Quote from: countryfree on February 14, 2019, 08:33:05 PM

Who buys gold?
Central banks, Indians, rich Arabs. In Europe, gold is very, very regulated. In some countries, every transaction has to be declared, and sometimes, it's also taxed. It's a bit better in the US, but not by much. Gold also requires you to rent a deposit box at your bank, and it's hugely difficult to travel with. Shares or cryptocurrencies, which you can trade online, are a much smarter choice for the individual.

Your whole post is pretty much misinformation.

What do you mean by gold is well regulated in Europe? Some of the largest dealers are EU based such as the european mint, silver to go, goldsilver.be.

In the UK you can buy as little or as much as you want pretty much hassle free.

If you spend over £5k in one transaction or £10k a year with a single dealer you just give them a copy of I.D, this is not submitted to the authorities routinely but just filed away. If you dont wish to do this there are plenty of dealers out there to spread your buys around.

You can also import gold into the UK tax free.

Not every transaction has to be declared.
Gold is completely tax free to buy
Legal tender gold is capital gains tax free if you sell at a profit
Why do you have to rent a safety deposit box? $40k gold is the size of a smart phone, very easy to hide away safely.
Allocated gold can be traded as easily as crypto with services such as bullionvault or goldmoney.
Gold can be spent as easily as crypto with Glint
Gold is not difficult to travel with, you just have to declare over a certain value at customs. There are several members of a precious metals forum I am a member that often travel to europe and bring large volumes of gold and silver back.

Shares or cryptocurrencies serve different purposes to gold as they contain significantly more risk than physical gold (see my above post video link)

Quote from: Kopyleft on February 14, 2019, 07:39:40 PM

I do not know much about the gold-dollar relationship. But I'm interested in the maximum supply of gold. It is a finite resource and can get exhausted like most mineral resources.
Is there any duration period (or estimate) of when the total gold bars could be all mined globally, just as we have with bitcoins?
And how would exhaustion of the metal affect it's market value?

There is still plenty of gold out there to mine e.g. in sea water, deeper down but it comes down to how cost effective it is to mine. I think most of the low hanging fruit is already gone and with decreasing gold yields, increased energy, people and equipment costs the price will have to climb just to hit break even point.

I think in the not too distant future it will be more profitable to recover gold from e-waste rather than trying to dig it out of the ground.