about GoldMoney not sign up? After all, it’s Free to join, easy to fund in any amount, secure, offers the lowest price to buy/highest price to sell actual allocated 99.95% + pure physical deliverable gold, with 24/7 liquidity, a free debit card for purchases, and all this with the lowest fees in the industry!






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Wednesday 15 June 2016

FOR INVESTORS





If you ask me, (hey I know you didn’t but I’ll tell you anyway since it’s my site ha ha, and I expound on my reasons below) it is my firm contention that GoldMoney offers investors a very low risk, very high potential return on share purchases.

What follows is why I feel confident saying that:


- GoldMoney is a new, well financed, debt free, strongly backed publicly traded Canadian company.   TSX - (XAU)


- You have to admire the founders. They could easily have listed GoldMoney years ago as an ‘if, maybe, could, should, eventually, forward looking statements’ type of speculation, but they waited until they had all the duckies lined up and quacking before launching the stock. I’m sure co-founder and CEO Roy Sebag risked millions of his own money setting everything up. And he’s the biggest investor with 51% of the shares. (is he a future billionaire?) GoldMoney is a happening open for business going concern as we speak! 

- The necessary substantial investment in people, structure, security, digital platform, proprietary patent pending trading software, secure gold vaulting/shipping/auditing contracts, multiple account funding financial linkages, etc etc has already taken place and been funded. So that has already been de-risked. And remember, some of these issues were too difficult to solve for others who tried this.

- The structure and platform, carefully developed over many years, as I see it is very well designed to facilitate a virtually unlimited number of customer accounts globally. It enjoys all the benefits of net based businesses that made success so huge and fast (Amazon, Google, EBay, PayPal etc) It is very scale-able (easily expandable to meet demand). Every new customer is less expensive to support than those that joined earlier. Along with its many other positive attributes adding value, the low fee structure and no minimums or maximums for account funding/gold purchases means to me that it should have a very wide appeal. 

- In this age of global economic and financial crisis/uncertainty, with bank account bail-ins (realized and potential) and high counter party risks, it seems rather likely that the unique, inexpensive and high quality service offered by GoldMoney will be in big and growing demand, not so?

- Anyone who can/has opened a bank account will be easily able to open and fund a GoldMoney account. 

- GoldMoney is available globally (except sanctioned countries).

- MasterCard Debitcard now available (free)

- Thinking just of China, for example, (whose citizens are strong physical gold advocates and where gold export is forbidden), how many Chinese citizens will be interested in having access to a free GoldMoney account with low fees funded easily through China UnionPay, facilitating holding gold outside the country (secure, deliverable and spendable anywhere on the planet)? Many many millions, in my estimation. Not to mention Indians, Asians, Japanese, Europeans, and everyone else. (Note that PayPal, with many similarities to GoldMoney, has hundreds of millions of accounts!)

- As I’ve said before, what’s not to like here, folks? Why would anyone with a heart beat who learns about GoldMoney NOT sign up? After all, it’s free to join, easy to fund in any amount, secure, offers the lowest price to buy/highest price to sell actual allocated 99.95% + pure physical deliverable gold, with 24/7 liquidity, a free MasterCard debit card for purchases, and all this with the lowest fees in the industry! Now I feel I’m far from naive, so I don’t underestimate the limitations of the common man, which means many will fail to see the major advantages of opening a GoldMoney account, (let alone buy the shares) but at the same time you must admit that given the obvious tremendous value here, many many will.

- The free optional affiliate program is icing on the cake. It helps ensure a more rapid growth. (Affiliates earn gold from GoldMoney for each referral that opens an account.) Already I have come across 3 separate articles on GoldMoney, and I wasn’t even looking. Not to mention banners. And that’s after only 2 weeks since the startup! So word will quickly spread.

- Remember GoldMoney has no real effective competition in their field. Amazing when you think about it, really. It doesn’t seem possible, but that’s the undeniable fact of the matter. They have simply found a way around the barriers, where others failed.


POTENTIAL
So what realistically is the potential here, you may ask. I did a really quick, back of the envelope guesstimate. (do your own due diligence) Here is my Guess: Average annual turnover for every customer - I come out with a possible average of $100/yr in fees. (Note, thats the average - some will be more/much more and some less) Now that’s maybe not unrealistic, given that PayPal is said to be worth $80 per customer, and if you ask me the average GoldMoney customer could easily do more than the average PayPal customer. So for each 1 million customers, GoldMoney might be worth 100 million dollars (or even conceivably more). Divide that by say 40 million shares and you get $2.50/share x how many million customers you think GoldMoney could deliver over a reasonable time?

Remember PayPal quite quickly generated umpteen million and now has hundreds of millions! I just found out that GoldMoney signed up 10,000 accounts in the first week (4x more than hoped for) And that’s with no advertising and not much time for affiliate promotion, Get the picture? Lots and lots of realistic potential.

ACCOUNTS UPDATE

 Sept 15 - 170,000 acts

Dec 15 - over 500,000

Mar 16 - over 800,000 and $1.7 Billion Gold in accounts

 Jun 16 - over 1,000,000 

Sept 16 - over 1,250,000

And remember China! That alone is a company maker, isn’t it. ha ha ha


CONCLUSION

IMHO, this is an amazing opportunity, as both a GoldMoney customer and investor. GoldMoney is the right product at the right time at a great price, no? Is there some theoretical risk? Maybe, but likely only very short term. Price should only trend higher over time as the customer base builds and the word gets out. It’s surely not a matter of whether GoldMoney will be a success, the only real question is how big? To me, investing in shares of this company is a no brainer. It’s like getting a tiny piece of gold every time a GoldMoney account holder makes a transaction, in perpetuity! And in the case of a financial fiat ‘Reset’, it only gets many multiples better, doesn’t it?

PS: All this should happen with the gold price somewhere around here (which at $1200/oz is about the average mining all in cost of production, which should provide a floor for anything but a short term panic fall) What happens if gold should happen to rally strongly? Not to mention the 'reset', hey!




Note: I’m not a financial/investment advisor. I’m a speculator who believes in physical gold in personal possession and owns GoldMoney shares. Do your own due diligence. 

Sincerely;

Don


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Monday 13 June 2016

A Quick Look At Why GOLD and Why NOW?


 




Last (but maybe not least) a short piece on Gold. For the deepest, most thorough exposition I have found, (and believe me I’ve looked) on ‘why gold, and why now’ I can most highly recommend THIS post and also be sure to check the whole site out. Beautiful. But that will take a while, as it is rather long. For here and now, try this. 

Nearly everyone, most quite erroneously, think they know about gold, or at least enough. (It’s an expensive precious shiny metal, used for jewellery and collected as coins by enthusiasts and ‘gold nuts’, the wealthy have some as diversification, in the olden days gold coins were used as currency, the price increased a lot for a while but lately not so much. You can invest in risky gold mining shares.) Like that, right? What more could anyone possibly need to know? It’s just rare shiny metal.

As BitGold points out here;  Why Gold?, physical gold has, because of it’s many properties; (rare, robust [inert], divisible, fungible, hoardable [as not used for much], hard to imitate, of known quantity, widely held, used by the wealthy/central banks as a reserve asset, etc etc) throughout all known history has perfectly provided society a long term store of value (SOV). In doing so it has supported and promoted trust and cooperation between people to the advantage of all. Very few people outside of high finance realize the importance to society of a perfect SOV. All advanced societies need something into which savings can be safely kept and maintained over long timeframes, don’t they? Both for each generations old age and, for the wealthy even into future generations. Although other things also are used in that role, like land, antiques, art, etc none but gold have all the qualities necessary to do so perfectly. Fulfilling this critical role, along with its being quite rare and therefore needing a great deal of energy to find, mine, process, and distribute, has meant that gold possesses a high value for society and has been priced accordingly.

Now we come to the modern ‘debt based fiat’ era and its associated problems, both economic and financial. In a nutshell, I can say that the main issue is that an impure debt based ‘fiat’ system like the one we have (one that suppresses and makes volatile the gold price and through the misuse of gold paper derivatives blocks gold acting properly as a store of value) engenders instability by both widespread over-indebtedness and mis-pricing of real assets (real estate, stock, bond, art, antiques and collectable bubbles, anyone). This leads to many highly problematic systemically threatening crisis. 

The key issue in this situation that is not well understood happens to involve Gold at its centre. For something to be able to act well as a long term SOV it necessarily needs to have its value be stable and at the same time be responsive to destabilizing events. The main conditions necessary to accomplish that have been found to be twofold - that it be widely held and also freely traded in its physical form. 

Now we get to the tricky part, so please pay especially close attention. Although physical gold is generally traded freely most everywhere, a process has developed gradually over fairly recent times which enables those who most profit from the debt based fiat system to subvert gold from playing its role as the SOV. That process, gradually increasing in scope over recent centuries, has really been perfected in the last 50 or so years.

To explain this properly would take too long here (that's why I gave the link to the FOFOA site above ) but suffice to say that the current ability to trade non physical (paper) gold in the futures market without full physical backing (selling short without needing to hold physical gold), creates both price suppression and price volatility. And that in turn destroys golds ability to act as what it historically has been, a perfect SOV, because those two factors impair the necessary ‘trust factor’ needed by a store of value. This is by evil design, BTW, because what this then supports and encourages is that ‘fiat’ currency takes on the role of the ‘store of value’ (and falsely gains thereby) which it should not, because, unlike gold, it doesn’t possess all the properties necessary to fulfill that role properly, and will eventually fail. The bottom line is that because of this manipulated and distorted false fiat financial setup, we have a very problematic unstable global economic/financial system which is doomed to catastrophic failure sooner or later (soon now IMHO). 

Any time you have widespread long-term ‘interference’ in natural free human exchange/trade (usually effected through government edict/laws/regulations) what is engendered is mis-pricing market distortion (assets become either grossly over or under valued). This happens to allow for those few who recognize the opportunity created, to position themselves properly to profit (sometimes greatly) when the fundamental natural market process reasserts itself, as it always does eventually. This time when that happens (called by some the ‘Reset’) GOLD, whose price has been long and greatly suppressed because, as we just briefly described, it has been prevented from exercising its historically proven role as global store of value ‘par excellence’, will suddenly be ‘repriced’ in the marketplace to its natural real value, which is MUCH MUCH HIGHER, as it regains its true value operating as societies main SOV. 

(BTW, knowing this is why the power elite, both individually and collectively through central bank gold reserve holdings, always keep lots of physical gold safely and quietly stored away for themselves) 

If this short exposition happens to indeed be in fact true, it means that anyone with the power of correct knowledge and the foresight to properly position themselves (by accumulating physical gold at the suppressed price), will benefit greatly after the system ‘resets’ to its real/natural free trading condition. This is destined to happen at some point because natural market forces cannot be suppressed forever. That’s my strongly held perspective and I am positioned accordingly, and will remain so. Folks, for the little guy, opportunity like this knocks rarely. 

As I said to a friend when discussing, “If there were ever advantageous times to own gold, this surely one of the best”. Full stop.

That about covers it, I think? Good enough for me, anyway! Go Gold! Go BitGold!




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Monday 28 March 2016

WHY GOLD IS GOING TO 50x - 100x AFTER THE COMING "RESET"




I feel quite confident that after the current financial debt based fiat system collapses (not too long now IMO) and they 'reset' to a new system, Gold is going up 50x to 100x in todays purchasing power, (not hyper-inflated toilet paper). The basic reason is that all the fiat currency currently allocated to the store of value (SOV) globally will instantly migrate to the new SOV, that will be gold. This is the reason that some CB's (like Russia and China) are buying all the gold in size they can get. (BTW - there is a strong rumour that they are paying $30,000/oz for it, wonder why, hey) and why to get into the EURO all countries need(ed) 15% of their reserves in physical Gold.

That's not to say it will be that easy, people, it never is easy for us small fry, is it. The strong gold hands will be working hard to get your physical on 'this side of the Reset'. IMO they will do that by ramping the paper gold price first possibly hard down, and certainly hard up to maybe Rickards $10,000/oz on the way to hyper-inflation. Only those strong hands (with deep knowledge, not necessarily deep pockets) will be able to withstand that and keep their gold to the 'other side'.

Never forget that the fiat currency you will be paid for your gold 'on this side' of the reset will be soon hyper-inflated to worthlessness, so in effect you will be giving your precious gold away if you sell it for current debt based fiat, whether it is for $5000 or $10,000 or any other number you can imagine. You will know hyper-inflation is baked into the cake, (if you don't know it already) when 'helicopter money' (which THEY are discussing already) starts anywhere. THEY will have to try it because THEY need consumption to greatly increase in order to save the deflating economy due to 'peak debt' saturation. That's the reason that all the 'printed trillions' hasn't caused the needed 'growth' and prevented the ongoing deflation.

People, i'm not saying/predicting the end of the world, ok - just the end of this current global fiat debt based system. It's end is guaranteed due to a fatal flaw (which BTW has caused ALL PRIOR FIAT SYSTEMS to collapse in the same way this iteration will - hyper-inflation). I'm sure you are all dying to know what that flaw is, aren't you? That flaw is simply this: that because all fiat currencies are now debt based, meaning that they are borrowed into existence at interest (and are therefore the issuing CB's liability), the growth required (because it is essentially a ponzie scheme) and also in order to pay the accruing interest payments on all prior issuance, means an ever growing debt balance until the 'magic' of compounding interest essentially eventually requires the debt to grow exponentially into a hyper-inflationary collapse event. This is mathematically certain, and the only question is how long before the said collapse (as explained - a feature not a glitch). By 'printing' what the real reason for doing that besides bailing out the banking system, was to extend the fiat timeline as long as possible, seen? BUT, and this is critical to understand, they could in so doing extend the timeline to collapse but NOT prevent its eventual hyper-inflationary collapse (because the compounding interest growth rate was slowed down but will still mathematically eventually grow to infinity).

The reason (there are reasons for everything, correct?) that the physical Gold price is both repressed and jerked around (by means of non backed paper gold derivatives) is to prevent it attaining to its true role, that of the global SOV, which the ponzie fiat currencies usurp, do you see that fact? They must prevent at all costs Gold attaining to the SOV role because if it did, it would very quickly blow up the fiat ponzie scheme. Gold is not hoarded by the Giants as they do (the Uber wealthy old money and their CBs) as an investment, but rather because they designed the fiat system and are therefore very well aware of the built in collapse feature I have just explained. They know (not a belief or supposition or guess) that they only thing that will survive and actually thrive said fiat collapse is physical Gold and real PRODUCTIVE assets (BTW like BitGold stock shares which are a fantastic investment under these circumstances)

It's my intention with these missives to help others deepen their knowledge to enable them to make the transition to the 'Reset' successfully. GOT GOLD?

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Friday 25 March 2016

SCHIFF vs SEBAG


Peter Schiff wrote a scathing denouncement of BitGold in an article. We reprint that article here and below it reprint a rebuttal from BitGold co-founder Roy Sebag. Peter makes many fine sounding points but please keep an open mind until you read Roy's thorough rebuttal.


This is an original commentary written by Peter Schiff for SchiffGold.

Gold is not only the world’s best performing asset so far in 2016, but it’s also off to its strongest annual start since 1980. A key difference is that 1980 was the end of a bull market, while this is the beginning of a new one. Actually, it’s the beginning of the second leg of a long-term bull market that began over 15 years ago, which I believe will be even more powerful than the first.
But today, I am warning potential gold buyers about another gold ripoff.
This case comes from a recent Canadian startup called BitGold, operated by GoldMoney Inc. One of the services BitGold provides is prepaid debit cards that customers can use to access gold purchased from and stored by the company. Now that is a great idea. The problem is that BitGold claims to be the first and only company in the world providing this service. The truth is there are several other companies offering gold-backed, prepaid debit cards, including my own company, Euro Pacific Bank, that first began offering them over three years before BitGold copied the concept. In fact, my bank even offers silver-backed prepaid debit cards, a service not currently provided by BitGold.
I find it hard to believe BitGold isn’t aware of existing prepaid gold-backed debit cards, but they have no problem marketing theirs as being the first and only one in the world. My guess, however, is their real intention is to deceive investors into purchasing the company’s over-priced stock. If investors think the company provides a unique service, they are more likely to overlook huge current losses. The hope is that by being the only company providing an innovative service that those losses will eventually turn into profits. But since BitGold does not have the first-mover advantage it claims and is not the only player in a market that I think will be even more competitive in the future than it is today, I do not believe BitGold’s business model will ever deliver the kind of profits investors expect.
However, one difference between BitGold and my bank is that while BitGold accepts American customers, my bank does not. So if you’re an American, and you like my idea of having gold that you can carry around in your wallet and spend using a pre-paid debit card, then BitGold is a viable alternative to my bank. But my concern is for those Americans who may fall victim to another marketing deception being perpetrated by BitGold.
BitGold claims that customers can redeem their gold in popular sovereign coins or reputable bars – the same coins and bars you can also buy from my company, SchiffGold. In addition, BitGold claims to be the lowest cost way to purchase these products. The truth is that BitGold is potentially the most costly way to buy these products. As such, if your ultimate goal is to take physical possession of sovereign gold coins or bars, BitGold is the last vendor you should consider buying from.
Let me explain why. BitGold’s claim that its customers can redeem their gold in sovereign coins or bars is grossly misleading. If you buy gold from BitGold, you are buying a fractional interest in larger bars that the company stores on behalf of all of its customers. If you want to take actual physical delivery of sovereign coins or smaller bars, legally you are not redeeming anything that you already own. What you have to do is sell your fractional interest in those large bars first, then use the proceeds to purchase sovereign coins or bars from a separate company that BitGold has partnered with. So this process is not a legal redemption of gold that BitGold has been storing for you, but a brand new purchase of gold coins or bars that you never owned, from a completely separate company! This distinction is huge, and BitGold seems to be going out of its way to conceal the implications from its customers.
To understand the true cost of buying through BitGold, consider the example of “redeeming” ten, one-ounce Canadian Gold Maple Leafs. Let’s assume the price of gold is $1,300 per ounce when it’s originally purchased, for a total cost of $13,000, but then rises to $2,000 per ounce by the time the customer wants to redeem it. The customer would have been charged a 1% fee of $130 when he first purchased his gold. Then he would pay another 1% fee to sell his gold. But since the price of gold has risen to $2,000, the 1% fee on the larger $20,000 value would have also risen to $200. BitGold also adds a “redemption fee” of 0.5 of a gram of gold, which in this case tacks on another $32. BitGold’s partner then charges an additional 2.2% for the purchase of the coins. So the total cost would be $802 over the initial spot price of gold, or 6.2% of the original purchase price (not even including the hefty shipping and insurance fees). By comparison, SchiffGold sells these coins for 3-4% above spot – typically with free shipping. So rather than being the lowest cost way to buy gold coins, BitGold is actually about twice as expensive as most of its competitors.
If BitGold were only twice as expensive as its competitors, it would not be that bad. But the ticking time bomb that BitGold is not disclosing is that when customers sell their gold on the BitGold platform to purchase sovereign coins or bars, the sale is a taxable event. This revelation is huge, and will add an enormous tax cost that will dwarf the already hefty markup charged by BitGold for selling you the physical bullion being redeemed.
The US government taxes any profits realized on gold sales at 28%, provided that your holding period is greater than a year. If it’s less than a year, the gain is taxed at the ordinary income tax rate that can be as high as 39.6%. On top of that, there is another 3.8% added for the Obamacare tax, bringing the total tax bill to 31.8% for long-term gains and 43.4% for short-term gains. But if you live in one of the 41 states that also imposes an income tax, you are looking at a combined tax rate closer to 40% or 50%, depending on your holding period!
Using the above example, assuming a holding period longer than a year, this tax bombshell adds approximately $280 per ounce to the cost of the purchase, for a total extra cost of $2,800 for 10 Maple Leafs, representing 22% of the original purchase price. So the true cost to buy from BitGold in this example is 28.2% (6.2% paid to Bitgold and its partner, and 22% paid to federal and state tax collectors), as opposed to the 3-4% cost to buy from their competitors, like SchiffGold. Now if you don’t have the extra $2,800 lying around to pay the tax when you “redeem” your coins, you would only be able to redeem 8.6 ounces of physical gold out of the 10 ounces you originally purchased. The other 1.4 ounces would have to be sold to pay your tax bill. Also, since $676 of the $802 charged by BitGold and its partner is not assessed until you buy your coins, if you did not set aside those funds, the total amount of gold you will actually be able to afford to redeem will be fewer than 8.3 ounces.
Of course, the higher the gold price rises, the bigger your tax bill grows, and the more of your gold will be surrendered to the taxman to pay it. Say you take delivery of your gold when its price has risen to $5,000 per ounce. Your tax bill at 40% on the ten ounces originally purchased when gold was selling at $1,300 per ounce rises to almost $15,000. That exceeds the $13,000 you originally paid for your entire purchase! If you don’t have the cash, you would only be able to redeem 7 ounces of gold out of the 10 you originally purchased. You would then need to sell 30% of your gold just to pay the taxes to redeem the other 70%. Of course, this assumes tax rates have not gone up. In an economy where gold is selling for $5,000 per ounce, and given the growing size of the national debt, my guess is that future income tax rates will be much higher than they are today.
In fact, if there is hyperinflation and tax rates also go up, and you try to “redeem” your gold from BitGold, there will be very little actual gold left to redeem. If the price of gold rises to $100,000 per ounce, and the tax rate also rises to 70% (maybe as a result of some kind of windfall profit tax on “evil gold speculators profiting while others suffer”), your tax bill would be almost $700,000. As such, you would only be able to redeem 3 ounces of gold from your original 10-ounce purchase. You end up paying 70% of your initial gold purchase in taxes, and your $700,000 tax bill is over 50 times higher than your original cost to buy your gold!
Now with true hyperinflation, the future price of gold could be much higher than that, and at one point in American history the top income tax rate was 90%. I agree that this is a worst-case scenario, but one of the reasons to buy and hold physical gold is protection against worst-case scenarios. But under a worst-case scenario, having gold stored at BitGold will be virtually identical to having no gold at all. So if you think the price of gold is going up, and you ultimately want physical delivery, buy your gold from SchiffGold and take delivery now. Don’t buy from BitGold expecting to take delivery later, as after taxes there may be very little gold left to deliver.


Roy Sebag Response to Peter Schiff’s Questions About BitGold
Since launching BitGold in May of 2015 with no users, no assets under custody, and just 16 employees in Toronto, we have grown to over 800,000 users, $1.7 Billion in gold and precious metals under custody (including the assets of GoldMoney which we acquired), and over 53 employees. We have raised close to $70 million in capital from leading institutional and high net worth investors and as far as I know, maintain a liquidity position and balance sheet which is substantially more robust than any private gold bullion storage provider, coin dealer, or investment firm. We took the unusual step of going public on the Toronto Stock Exchange for the sole purpose of providing quarterly transparency and best-class corporate governance, allowing our members to view our financial health as audited by a Big-Four Auditor (KPMG) and peruse in the commentary and discourse provided by an independent board, an audit committee, and accountable management with significant shareholdings. 

Of all these things though, the point I am most proud of is this one: through our company, hundreds of thousands of users that have never purchased gold before are opening accounts, and we believe that 50% or more of our customers had never bought physical gold before. 
They are opening accounts because: 
- Gold has never been so accessible and frictionless 
- The technology of our platform offers new use cases and utility 
- We promote a message of long term savings and utility, not a get rich quick or end of the world sales push.

In other words, our business has allowed the gold category to expand beyond its traditional market, a business based on technology, utility and hope, not the tired retail gold market full of fear and greed. That was always our mission, to empower people with democratic access to gold. We knew that the math behind why gold works as money would do the rest in time. As former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said: “The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own” 

 While we have been busy with the above we have, from time to time, received correspondence from members and shareholders with various hit pieces and attack blogs. My co-founder Josh Crumb and I have been attacked by BullionVault, Dominic Frisby, WeUseCoins, and a plethora of other incumbents or “thought leaders” within the gold space. 

 Each time I am forwarded one of these hit pieces, I find myself scratching my head. Having followed these companies and individuals for many years, I thought their motivations for entering the gold market were altruistic, a discovery of what was right vs. wrong which imbued in them a responsibility to share this timeless wisdom with others and help fuel a movement towards a more meritocratic monetary standard, one which measures the value of human labour and time transparently, equally and fairly. With the exception of the BullionVault piece, where they specifically targeted our financial integrity and attempted to incite fear in GoldMoney customers, I chose to remain quiet and not answer the others. I found my time was better used focusing on the business and enabling our users to derive the benefit and utility from our network over time. Recently, Peter Schiff posed some questions about BitGold with respect to the ultimate cost of redeeming gold coins via the platform. Over the last day I have seen an escalation in misinformation being spread about BitGold and I believe that gold ownership is already a widely misunderstood undertaking which should not be further complicated either by obfuscation, misrepresentation or miscalculation. The misinformation has been specifically targeted at scaring our customers, questioning the integrity of our business, and waging a “search content” war so that they can promote their own business or discredit ours when customers look for our rapidly growing business over the internet. The irony of course is that none of their businesses have ever been as well capitalized, more transparent through public filings, or have had more satisfied customers than our own 10 month old service. It is very clear that in a year or two they simply won’t matter, their fear mongering and hit pieces will be seen as dead wrong, just more road kill on the SEO super highway. 

Detailed Rebuttal to Peter Schiff’s Argument 
Peter Schiff lays out an argument founded on an inaccurate and incomplete understanding of our business. For the benefit of our customers, I will work through the arguments made by Peter Schiff. Our focus has always been on an internet-scale, mass market service. Much of our product and marketing strategies are modeled on businesses like PayPal, we’ve never been concerned with small scale competition in retail gold products as that has never been our target market. Mr. Schiff says that he doesn’t care about the “$50 account” because there is no profit in it, but that is exactly why we built the business the way we did, so we can reach the scale that every holding matters and we can democratize access to gold for everyone. Mr. Schiff starts out by saying that the BitGold Network and Platform allow ownership of gold in as little as .01 .9999 Fine Grams or $.04 Cents because the ownership of the physical property is a fractional share. This is Schiff’s first error. Had he spent the time to read through our Terms of Service or the Prospectus filed with the Toronto Stock Exchange relating to Aurum, our patented physical gold settlement system, he would note that while Aurum does in fact automatically make a market in increments of .01 grams, allowing gold to be used in day to day economic transactions, it also (and this is the key) automatically allocates “buckets” of physical bars to specific users as they reach the corresponding physical threshold. Most importantly, Aurum does this under a 100% pure gold accounting standard in line with LBMA guidelines. In other words, if one bar is .995 and the other is .9999 or .9995, Aurum is adjusting and reflecting your ownership on the BitGold platform as a physical interest in the pure gold content. This is critical for the reasons I will set out below. There are three physical thresholds: 

 Physical Threshold 1 = BitGold .9999 Fine 10 Gram Cube

 Physical Threshold 2 = LBMA/COMEX .995 1 KG Bullion Bar 

 Physical Threshold 3 = LBMA/COMEX .995 Good Delivery Bar (400 Tr. Oz) 

 As you begin your journey with the BitGold platform, you are working your way towards achieving allocated ownership towards one of these thresholds. 

 Let’s use an example where someone owns 8.5 Grams of gold. That person owns the physical property right over 8.5 pure grams of gold though in reality the specific bar will likely be a 1kg Bullion Bar at a specific vault of their choosing. But remember, we are talking about a physical property right and we are talking about gold, an element that can be easily physically divided into any increments. This is important under insolvency, where a 1kg bar could literally be divided into as many increments are required to satisfy each interest. Or, and this is important, for the purpose of exchange like for like gold interest. Let’s go back to the fellow with 8.5 Grams. He has now added more funds and has grown his balance to 10.5 grams. He now chooses to redeem in the first physical threshold of 10 grams. Aurum is exchanging his interest in 10 pure grams from a 1kg Bar into a physical 10 gram Cube leaving him with a 0.5 gram position in the 1kg Bar. The 10 gram cube is not a taxable event and is a redemption par excellence of his physical interest. Thus, Mr. Schiff’s analysis is incorrect as far as this use case is concerned. 

 Let us review another example. Now we will assume that a user builds a balance over time equating to 1,000 grams. At this stage, that user owns the entire 1kg bar which means he may redeem that entire 1kg bar and once again, this is not a sale, it’s a redemption of his physical interest. This example also holds true for larger balances. 

 The last example which I will mention is redemption into sovereign coins. Here, a user will elect to essentially sell their physical gold property in a specific bar or cube and use the proceeds to purchase a coin. There is obviously a tax event for jurisdictions that tax capital gains on fine bullion (not every jurisdiction does and it’s imperative that members consult their own legal and tax advice on this matter). And, aside from one’s views on the merits of capital gains taxes in general, what’s wrong with that? For someone that has benefited from the exposure to gold over time to choose to convert a portion of that gain (pre or after tax) into a totally new physical product, there will be other benefits derived. BitGold never claimed to offer the sale and storage of specific sovereign coins. We offer a gold payments and savings network. The service for converting your gold balance into a sovereign gold coin is akin to selling a blue house for a red house. You are no longer owning the same property right. An exchange has taken place. This misses the point though because in reality, nobody sits on a long-term balance of gold and then decides to cash into sovereign coins once they have achieved a massive gain. The logical thing to do would be to either sell gold and diversify into something else (you have already benefited from the gold gain) or, redeem into 10 gram cubes or 1kg bars if the objective is to redeem the physical interest. A conversion from our standard bars and cubes into a separate product is by definition, an indication by the member that there is a desire to own a specific something else and thus are willing to pay the additional fees and expenses associated with that desire. 

 I will go over this one last time using Mr. Schiff’s own math and example so it’s crystal clear: 

 Let’s assume Gold is trading at USD $1,300 a Troy Ounce or USD $41.8 per gram. You deposit USD $13,000 worth of gold representing 308 Grams after paying the 1% deposit fee. You are now the owner of property representing 308 grams of pure gold at a specific vault location. 

Time passes and the price of gold rises to USD $2,000 a Troy Ounce or USD $64.3 per gram. Your gold balance of 308 grams is now worth USD $19,807. You now decide to redeem your physical interest. Your choices are as follows: 

 1) Spend or convert the 308 Grams into something else at which case a capital gain event would likely be triggered meaning that only your gain of $6,807 would be taxed at whatever the law in your jurisdiction states. 

 2) Redeem your property in the form of 30 individual 10 Gram Cubes in which case 300 physical grams would be redeemed leaving you with 8 grams which could either be spent, or saved triggering no taxable event. 

 If members take the time to compare that all-in cost to any other alternative, they will immediately see the stark differences and cost savings achieved on the BitGold platform. Again, this is precisely why the market has overwhelmingly supported BitGold and what led to such a large influx of users. Remember, BitGold is not just about buying and selling gold. It’s about using the gold. With BitGold, you get free storage, free insurance for the entirety of the period you would own the gold. The most important use case though, would be your ability to use the gold by paying others in gold for good/services or earning gold through the platform by invoicing in gold for your time and labour. 

I don’t believe Mr. Schiff has spent enough time on our platform to understand the global attributes which make gold the perfect money. Mr. Schiff assumes that there is no economic benefit to be derived from maintaining a transactional gold balance and periodically spending that balance. If one fully comprehends that gold rises over time vs. fiat, why would one not want to ensure maximum exposure to gold vs. fiat while converting only limited amounts of gold over time in relation to the fiat. That, is what BitGold provides and we are in fact the first ones to have cracked the code. Let’s take a step back though, why is Schiff forgetting that not everyone on the planet has access to a currency which even temporarily gains vs. Gold such as the USD. A perusal of the below statistic from our latest research report shows that Gold priced in currencies relevant to 4 billion people, has been at or near an all-time high for 80% of the time over the last 40 years. That is likely why 80% of our members are outside of North America.


Here we show through proprietary research that the gold price, as measured in currencies other than USD, hovers at within 30% of its all-time high for nearly 84% of the time in currencies affecting 53% of the world’s population. Put differently, to 3.75 billion, gold is almost always the best currency to be using.

In summary, there are a plethora of use cases for utilizing gold as your foundational currency even when incorporating taxes on the long-term gains. The math works for the majority of the world’s population and that is what investors have been attracted to with respect to GoldMoney Inc.

 This brings me to my next point, criticism of the BitGold business model. 

 BitGold is a Gold Network Powering Gold Payments and Savings 

 If one spends time studying business case studies such as Paypal, Amazon, or even Costco, he would understand the concept of building long-term networks, moats and customer relationships by providing a lower cost service. He would understand the concept of embedded operating leverage which is why Mr. Market awards Amazon a $267bn valuation though the P/E Ratio is nearly 500. 

 Mr. Schiff also calls out our business model as being bad for shareholders, though to my knowledge he has never disclosed a long or short position in GoldMoney Inc., and has never sought information on our business model from management or any of the bank analysts which cover our stock professionally and independently. Mr. Schiff calls out customer acquisition strategy (bonuses and referrals), affiliate marketing, and covering the upfront costs of products like the prepaid card (just as a bank does with its onboarding products). Again, we are not modeling our business on one-off sales to unknown clients buying overpriced gold coins, but investing in long-term customer relationships. Our “loss” is not a loss on our business transactions, it is a customer acquisition investment so we can build out a global network scale, lowering the cost and increasing the utility of everyone on the network. 

 Mr. Schiff states that Paypal never lost money pursuing this strategy. The facts are quite different. As an early stage public company, according to their old S1 filings from 1999, PayPal lost over $200 million dollars just in the few years they were a standalone company before they were bought by Ebay. As a person involved in financial services, we would expect Mr. Schiff to understand these concepts unless his intent is simply to scare customers away from our business. 

 Though its been only 10 months and only $10 million has been spent to date, it should be obvious to any intelligent investor that the value of BitGold Corp. and the BitGold network is not found in the backward looking IFRS reported income statement which includes substantial non-cash items but rather, the forward looking customer lifetime value and network rents. What is the value our 800,000 members derive from our network? What is the economic utility? Is it higher or lower than last year? We no longer need to market to them, we no longer need to convince them to use the network. Once they trust us, once they derive benefit from the platform, their activity and thus our revenue grows. This has been demonstrated via empirical data and transaction velocity on the network. Mr. Schiff misses another obvious point. BitGold Corp. is just one half of GoldMoney Inc. which also owns the GoldMoney business, founded in 2001, which is very profitable. An analysis of our public financial statements shows that GoldMoney free cash flow helps to offset the growth capex at BitGold. This trend will continue even though it is entirely within our capabilities to reduce our marketing spend and increase our operating leverage if we so desire. Finally, there is no rush for us to do anything but focus on growth. GoldMoney Inc. has a net worth of over $100 million and cash and liquidity of nearly $70 million. At our most pessimistic burn rate, we can continue operating in the manner we are for two decades, yet even that conclusion omits the fact that our investor base is deep pocketed and well aligned with our mission for democratizing access to gold. Over the next year, we will continue to grow our offline efforts via TV commercials and even flagship branches in several key cities. We are not in this to generate high margins on the backs of our customers. We are in this to change the world.

  The increased attention we are generating, even if not always positive, is a necessary part of bringing gold back out of relative monetary obscurity in the mind of the public. Once the public realise that gold COULD be money again, they will begin to ask whether gold SHOULD be money again. Given that logic, the laws of physics and the lessons of history are all on our side, we are confident that the question, once asked, will answer itself in the affirmative. 
I won’t lie, Peter Schiff has had his moments. My favourite by far was his takedown of Occupy Wall Street Protests in 2008. Peter has the stamina and drive to evangelize the truth like no other. That is a very valuable and important quality. 

 Sincerely, 

 Roy Sebag 

 BitGold Corp. Founder 
GoldMoney Inc. Chief Executive Officer
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