Get Your Gold Out of Dodge With Bitcoin

From my time working at a walk in precious metals dealer one of the questions that I remember coming up with relative frequency is what do I do with the metals? How do I store it? Should I keep it at home or in a safety deposit box? These questions were, for the most part, easy to answer as you could present the customer with three quick options for their storage and let them decide which would be the best. On the other hand, the question that never came with a quick simple answer was always, “how do I get my gold out of the country?”

The presumably intentional vague regulation put out by U.S Customs reads like this;

“There is no duty on gold coins, medals or bullion but these items must be declared to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officer. Please note a FinCEN 105 form must be completed at the time of entry for monetary instruments over $10,000. This includes currency, ie. gold coins, valued over $10,000. The FINCEN definition of currency: The coin and paper money of the United States or any other country that is (1) designated as legal tender and that (2) circulates and (3) is customarily accepted as a medium of exchange in the country of issuance.”

As mentioned before, the regulation is conveniently vague because it does not say whether the $10,000 value will be assessed by the face value of the coin, in the case of the American Gold Eagle this would mean that every ounce of gold has the value of $50 USD, or the market value of the gold, being around $1565.00 currently. Either way it is not a value that you want to be assessed by the U.S’s elite and respected TSA force.

People even come up with rather ingenious ways to circumvent the system. I can remember one of my customers devising a plan to take a cruise ship down to a location that he was expatriating to because he said that customs inspections on cruise ships were not as thorough as they were by flight. Still other customers would talk about taking the gold out of the country in increments or to make the gold into jewelry so as to avoid the customs declaration.

All of these ideas are viable options but they remind me of various scenes from the movie Deer Hunter as all these options, if done enough, will lead to the same disastrous wealth confiscation by the proper authorities.

Ah but what about Bitcoin? The great thing about Bitcoin is, as of now, there are no foolish laws that tell you that you must declare them. More importantly there is no way of knowing that you had moved your mathematically encrypted digital files to another country or, were in the process of doing so.

There are large Bitcoin exchangers that you can sell your Bitcoin to and they will deposit money into your checking account or you may even receive a wire from a money sending company. The problem with services like these is there is a record of the payment. Money transactions should always only be between two parties. It is only in our mixed up, central banking, fiat money dominated world, that this reality has been skewed to the public.

But if I take my Bitcoin to another country how will I use it? Well Bitcoin is quickly becoming a form of payment all and in and of itself. More and more vendors are taking Bitcoin as a payment directly but for those that need to still have local currency for day to day living a simple search on localbitcoins.com will reveal where you my meet a local dealer in the country that you reside and sell your Bitcoin directly.

Of course Gold Silver Bitcoin recommends always having physical precious metals along with having Bitcoin. This allows for the maximum security in the preservation of your wealth.

The problem in answering the question a few years ago of “how do I get my gold out to the country?” is that there was not a good answer. That was when Bitcoin was still in its infancy and its potential was not clearly understood. Today however, it is the best option that one has for moving wealth out of whatever collapsing economy one may find they need to escape from without any form of declaration.

Originally Appeared at Gold Silver Bitcoin

2013-02-21 01:19:03

Source: http://silvervigilante.com/get-your-gold-out-of-dodge-with-bitcoin/