If you want recommendations or ratings, check http://www.gdcaonline.com/ and decide for yourself. This is an association that certifies providers.
I bought some Pecunix a few days ago and worked rather well. But your mileage may vary according to the currency provider and exchange provider.
Are you wanting to take physical posession of your gold/silver or wanting it stored for a time in your future? Buying and storing physical gold is not that difficult at all.
You can purchase it from as little as $50 USD which is 100% allocated silver. At these levels the premiums are relatively high but include 7 years insurance and storage at a rate of about 8-10% of each purchase. You can sell at anytime for a fee of around 1% or so? You would need to clarify that but funds are held in switzerland and you can have funds in your account in around 24 hours of sale. The issue I have with digital currency (apart from James Turks gold money) is that most paper based gold purchases are just that - paper promises. all the accredititaions in the world won’t help you if they don’t have the gold or silver they say they have. Accreditation didn’t help Citigroup or the worlds largest insurer AIG and it won’t help your mind if you can’t get your gold or silver.
I’d say GoldMoney is the safest bet, then Pecunix; but it’s a good idea to use multiple DGCs anyway.
Yes, GoldMoney has had more visibility than the rest. And they don’t require 3rd party exchange providers. But their accounts are more like savings accounts, rather than a payment tool, IIRC.
Thanks guys.
@ Matthew - I’m not sure if I’m after digital currency or physical gold/silver. Perhaps either/or, I’m really new to this and just want to backup my money while I still can. However, being able to actually use it (in small or convenient amounts) when the time comes is clearly a priority. I’d like to be able to buy food and clothing if/when the shit hits the proverbial fan!
@ Paul & Eduard - GoldMoney looks very interesting - thanks - and the tip to use more than one DGC sounds like a good one. I have heard not such great things about E-gold and similar e-currencies recently; you never know if one might be targetted by governments and if so exactly how resilient they are.
I’m just browisng through the Pecunix website and reading as much about them as I can - I must say on first glance it sounds like an impressive company, very secure etc and the website is actually quite useable (unlike, say E-gold or Liberty Dollar etc, yuck!)
What would you guys say to buying some physical gold/silver and some digital? Eduard you mentioned possible ‘legal issues’ when buying it, and ‘conformity’ issues upon re-sell - could you elaborate on this a little?
Thanks again,
Fingolfin [*]
PS - the only thing that worried me a bit about GoldMoney was this: “insured through a policy underwritten at Lloyd’s of London.” What does this mean and how exactly are Lloyds involved? Isn’t it risky to have anything ‘backed’ by banks right now?
I am in the exact same dilemma fingolfin. Please don’t consider my next comments to be any kind of endorsement for my part, since I have absolutely no experience in gold or silver investment.
Before reading all the replies to your original post I would have considered www.e-gold.com to be one of my picks. Not now however. Thus I end up with www.goldmoney.com and www.bullionvault.com. My first observation is that the spread on the goldmoney site is ~3.7% if you are not a member. In comparison it is ~0.8% for the Swiss vault on bullionvault and a little higher on the American while lower on the British. Thus if you only plan to hedge your wealth in gold it seems bullionvault it better in this regard. The downside is that you can’t buy silver. I must admit, that I haven’t checked storage fees yet, so goldmoney might win out in a comparison overall.
My idea at the moment is this: To buy a little amount of gold at bullionvault and a little amount of silver at goldmoney. Then when I’m familiar with both sites I will see which one to place an increasing amount of gold at. In any case it is always a good idea to spread it out. Also, you could consider having gold in both the UK and Switzerland for security reasons.
Just my 2 cents
Hey corpus delicti - thanks for the quick response. I am actually getting a little confused now about hidden fees and charges etc. From bullionvault.com; they say that you should watch out for these potential hidden fees:
spread cost, storage charge, fabrication charge, weight discount, currency conversion costs, roll-over dealing costs, futures/spread bet contango.
What… the… why does it have to be so confusing?!! What are the main things I should watch out for? GoldMoney and Pecunix fees are listed here, for example:
http://goldmoney.com/en/fees.php
https://www.pecunix.com/money.refined…ind.feestructure
Sigh will I have to spend an entire day comparing fees and charges for each e-currency provider? The Pecunix page doesn’t look too bad at first glance. Out of interest, corpus delicti, do you also also own physical gold etc?
I too think the whole business of different fees are confusing. That is why I plan to use at least two suppliers. So that I can find out along the way. However, to my knowledge, no one has lower spreads than bullionvault. It is explained here.
No, I don’t own any gold or silver at the moment. I’m just as unsure as you are about this, but if I do this it is simply to hedge some of my savings. I don’t actually “care” whether I can use it as a currency. The reason being that I live in Denmark. In my country no one talks about gold, we have no bullion dealers nor coin shops to my knowledge, no vaults and no gold exchange. Hence, if everything come crashing I wouldn’t be able to do much about it anyways (apart from buying goods as a madman every chance I get). With that said, I wouldn’t dare to buy bullion stored in the states (UK or Switzerland for me, no offence guys).
You should also take a look at this comparison table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_gold_currency#Providers
My main criteria of selection was disclosure of reserves. But don’t take Wikipedia’s word and check the sources.
Depends where they are. e-gold is in a particularly risky position, being based in the US. GoldMoney is based in Jersey - very low political risk - and Pecunix in New Zealand. Also look at Commerce Gold, based in SEA and either has or plans to have a system of physical locations where gold can be bailed/unbailed (unlike the others, they don’t use LBMA bars, which you can’t take out of a vault without much expense)
Lloyd’s of London isn’t a bank, it’s an insurance syndicate - insuring against the gold being stolen, etc.
Thanks for the info guys, I’ll keep you posted about my decision. I still have a few things to consider but I think my general plan is to split my investment between gold/silver and physical/digital and to use different companies etc.
Check out this article if you have 5 mins:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7657178.stm
Fin