Cash, the value be dammed. Im not trying to sell fucking gold. Im not a fucking merchant
If the gold is in an accepted standard form, such as krugerrands, you just need to find a precious metals dealer. If it’s just a pile of gold, then there’s a lot of hassle. I imagine ingots of the sort national gold reserves hold would be somewhere in between.
Shifting a large quantity of gold may require a non-optional explanation of its provenance, with “I woke up and it was just there” or “a genie gave it to me after I did an online quiz” not being adequate, and an inadequate explanation resulting in its forfeiture if not more serious legal hassles. With a large pile of gold and no good explanation, you may be reduced to smurfing small pieces of it to different dealers, moving around a lot and avoiding the attention that such a pile would inevitably draw.
People like Al Capone would have a few things to say about unverified sources of wealth in any form. Pretty sure if I show up at a car dealer with a briefcase of bills it’ll raise a few questions too.
Yet another way society is biased against the poor. A rich guy shows up with a briefcase full of money and nobody bats an eye, it’s just another day. A poor guy shows up with a briefcase full of money and then suddenly everyone starts asking questions, and if he doesn’t have good enough answers he might get thrown in jail.
What if I mowed a rich guy’s lawn and he gave me a really big tip? No, I don’t remember his name. No, I didn’t keep the address. It was over there somewhere, go that way, it’s the big house with the mown lawn. You’ll find it, just keep looking…
US law requires any cash transaction of $10,000 or more be reported to the IRS/Treasury Dept. to include the federal tax ID # of both parties/entities, and the deposit accounts involved.
Depends on the dealership, heh
Same would be required for 50M in cash not to mention Taxes.
Btw cash is 50M gold is ~90M
(And yes the “M” dose mean Monopoly money)
a large pile of gold
That depends as well. Gold in specimen and nugget form can be worth considerably more than its value by weight and there’s plenty out there chasing these. These are not hard to move at all.
But yeah, there can be difficulties trading it and it’s generally subject to taxes. Quite often you need to be licenced as at least a fossicker if you’re selling unrefined gold as a prospector.
That’s without the pain in the arse process of separating it from impurities.
I wonder if i should pick the option that is going to make someone else rich off their commission, or just cash?
You don’t think you’ll be investogated for a massive gold transaction?
You don’t sell the gold. You take 10x loans of gold’s worth and use it as collateral. Like banks and billionaires do. Well maybe 100x…
Besides, you never know when the FBI might show up.
I could see FBI showing up if you try to do something with 500 kg of dollar bills as well.
I’d choose gold. AFAIK most all money laundering rules deal with cash.
Even if a geine were to give you 500 tons of cash or gold, some governments may have a problem with that and choose to redistribute it.
Choosing gold makes the value much more liquid in my opinion.
Not to mention that gold doesn’t rot (unlike USD). In today’s economy gold is probably more value-dense (as in, a pound of gold is worth more than a pound of hundered-dollar bills).
Currencies also come and go but gold stays. If you’re thinking long-term, gold is the vastly better choice.
If that works for you, fine. Im sticking with cash. The government doesnt know I have it, they wont know to look for it. And it wont start rotting in my lifetime.
you can visit my local pawn shop, they give cash for gold
70m in gold pls
Okay, here’s your five dollars. Thank you for your business.
Depending where you are you might not be able to put a that amount of cash in your bank, although it’s easier to use.
O, very little would actually get deposited. But all my groceries and eating out and booze and lots of video games and hobbie shit will just get paid for in cash.
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Bills weigh 1g, and 1g of gold is >$100, so I’m going with gold.
Around $140/gram currently for those curious
So then, however disgusting the thought, if they do make the trump $250 bill then that would be the only case where taking the cash is the better deal (putting ease of use for gold vs bills aside)
WWII killed the 500 bill (that was gold-backed at the time) so now ppl have to smuggle gold.
for a little while, yah ;)
Reminds me, that we are sadly phasing out €500
You’d think it would be popular with the drug dealers, but I guess crypto maybe has taken its place.
So $70,000,000 in gold or $500,000 in dollars.
But the cash is more liquid. Selling $70M worth of gold is a hassle and would invite unwanted attention. $50M in cash you can spend right away.
$50M in cash you can spend right away.
Maybe the bank won’t be too curious, but the IRS will definitely notice.
Just pay taxes on $50M. Then you’re left with around $25-35M depending on how you report it.
And that’s more than enough to live comfortably on indefinitely
So only go with bills if they’re in denominations >$100. I guess this would work better with euros.
wolframalpha says the gold is worth about $22m more, but it’s a no-brainer. gimme the cash ($50m). the extra ‘value’ in the gold is not worth the extraordinary measures needed to deal with it.
I agree: you’d probably pawn the gold off to some billionaire for some nominal amount less than its face value. (Would the government let you as a private citizen just sell them like $70 million in gold?) I’m assuming this is legal and in-the-clear, and it doesn’t matter if we assume it was created out of thin air.
I say “less than” because the buyers know you probably lack connections and just want it gone ASAP so you’re not robbed or worse. Still, whatever percentage hit you take can’t be anywhere near the 40% difference between the cash and the gold, and you’d probably dump it so quick that the investment opportunity cost wouldn’t matter.
Edit: Although if we assumed this was secret but entirely legal (like I somehow had $50 million but nobody but the revenue service knew), then I could maybe stomach the $20 million loss in exchange for less attention. Still, you’d be drawing a lot of suspicion trying to get that 500 kg of $100 bills into an account (or multiple) before you get found out.
Yeah by my calc a 1kg of $100 bills is about 100K, but the kg of gold is roughly $140k-150K (I just checked and its $144K)
But then I’d have to sell the gold…
Too metric. Can I get that weight in cheeseburgers please?
Ok. 500 kg of dollars, 500kg of gold or 500kg of cheeseburgers. Which do You choose?
Precooked weight if that matters.
Are those Troy kilograms? 🤔
Gold would be given in troy ounces
I’ll accept troy cheeseburgers.
3000 in weight.
3500 in volume.But I would assume solid gold bald eagle egg metric is needed?
290.Perhaps three fiftieths (6%, atm) of a ballroom budget?
5 and a half hours worth of ammo for a vulcan gun?
It’s 500 gold bars about the size of an iPhone 6
What denomination are the bills and how much does each brick of gold weight? Cuz I mean, if the bills are high enough, like $5000s they might be worth more than the gold.
Edit: The weight of the money doesn’t matter as much as the denominaton here. A $1 bill weighs the same as a $500 bill, y’all. If gold is $145 per ounce, a 500kg pile of $500 or $1000 bills that weigh about 1 gram each is worth a lot more. If they are $1s, $5s, $10s, $20s, $50s or eveb $100s, take the gold. If they are $500s or higher, take the cash.
A US $1 weighs 1g according to a random website I found on the Internet. I tested and it’s close enough.
As of today 2026/06/02, a gram of gold is worth about $140 assuming it’s minted and the purity is known.
That honestly surprises me. It means that gold and bills (assuming c-bills) are within an order of magnitude of each other.
Worst case with bill denominations: half a million. Best case with bill denominations: 50 million dollars.
Worst case with gold: $140/g less 10% worst case for verification and bulk buy discounts. $120/g ballpark. $60 million. Best case with gold: ~$70 million dollars upper bound for known minted purity.
So gold has the highest potential return but also the highest overhead.
I’d probably go gold. Even if I lost 50% due to overhead, I’d be able to pay my mortgage and my brother’s student loans and for my mum to live in a nice place.
Honestly, any of them would be a life changing amount of money.
I didn’t do the math but concluded that gold was the better value but harder to handle.
70ish million for the gold, and 50 Million for the money.
a hundred dollar bill weighs a gram and is worth $100, a gram of gold is worth $145. However you’ll pay income tax on the gold profit when you sell to get your cash.
Thats why you borrow against it :)
Nah, I know a guy.
You can see they’re in 100s
But steel is heavier than feathers…
Only if you can live with you’ve done to those poor birds.
You do realize that if you take either the gold or the cash you’re still roughly a billion dollars away from being a billionaire? At $72m you still have about 93% of the way to go before you hit even one billion. Elon is currently somewhere north of $700bn.
I’m just pointing this out because many people don’t realize how excessively rich billionaires actually are. Many still seem to think we’re talking about cutting into people’s rainy day savings when we’re calling for billionaire’s fortunes to get taxed. FWIW, nobody earns that kind of money.
With all of the above said, if it is legit and comes with no strings attached, I will gladly take the ~$70m in gold (with approximately the dimensions of a microwave). Even if I have to pay taxes on it.
While gold does incur a conversion cost when putting it in a bank account, the same is true for a large amount of cash (especially when it is in a foreign currency). And gold has an intrinsic value which only increases over time. Thanks!
For context:
500kg cash in 100 USD bills (like on the picture) would be roughly 50.000.000 USD.
And 500kg of Gold would currently be 71,396,000 USD.
Is it 100 dollar bills? How much? Each weighs a gram. Gold is worth…145$ peer gram. So that means…gold will always be worth more, unless severely diluted.
Yeah, but what’s more liquid? I can take those 100s and pay most of my expenses in cash for the rest of my life.
If I take the gold bars, I would have to find a buyer or find a way to convert it into cash. I’m sure most people and places will have questions about how I got the gold bars.
It’s entirely plausible that the dollar could collapse to near worthless within our lifetimes. Inb4 Americans who think the world would be ending.
Bass boosted, reverb inshallah.
When you heat both sides up: one is liquid, the other is flammable.
Plus we may have a $250 bill coming soon to make the cash option even more attractive!
Homie flunked the pound of feathers riddle one too many times
Gold: ~$145,000/kg
Dollar bills = about $1,000/kg
For reference.
Edit: didn’t tap the image to see $100 bills. Add a couple zeros to the $/kg amount.
It’d be $100,000 because they’re $100 bills
This right here.
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The photograph in the post depicts $100 bills.
Ah, thank you. My bad. Didn’t tap the image.
Not to mention the value of gold is not tied to how stupid the US president happens to be at that moment.
It probably had an impact though. As in the more stupid, the higher the price of gold, when people divest from dollars.
A lot of this question really hinges around one question. What do I have to tell the government?
Do I get this as a prize? A gift? An inheritance? Income? Magical Genie appearance? Do I have to launder it? Am I going to get audited?
It’s a lot harder to explain bundles of cash. Remove any identifying marking on the gold and claim it as marine salvage.
Except I dont own a boat, scuba gear and cant provide a lick of evidence that its marine salvage if even the most basic question is asked.
Its a lot easier to gradually introduce cash into my life without generating a paper trail.
Lol what your local kroger doesnt take gold bullion for milk.
So rent a boat and scuba gear and putter around the coast of Florida for a few days.
Buying groceries with cash is nice and all, but you will never put a dent in that much money doing it that way.
A cube of gold weighing 509kgs would only be about 30cm on a side.
521 kg, no? (27L x 19.32 Kg/L)
I’d take either and be happy.
That runs Gabe’s yacht for about 6 months.
What, are you like a normal person or something?
(/s)
And now you nerdsniped me into finding the value density of a dollar bill, which is roughly 1 gram, which makes a kilogram of dollars be worth some $1000 USD. Which still pales in comparison to the value of a kilogram of gold by at least a factor of 40-to-1
So, i know the post says “us dollars” but if it was hundred dollar bills, then the best value goes back to the paper, doesn’t it?
I had forgotten that the US dollars didn’t require being in 1 USD bills. Yeah, using 100 USD bills could make the value better than gold’s, as long as it sells below $100,000 USD per kilogram
…Never mind, the kilogram of gold hasn’t been below $100K since at least last year: apmex.com/gold-price/1-kg-gold…
I’d probably take the cash since I don’t know how to turn gold bars into money. It’s never come up before!
Ez! Find your local CIA agent, exchange the gold for cocaine, go to you local financial district, exchange the cocaine for stocks, sell them immediately at double the price (that’s just how the market works when all are motivated by greed), pay capital gain taxes, cash out at a local bank that will charge you like 10% in fees (+10% for the local FBI agent that doesn’t want to believe), weight the money, it’s exactly 107 bald eagles.
What about… 500 kgs of Bitcoin?
What about 500 kgs of your momma!
Damn. Now that’s a lotta momma.
It’s just one if we’re talking about OPs.
