We are witnessing more signs of gold’s reassuming its place as money.
From Forbes, (bold emphasis mine)
China’s got the gold bug. Recently, the government allowed citizens to actually own gold bullion. And now, starting on Sept 23, Chinese people can buy gold bars directly from vending machines.
Gold has caught on like a wrong and oversold political narrative. Is this WMD, or is gold for real?
The China machines, made by German firm TG Gold Super Market, is the first of its kind there, but are already up and running in Las Vegas and Boca Rotan in the U.S., as well as Abu Dhabi, Germany, Spain and Italy. The ATMs dispense gold bars weighing up to 2.5 kilograms and work just like the normal ATMs. The machines can accept both cash and credit cards.
The cash-for-gold machines will be on trial at Beijing’s upscale night clubs and private banks during the initial period for security reasons.
I posted Germany’s first gold vending machine or ATMs in 2009 here.
With gold more accessible to the public, it won’t be long when the function of payment and settlement in the marketplace will include gold bars or coins. (That’s if governments won’t engage in gold confiscation)
In fact, Donald Trump may be setting a precedent on this.
Mr Trump recently accepted gold bars as payment for Security Deposit for property rentals.
From the Wall Street Journal,
On Thursday, the newest tenant in Donald Trump's 40 Wall Street, a 70-story skyscraper in Manhattan's Financial District, will hand Mr. Trump a security deposit worth about $176,000. No money will change hands—just three 32-ounce bars of gold, each about the size of a television remote control.
The occasion will mark the first time the Trump Organization has accepted 99.9% pure gold bullion, rather than cash, as a deposit on a commercial lease. The tenant, precious-metals dealer Apmex, will sign a 10-year lease for 40 Wall's 50th floor at a leasing rate of about $50 a square foot, according to Apmex Chief Executive Michael R. Haynes. The company is promoting the use of gold as a replacement for cash in some situations.
As the great Ludwig von Mises wrote, (bold emphasis mine)
Under the gold standard gold is money and money is gold. It is immaterial whether or not the laws assign legal tender quality only to gold coins minted by the government. What counts is that these coins really contain a fixed weight of gold and that every quantity of bullion can be transformed into coins. Under the gold standard the dollar and the pound sterling were merely names for a definite weight of gold, within very narrow margins precisely determined by the laws. We may call such a sort of money commodity money.
Sound money could be in the future as the current paper money based system self-destructs.
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