<story><title>Costco gold bars are selling out within hours</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/costco-is-selling-gold-bars-and-they-are-selling-out-within-a-few-hours.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ArtTimeInvestor</author><text>Why do you think that people in Argentina are flocking to Dollar  and not to Bitcoin or Gold?&lt;p&gt;When I look at the search trends in Argentina, I see Bitcoin in a very volatile longterm uptrend, Gold in a longterm downtrend and the Dollar being constantly a distant third:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.de&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=gold,bitcoin,dollar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.de&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=go...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the 20 years which the Peso has been devaluing, Bitcoin has outpaced the others by far in terms of searches.&lt;p&gt;What other indicators could we look at to get a better picture?</text></item><item><author>e63f67dd-065b</author><text>You can see it happening right now in Argentina: the local currency is worthless, and people are flocking to ... US Dollars. Not gold, not bitcoins, but good old benjamins.&lt;p&gt;So gold isn&amp;#x27;t even a good inflation hedge: if you walked the streets of a failing economy (pick one: Argentina, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, there&amp;#x27;s plenty more) and tried to exchange gold for goods, you&amp;#x27;re not gonna get far (and will probably get mugged). You have to figure out how to convert that gold into something somebody will actually take, and that seems like the hard part.</text></item><item><author>ggm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price.&lt;p&gt;Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that&amp;#x27;s way way off market price.&lt;p&gt;So it&amp;#x27;s an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and demands huge upswing in gold price to pay off. And securing it at volume is a nightmare. Plus Costco wants to limit you to 2, and have a margin.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dh5</author><text>How are search trends the same as ownership of the currency?&lt;p&gt;Also in Argentina it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;dólar,&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;dollar&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.com&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=gold,bitcoin,dollar,d%C3%B3lar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.com&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=g...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Costco gold bars are selling out within hours</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/costco-is-selling-gold-bars-and-they-are-selling-out-within-a-few-hours.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ArtTimeInvestor</author><text>Why do you think that people in Argentina are flocking to Dollar  and not to Bitcoin or Gold?&lt;p&gt;When I look at the search trends in Argentina, I see Bitcoin in a very volatile longterm uptrend, Gold in a longterm downtrend and the Dollar being constantly a distant third:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.de&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=gold,bitcoin,dollar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;trends.google.de&amp;#x2F;trends&amp;#x2F;explore?date=all&amp;amp;geo=AR&amp;amp;q=go...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Over the 20 years which the Peso has been devaluing, Bitcoin has outpaced the others by far in terms of searches.&lt;p&gt;What other indicators could we look at to get a better picture?</text></item><item><author>e63f67dd-065b</author><text>You can see it happening right now in Argentina: the local currency is worthless, and people are flocking to ... US Dollars. Not gold, not bitcoins, but good old benjamins.&lt;p&gt;So gold isn&amp;#x27;t even a good inflation hedge: if you walked the streets of a failing economy (pick one: Argentina, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, there&amp;#x27;s plenty more) and tried to exchange gold for goods, you&amp;#x27;re not gonna get far (and will probably get mugged). You have to figure out how to convert that gold into something somebody will actually take, and that seems like the hard part.</text></item><item><author>ggm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price.&lt;p&gt;Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that&amp;#x27;s way way off market price.&lt;p&gt;So it&amp;#x27;s an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and demands huge upswing in gold price to pay off. And securing it at volume is a nightmare. Plus Costco wants to limit you to 2, and have a margin.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dep_b</author><text>People do have an interest in Bitcoin as it&amp;#x27;s the only way to do transfers abroad that really works. But typically they just hoard dollars. Bitcoin also fluctuated way more than dollars in the last few years, people that buy dollars are typically middle and higher class people that want to save money for their house, going on vacation and that kind of stuff. Risk avoiding people.&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of dollars, the one most people talk about is the &amp;quot;blue&amp;quot; (meaning black market). It trades for twice the official rate, but since you can also sell it at around that price it doesn&amp;#x27;t impact you that much when you&amp;#x27;re saving in it. It does hurt when you want to spend that money when for example traveling abroad.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dolarhoy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;dolarhoy.com&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>