Any country that keeps gold in US or dollar reserves may end up looking very foolish. Sanctions and asset (financial and real) forfeitures coming soon to a country near you.

The simplest and easiest geopolitical strategy that is available to any country: switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels. Keep out of oil and natural gas. Keep out of dollar system. Any country can be immune to geopolitical drama, dollar shenanigans. Remember China has export restrictions on oil. When things get tough, most of the oil countries (with refining capacity to export) are going to have export restrictions. Thats the only way to deal with the mobs in their own country.

From: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KPq7jyQcemA

Richard Campbell: Politicians aren’t going to do things that aren’t popular, so we have to make these solutions popular for there to be a chance to build political will.

Richard Campbell: Corporations are inherently conservative, and power companies doubly so. Until there is a public groundswell demanding these changes, they won’t act. It’s up to us to make enough noise and show that these are good solutions worth pushing forward.

> switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels

You think other countries can't restrict those things? Restricting components related to those things will work just fine.

By the way, you can never switch completely to just renewables, it doesn't scale that well. They are simply too inefficient, unsecure, to "switch completely" in a country scale. Maybe just your house or some districts. You still need coal/gas/nuclear to maintain the power grid.

Oil is needed for many components inside stuff you mentioned. Oil is a must in military. If you want clean, abundant, cheap, secure energy, invest in nuclear.

Everything has tradeoffs. Diversify it.

Easiest. If that is the easiest way you see I am afraid to ask what the harder alternatives would be.

How is it hard? It's difficult to build electrical generation these days and not go renewables because they're so cheap and fast to deploy.

It's not a total solution, but market forces wise everything says "build solar and batteries with your money". Governments practically don't need to do anything for this to be the default.

Batteries don't solve the storage problem, but surely you know this.

China is pursuing the strategy you're describing, but there's a reason they're also building nuclear, they're increasing LNG infrastructure, they haven't phased out coal, and they've built a huge amount of oil storage.

Solar and wind can be part of that strategy but it's not so simple, otherwise people would do it

Bateries do solve storage problems. And yes, china energy strategy is based on wind and solar - their portion of China energy production is massively growing.

Because keeping your national gold reserves in a Mafia state run by a arbitrary kleptocratic elite is a very bad idea.

At this point international trust in the USA is at around the same level as trust in Iran and Russia .

China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.

> China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.

Is anyone storing their gold reserves in China except Cambodia?

> China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.

This can change quickly, as current management is less about comerce and more about "being the new Mao". If Russia can get Ukraine, USA can get Venezuela resources and threat Greenland, why wouldn't I get Taiwan?

Specifically because China has now opportunity to gain international trust. Also, their own advancements in semiconductor manufacturing make Taiwan less attractive of an asset.

and it's going to be like that for decades unless november there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.

I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them.

The change has to be sweeping. The current people in power doing crypto pump and dumps: Internet trolls posting rage-baiting AI slop as official government communications as like the FDA and the CDC, then betting on polymarket about who they're going to bomb, teenaged 4chan trolls ctrl+f'ing for keywords to cancel things like cancer research because it has a "woke word" like "diversity" in published medical literature, these should be structurally impossible from getting near power again. Don't ever forget this happened. There's no undo. Decades down the drain.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/halted-nih-clinic...

And the Wild threats to invade neighboring countries. Someone needs to do to America what America did to Venezuela.

But instead, these criminals get to keep their jobs and it goes completely unpunished. Seriously, felony is not the right term. It's way beyond that.

I suspect the people of Greenland won't ever trust Americans again.

This isn't just going to go away. You can't just undo what Orange Mussolini is doing, and it'll take far longer than a decade before anything like a trusting relationship can be reestablished.

Not just Greenland. I imagine a lot of people here in Blighty will not take well to the US meddling in the sovereignty of the Falklands.

I do wonder if the sudden noise is due in part due to to Peter Thiel's move to Buenos Aries.

As a European, that would change nothing for me. The issue is systemic disinformation, fundamental lack of empathy and all those echo chambers. As long as this exists, the current situation will repeat or get worse.

> november

Have the Dem restored "appealing" and leadership?

--

Edit: look, see? About the barbarity of sniping (the counterargument to the at least two hitters at time of edit is not the post from lyu07282). My post is obvious and direct - friend of mine met only days ago a minor intellectual stating that voting the current administration in the usa was "right" given the opponents, and it is one of a long series of encounters. That the acquaintances of the friend were insulted or not in response is irrelevant. That a regime gave power to another out of evident faults is a fact, and if the reaction of some is ventral - "oooh! boo!" - the highway downwards remains paved.

no, i have no trust in them.

There needs to be some set of adults who take this lawless criminal hijacking of the government seriously for what it is.

This is clear as day, not a matter of politics. It's just clear crime. The material evidence is irrefutable and indefensible and it happens multiple times a day.

The DSA is pretty much the only hope democrats have left to restore any amount of credibility and they are fought by pretty much everybody right now.

Sorry but no "unless" left IMO. China has been and is still gaining momentum in every strategic matter, and they are very probably going to lead from now on.

What I am curious about is how that global leadership is going to change them, from citizens to government.

It's cute that you think power is going to change hands in November. It'll be his reischtags fire. He's already planning to send ice to police the elections and only in places he's bound to win will people be voting.

>Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945.

Literally just yesterday, Germany's public broadcaster released a 26-minute documentary. "The far right's rise: Is Germany at a breaking point?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOk01r2eoc0

The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.

The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2027_F...

And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.

It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.

"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.

Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

(Exercise for you: Try to get a passport from Liechtenstein, even if you work there permanently for a Liechtenstein company, its unlikely that you can even rent an appartment there!)

>Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

Precisely. Why is it that people only clutch their pearls with horror when this principle is applied to the US?

I suspect because we don't regularly hear of masked armed thugs in Switzerland beating up, sometimes killing or throwing into concentration camps innocent people who were looking to immigrate.

Nothing wrong with making immigration laws strict, if that's what a country wants. That is totall fine.

But there is no justification to beat people up, kill them or throw them into concentration camps. Just tell them no in a professional manner and politely send them back to their own country (also, not some random contry they haver never been in).

How many Swiss citizens have they detained in concentration camps and deported to places they've never been and have no connections?

Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss. If it helps any, 48% of us wanted to stay. This Brit has a profound sense of wehmut. Seems like the whole continent is struggling with nationalism though, no? Hearing AFD is on the rise

> Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss.

There certainly is, and I for one would certainly appreciate it. The problem is, with Reform polling as high as it does... there is a pretty high chance that they torpedo any negotiations :(

Trust and trustworthiness. Trust is very hard to win back, once its gone. Trustworthiness makes you willing to rely on a partner. Trustworthiness only builds very slowly over prolonged periods of time, by consistently not betraying ones trust.

You write as if you have confabulated yourself into being Europe's official spokesperson. This is all a bit high-handed.

I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.

Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.

It’s hard to take comments like this serious with all the hyperbole.

But regardless. Polls of your average citizen aren’t worth a whole lot considering most people get their information from social media.

I think Americans are unwilling or unable to see just how much foreign attitudes towards the US have shifted.

That comment was 100% correct. There was no hyperbole there.

I suppose it could turn very bearish in the next few years?

Something always occurs to me whenever I think about climate change. I think, "What is prosperity?" and the answers are mainly centered on stability and security. Not "stock market" stability, or "national security" but...

Weather stability (floods, droughts, severe storms that lead to crop loss or yield reduction, wildfires, power outages and destruction).

Food and energy security (crop loss or low yields leading to scarcity, food / gas / electric price increases etc)

When I think about my family I think: first priority is to guarantee shelter, food and basic comforts. Everything after that is important of course, but without those three things, it all tastes like ashes. I can't pretend to be happy without stability.

We can pretend that AI and GoogleAds are a great way to measure "prosperity" but in reality, if there's a threat to the basics, we can't pretend to be prosperous. "Value" can be destroyed very quickly when the foundations are gone.

I don't have any more detail than that. I'm a lowly infrastructure engineer. I don't go any deeper than those shower thoughts.

But is Europe looking at the state of the world and pulling it's reserves closer-to?

Because America can’t be trusted.

Yes.

Also to note, why was the US trusted before? I think it's a heritage from the Marshall plan: The US saved us twice from Germany, therefore we owe them our nations and storing our gold there won't change much. A century later, it does.

I'd rephrase the question as: Would you trust your parents? In childhood years probably, because you owe them your education anyway.

In this context "trust" is something of a euphemism. The US had a big enough military relatively speaking that if they came for your gold then it wasn't feasible to stop them unless you were part of a competing bloc. So, you know. Keep the gold somewhere the US is happy with. Best shot of getting to a good outcome, and the US was pretty reasonable in the 1900s.

That all appears to have changed. They may already have lost the ability to physically coerce even medium powers and at any rate look like they have to retreat the boundaries of their global Not-An-Empire. So it makes sense to start rethinking the gold's physical location.

And because of the very convenient geographical location USA is unlikely to be invaded. You'd want your gold to be safe.

> Also to note, why was the US trusted before?

Trust was never absolute. What we trusted was that the US would act rationally to further their interests. The US benefited tremendously from economic development across the world (industrialisation, free trade, rebuilding after the wars, etc). Sometimes the US government miscalculated (like in Iraq), but there was nothing really destructive like what Trump is doing.

Even when we disagreed we could still talk things through and agree on other things. Now, you have Trump insulting allies and praising ennemies every day. Of course there is no trust.

I think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today. Of course people will say that it's all because of Germany's own decisions. To which I would counter that Germany doesn't any sovereign decisions and the last time it did that was in 2011.

What happened in 2011 and why were there no sovereign decisions afterwards?

> I think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today.

That plan never got implemented.

There is a very awkward episode in Belgium national history, at the eve of WWII, the then minister of finance Camille Gutt, had the foresight to move tonnes of gold from the national bank to America and France but for some reason our king did not manage to pack his bags in time and was captured by the Nazis.

Do you have any reference to your story? Because this is not the historically accepted one. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_III_of_Belgium#World_W...):

"On 24 May 1940, Leopold, having assumed command of the Belgian Army, met with his ministers for the final time. The ministers urged the king to leave the country with the government. Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot reminded him that capitulation was a decision for the Belgian government, not for the king, to make. The king indicated that he had decided to remain in Belgium with his troops, whatever the outcome. The ministers took this to mean that he would establish a new government under the direction of Hitler, potentially a treasonous act. Leopold thought that he might be seen as a deserter if he were to leave the country: "He was resolved to remain with his army and amidst his people so as to share their fate."[6] Leopold had long had a difficult and contentious relationship with his ministers, acting independently of government influence whenever possible, and seeking to circumvent and even limit the ministers' powers, while expanding his own."

I mean, we were trusted but also not fully.

This isnt the first time European powers repatriated gold from the US. In 1971 France sent their navy to take their gold back because of another conservative US leader who decided to try and leverage our power at the expense of international trust and lost us a portion of said power[1].

I am an American. I preferred when we were stronger because we sweetened the deal enough with everyone else that they let us be world financier/police/anti piracy force/etc.

This fucking machismo theory taking over the older conservatives and the "The Torment Nexus was actually an awesome idea" taking over the tech bros and younger conservatives is fucking destroying us. Both groups seem incapable of believing in a win/win deal. Its also zero sum game to these fuckers and thus our soft power, and eventually our hard power, is being lost.

[1]https://www.helleniscope.com/2025/07/31/august-1971-the-day-...

It's not really "eventually" for our hard power.

Iran has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities, and it's a fraction of the threat China is.

We have 0 carrier strike groups in the Indo-Pacific right now.

> Iran has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities

I'm far from a fan of current US policy nor an apologist, but this is a flawed analysis.

The war with Iran has exposed the stupidity of entering into that particular conflict, where:

* the goal (if there was one?) was something like regime change at arm's length

* 'arm's length' means using expensive long distance precision weapons, as there was/is very little taste for an invasion

* the target (Iran) is situated next to US allies which also happen to be hugely important as oil producers/exporters

* the target can also threaten a hugely important global shipping channel - the Strait of Hormuz

* the target has prepared for this action for years if not decades, and has good-enough drone technology to hand to threaten its neighbours and the Strait of Hormuz

This is an almost unique case in the world, and as such, its lessons of "US weakness" of "US failure" simply can't be assumed to translate more broadly. Iran is/was far more a strategic blunder which could/should have been foreseen, than a sign of America's weakness.

Yes, America currently has low stocks of long-range precision munitions and Patriots, but it still has the most powerful conventional military by far, and a globally-unrivalled ability to project that power around the world, if it chooses to.

---

"But what about Ukraine? What about drone warfare? America is far behind there." This may have changed the game. The heavy usage of drones in Ukraine evolved, noting Russia didn't initially invade with swarms of drones. If the US had had a strong reason to support Ukraine (imagine Russia had instead invaded Florida) they could likely have used conventional means (air superiority, tanks, men) and ended the war within a few weeks. Admittedly, now it's far less certain how those tanks and men would fare in current drone battlefield.

> and it's a fraction of the threat China is

It depends entirely on the nature of the war envisaged (see the points about Iran being a unique situation.). In particular, China does not have anything like the US Navy to project power in the way that the US still can.

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan all also exposed the weakness of American might? Was the last big war that the US won WW2?

The US lost these wars politically. This has always been the US weakness rather than pure military power.

The US was better at getting what they wanted through either soft power or threat of military action than as a result of actual intervention. Which is why it’s really counterproductive when the government does not believe in soft power anymore. It’s the one thing you did well and that allowed you to get your way most of the time.

America won Iraq and Afghanistan in a walk.

They didn't do a great job of nation building afterwards, but the actual war part was very successful.

You go to war because you want an strategic outcome you can't get with other means. I doubt the strategic outcome of the USA in Irak or Afghanistan was "kill a lot, lose not that many, leave the country in shambles, achieve nothing in return".

The strategic outcome in both wars was to replace the goverment for a friendlier one, and in both cases the USA didn't get it, not even close.

But if you view wars as an sport where people kills other people and the winner is the one who kills better/more, then war is declared over and "teams" look for another war to "play", indeed USA won both wars in a walk.

We achieved "get the Iraqis out of Kuwait" back in the day.

"The strategic outcome in both wars was to replace the goverment for a friendlier one, and in both cases the USA didn't get it, not even close."

The current Iraqi government is considerably more friendly to the US.

Bit lost here, to be honest - What exactly did the US win in these engagements?

You might make a case for increased control of and importance in the middle east for Iraq, sure - that declined somewhat after a forced fumbling backwards out of Afghanistan and tanked on contact with Iran, so if that was the take home stuffed panda prize to write home about it's been well and truly run over by a road train and left in a ditch.

Clearly big wins for the USofA PMCs, but that's a little more narrow than "America".

What the fuck are you talking about? Afghanistan was handed back over to the Taliban. That's a victory? Kill them and chase them for decades and then release a bunch of their prisoners and return control of the country to them and declare victory?

I think its eventually in that if we put our might behind it we could take probably any 2-3 major military powers on the planet at the current moment, but that's with the caveat that putting our might behind it means tens to hundreds of thousands of dead military members which we as a nation have lost the stomach for.

I am saying eventually in that I think we will not even be able to do that if we found our grit again in the coming years as long as we are prioritizing raising testosterone in individual soldiers and removing qualified women and minorities from our military over having competent leaders and prioritizing logistics.

Sorry, the ship has already sailed.

1. In Iran alone, the US has depleted stocks of some of its most advanced and important weapons systems.

2. The US does not have the manufacturing capacity for an extended conflict (China does) and the US is in fact dependent on Chinese components and raw materials.

3. As it relates to a China contingency in the Taiwan Strait: the Strait is ~140 miles at its widest point, and the Chinese have spent 20+ years investing in A2/AD capabilities. Given the state of the US military right now, it's hard to see how the US could overcome China's geographic advantage.

4. Our most important allies don't trust us (and we're even threatening some of them) so don't expect them to help.

5. Some of the most experienced and competent military leaders have been pushed out by an unqualified alcoholic who is more interested in how many pushups the cannon fodder can do than he is in how many ships America can build.

The end of the US hegemony and the unstable regime in the US makes decoupling the best strategy.

The end of hegemony isn’t usually immediately followed by the appointment of a new leader, usually it means fragmented power and war.

Yes, China is a likely eventual successor and in some parts is the world has replaced the US in being the influential superpower.

China is making trade deals and integration left and right and even Canada and Mexico are looking in other directions and cooperate more closely with china and eu. Maybe not a single power has to hold power

China has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.

I think it will change.

China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.

Next it will go for Taiwan.

Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.

At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.

Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.

> Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony?

No, not really. For now we are headed towards a multipolar world rather than a hegemony.

Russia had assets in Europe, look what happened to those. We got so naive and relaxed in the abscense of big wars within the "western hemisphere" that some people geniunly forgot what will happen to all of their "assets" when shit hit the fan.

I really wonder why. Something must have happened

Not relevant to the point - "I gave my item to my former friend Paul". For some reason or for some other, it happens.

And miscalculations in game theory happen ("he wouldn't, given...").

I put my gold in the safe of my best friend, he has a good safe. Then I rapped and killed his wife and children, and destroyed his house. But he doesn’t want to give me the gold back.

You are doing the complexity of history, and the due diligence of objective assessment and focus, a great disservice with those gross similes.

Let us stick to a fitting analysis for the point of the limited trust entities can give each other, and let us stick to actual events for what the crimes committed are concerned (for the respect due).

ok, but russia and the west were never best friends, just some russians have major crushes on western europe and would still trust the europeans to hold their gold more than their own russian compatriots :))

Miscalculation is the right word.

And: it is relevant. You gave away the relevancy yourself. It is called game theory. Games have rules. Break rules see what happens. Or instead be prepared.

Seems like someone broke rules but wasn't thinking through consequences or didn't care about them

The something was the collapse of the USSR, right? "The end of history" etc.

Case in point: a naive belief in "high moral". Bad guy (Ru) attacks good guy - bad, punish, cancel. When good guy (US) attacks bad guy - that's different, whataboutism etc. Such POV falls apart when good guy (US) attacks another good guy (EU), and while you may chose to ignore such possibility, European leaders don't (a rare case of competence on their side).

I don't think it has anything to do with morality.

It is just leverage.

The assets are still there and frozen for the most part (in Euroclear).

Some people would like to see them put to use in guaranteeing reconstruction and defence for Ukraine.

Good opportunity to post Periodic Videos tour of a Bank of England vault:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA

I'm more interested in why was it centralized (there) in the first place? So it's easier to trade where when you make a sell/buy IOU is exchanged and a sticker on the bar is put or a bar changes pallet? I'd kind of understand that except these are central banks - how often do they even trade gold? Since we're in 2026, I actually googled that last question and it turns out central banks trade or adjust their gold reserve on a monthly basis. Somehow the thought of that seemed to me as too much of a high frequency trading for a central bank :)

Even animals have a stability pact. Humans, especially politics need stability, when you mess it up, fear takes over and among other things, defensive stuff happens. So this is a simple reactive defensive act.

If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country it is fighting with.

> If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country..

Canadians, and the rest of the world is finding out that you don't even need a conflict for US to lay claim over your stuff. "We want it", is perfectly legitimate and legal reason for the taking.

Sure, and you can replace US with almost any country in that sentence. The problem right now is there's a feeling that even decades-old alliances are no longer something you can count on when you're talking about the US.

Plus even on a less-than-wartime level, nobody wants wants their own national assets to be held-hostage or used for extortion, whenever this Republican administration next demands a "favor" for domestic bragging or kowtowing-humiliation for a perceived personal slight.

As Boston would sing, "More than a Feeling"

it gets easier to understand if you adopt the anti-imperialist position, these are vassal states, the us hold incredible influence over them. Gold reserves are just one of thousands of levers at their disposal, if some european nation has a revolution and seeks to assert their sovereignty then the US has a lever to pull. The point to question is the existence of the lever in the first place, the US doesnt have gold in any other country, china or iran doesn't put gold in the US because it gives the US this lever. Thats one of the mechanisms of imperialism, it means if some "western-aligned" (people dont like the word vassal) nation acts in their own interests against the US the US can pull that lever. Why would any nation ever place such a lever in the hand of the US? It's the same exact mechanism why many african nations have the french CFA currency, it gives french the lever to pull its a remanent of colonialism in the case of france.

Mainly because the US Dollar debt at some 39 to 40 trillion is now unserviceable and the US is going to default the debt payment. So countries are preparing for that eventuality - the US ship is on the event horizon but being slowly but surely sucked into the Black hole. The last govt was ensuring spending all the unspent budget - even if they knew it was bad for the country . The current govt will be left holding the baby when the crash comes. The only question is how long can you hold - 1 year 2 years before the ship crosses the edge of the event horizon

Most of the major Bitcoin spikes and leveling-up of the price since 2012 have preceded or corresponded with governments tightening controls, and people using BTC they owned or buying it to evacuate capital to more lightly regulated countries. That's also why there hasn't been a Bitcoin rush for awhile, imho... it's no longer very useful for that, now that all the entrance and exit nodes are monitored. Gold is a bit hard to move, but this article may be underselling to what extent the recent spike in gold prices is attributable to demand for that kind of liquidity. The cross-border, anonymous kind.

The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.

Localbitcoin is dead but there are still venues to trade bitcoin/crypto for cash. They have mostly moved to p2p on facebook and discord.

There are a few platforms that facilitate personal transactions using stuff like Venmo and Zelle but I suspect most of the people who are continuously selling lots of coins are probably silk road type vendors so I have to imagine it's just a great way to get your Venmo account on the feds radar.

Using Venmo or Zelle obviates the reason for using Bitcoin to move money from one country to another, which is that you don't want the transfer to be traced, and you may or may not have access to the banking system where you're going (eg the enormous flood of Bitcoin out of China and Hong Kong during the crackdown). Venmo and Zelle are American banks that just add a new type of KYC endpoint. From there, it's easy to see the whole blockchain back to where you acquired it.

Localbitcoins facilitated a cash exchange that was extremely useful for people seeking to move money out of repressive regimes and convert it into local currency they could live on.

To your point, that money didn't have to be acquired on Silk Road or something... I used to get paid for work in BTC, and used it to pay rent for a couple years in Argentina by selling it to a dude I'd meet once a month at a Starbucks.

You don't have to be a silk road vendor. You just have to be selling and buying both, then you can make money on the spread, which can be several percent in P2P markets.

The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold significantly more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.

So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.

Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. The USA did this before. Up until 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then the USA simply canceled that promise.

The current ramp up to AI dominance might be what holds the USA back from breaking more ties with the world. It is a race that must be won. And investments from abroad help. But when the whole world is operated by US AI factories things might look different. When every task around the world is performed by intelligence generated in the USA, just like every computer is run by US software now - there might be little incentive left to "pay the rent" for the rest of the world that now sits around idle, fiddling their thumbs.

> The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold way more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.

The dangerous situation we are in is that the US is berating and betraying its closest historical allies, eroding its credibility and soft power, and weakening its leverage at a time when threats to the Western order that has existed since the end of WW2 are growing rapidly.

Incidentally, the orange man in charge loves to tout "deals" in which foreign countries agree to invest substantial sums in the US, so any actions that lead foreign countries to believe their investments might be nationalized banana republic-style won't help the administration's efforts to attract investment and onshoring.

If the US did something so economically hostile it would tank its own stock market just from the world cutting off a bunch of trade.

> cutting off a bunch of trade

Given the last 19 months of tariff chaos while Republicans control all branches of government, I don't see any reason to think they're concerned about that.

Plus the whole "assassinate the Iranian president in the middle of negotiations to start a war across a major global trade-route" thing.

I dont know. Stock market claps and absorb everything these do happily.

> So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.

This opinion is very naive. The moment the US declares "ownership be damned", the US dolar stops being the currency used in things like the oil market and it's value tanks. The world will scramble to use an alternative currency, which will end up being either the euro or the yuan. This effectively marks the end of US as a world power.

Or Bitcoin. Of which almost half is already under US control.

Anyhow, much of the new currency will flow to the USA if the USA becomes the worlds source of (artificial) intelligence.

It's not going to be a net win for anyone. A country that needs to keep borrowing to stay afloat is not going to improve its position by effectively defaulting on its debt, regardless of the exact method or type of assets involved.

The USA might hold a majority of the worlds value generation in a few decades. If AI generated in the USA powers everything. Then the USA does not need to borrow anymore.

Well, they could, but the moment Donald defaults on those bonds, he can say goodbye to those stock market highs and watch new unprecedented lows.

"If you owe the bank a million, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion..." etc.

And the US owes trillions.

That cuts both ways. US entities own huge amounts of overseas assets including debt.

A more appropriate saying would be cutting off your foot to spite your leg.

Thankfully no one has done that yet.

yes. but most of it is not to other countries. Most government debt (over 80% globally) is privately owned through sovereign debt instruments like bonds.

And who owns the bonds?

Private citizens and companies, as the gp said.

It’s a tire fire but not for the reasons you’re pointing out.

Dedollarisation next

The orange one. Duh.

He’s just one part of the explanation, it’s also all the people who are behind him. He’s mostly a front nowadays. If Trump is gone, things wouldn’t be better with Vance taking his place

It’s the voters that put him back. You could say it was an aberration the first time but the second? Americans are too stupid and selfish to be trusted with the immense power they were given.

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

This is brilliant. How do we reconcile it with democracy though?

Education, healthy media environment, healthy culture of understanding and respect. Exactly everything the conservatives have been pushing against since decades

> the second

The second was very clearly a systemic failure out of many factors. Those systemic failures are the point.

I mean that is the biggest factor now, but also because most of the rest of our federal politicians are also worthless and corrupt.

He's the center of gravity who's enabling the decline at the moment. It's a rare case where doing the thing would probably result in less instability instead of more.

If you blame the loss of trust in America on a single person you live in a delusion.

Don't forget that Biden and not the orange one blew up the most important gas pipeline of the most important European ally^H vassal.

How can you trust USA after that?

Individuals can do the same. Sell gold ETF and buy coin/bullion. The cost of holding physical is lessened if held for +10 years.

Well, why would European gold be stored in America in the first place?

It's a remnant of the cold war and the two preceding hot wars. The plan was to ship big parts of the gold overseas, just in case Europe gets nuked and occupied in a ground invasion from the east. But lately there have been more threats for an invasion from the west, so gold goes back.

It's probably a matter of liquidity, storing it where it can be exchanged when needed. Transport is quite expensive

Security: European have been taken over multiple times by Germany. Keeping the gold in the usa keeps the money a safe distance from the fight.

Gosh, have we in the West forgotten so much of our history already?

Much of the gold was moved out of Europe prior to and during WWI. Partly out of fears of German aggression b ut also because throughout the war, European countries bought massive amounts of materiel from America, which increased the flow of money out of European and into American coffers.

But gold itself is very heavy and thus cumbersome to transport. It doesn't make sense to run transatlantic gold shipments every time a few bars change hands. So central banks tended to keep the gold more or less in one big vault and just sort of move the bricks between one country's pile and another. So there would be, in essence, a large stack of gold in the US Federal Reserve, and that gold belonged to France, or whomever. When the war ended, European countries were devastated and needed goods from somewhere that didn't have depleted industrial capacity and whose farmlands weren't littered with UXO.

This situation more or less cemented America's position as the world's creditor, and so it simply was more convenient to keep a large portion of one's gold reserves in the country with whom you were doing a lot of business. For some countries, repatriating gold is a matter of sovereignty, and e.g. France started repatriating its gold reserves in the 1960s.

Now that Americans have decided they like being a military, economic, and cultural superpower less than they like electing a dementia-ridden child rapist, other countries have correctly realized that America's decline cannot be stopped, only slowed. After all, it's Americans themselves who are the root of the problem, and Trump is but a symptom. This instability is not going to stop when he leaves office. Better get your gold off the sinking ship, but do it slowly so as to not accelerate the sinking before you can get it all out.

Re: the gold situation after WWI, if you're interested I encourage you to read Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer, IIRC.

Related:

Norway's Oil Fund Proposes Selling Roughly $80B in U.S. Treasurys

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564189

Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526

Lack of trust.

more interesting question: When do countries change gold reserves locations and for which reasons? past examples?

Typically they move gold to allies when it’s safer to keep the reserves away (e.g., it’s really hard to imagine the US getting invaded, but that happened to almost all European countries in the last century or so) or when politics become unstable. They take the gold back when the calculus changes. Famously, France got a chunk of its gold back from the US in the 1979s (and finished that process this year).

The rabbit hole goes quite deep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation .

Okay so possibly dumb question, but...what do you do with the gold when you "need" it? How is a bunch of shiny, admittedly "desirable", metal going to fix whatever class of crisis the article is hand waving?

Are we talking physical stuff like Germany deciding third time's a charm and Europe saying "fuck, okay America the gold is already there, do your thing and ship us a few thousand tanks and a few hundred thousand boys from the plains!"

...or are we talking more obscure "fuck, someone did stupid things with excel sheets, we need to make the numbers not say society is over, here everyone...do something with gold!" type situations?

In the former case, this all makes a lot of sense given that the US has both demonstrated a reluctance to assist other countries (sans Israel?) and a lack of capacity to do much if they did care.

I can't help but feel like in a lot of cases you're just going to suddenly crash the gold market and create a bunch of inflation because currency itself is not a "means of production" that you can make things with, it's an old IOU.

You just hold onto it until you want to trade it for something else. Right now there are liquid international gold markets. Like bitcoin, people who are trying to get rich quick by day trading are much of the liquidity.

I’d be really interested to see all European countries & Canada dump their US bonds en mass if trump does anything untoward in Greenland, Canada or elsewhere.

As an American trying to retain my sanity in this country, I have to tell myself that such things are just trollish nonsense from the ultimate reality television troll. It is comforting to me that 50% of what he says is bluster and the other 50% is pure fabrication. I think we have developed some resistance to it where, like, a few years ago we would say "OH MY GOD! HE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THREATENING CANADA!" and now we're just like, "there goes crazy old man again, don't worry, he just shit his pants on the golf course".

Not saying it's right or sound that he's the elected leader of the country or that our politics is so warped... I mean, I blame it on being on the losing end of the most rigorously fought information war in history.

But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

FWIW, the American people can't even support a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been blowing up our soldiers for decades. Hard to imagine they'd show much support for invading an ally.

> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

Sorry, but no.

Even if there are no kinetic attacks towards allies right now, the "crazy old man" is causing real harm. Harm to global stability and the world order, economies, to businesses and individuals, to long term initiatives such as research and healthcare. But most importantly, real harm to the trust between ourselves. Western allies can no longer trust the USA, it is broken, we no longer have the same values.

The first time in 2016 we forgave, everyone makes mistakes and Europe is certainly not free of them. But the American people chose to elect him twice with full knowledge, now everyone suffers.

So the rest of the world forges its own path now. America's military, economic and cultural hegemony will decline. Not tomorrow, maybe not even quickly, but inevitably. Godspeed !

Which is it... Godspeed the decline, or you hope it doesn't?

I think it's a tragedy that America elected him twice, and it has already led to chaos among our allies and irreparable harm to the postwar order in which America was the seat of empire after Britain. I think that [the populist brain virus which took hold of America, in 2016 and particularly after covid] was done intentionally by Russia and China who are enemies of America. Is the loss of that order what you are bemoaning?

We are also a country that established itself from European colonies. Every time Argentina or Brazil or Chile or Venezuela or Colombia go through spasms of communist or fascist takeover, Europe takes that as an unsurprising fact, and the bankers keep doing business with them. There is something much more frightening about America reaching some polar political extreme, and it's not simply nuclear weapons (because several very extreme dictatorships have those).

What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany... the idea that we are losing the generational knowledge we built to safeguard some of the world against savagery. In order to believe this, you must also believe that Germany and the US are not already, inherently savage and that some of the order brought by NATO and the postwar order has been a good thing, even up to and including the Cold War.

Then, we can define what is worth saving about America and why it matters.

While I personally believe a lot of America is worth saving, it is not up to us, and the arcs of history take many decades to play out.

As Brexit has shown, even when sanity returns, the previous reality does not.

So it is not that we wish the USA ill, or harm, quite the contrary - we did not ask for this. We have clearly understood the message and we are focused on our own future now.

Previous reality probably won't return... although you never know. I think a lot of the world would breathe a sigh of relief and get back to normal under a more rational American leadership. Unlike Brexit, we haven't literally burned our bridges.

I think it's important to understand that there's a difference between American right wing populism and the British form. Brexit was a self inflicted wound whose harm was almost entirely limited to Britain. If anything, it shored up some European resolve against the anti-EU parties for a time.

On the contrary, if the isolationist wing of Trump's party had its way, American withdrawal from the world would have a far worse impact on the stability of European politics and concrete strategic defense.

I'm a 2nd generation American ... my family is Polish and Ukrainian. I had / have the option to reclaim citizenship elsewhere, both in and out of the EU. I've lived in France and Spain, Czechia and Argentina, and in 15 countries in total since 2004. I didn't choose to be born in America but I also can't imagine a world where it doesn't retain military and financial supremacy. The vacuum would be immense and the only powers which could fill it are, for lack of a better word, evil. I believe the only option is to resuscitate and improve America, because without it exercising political power, the whole world will instantly be on fire.

> What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany...

Without downplaying or excusing the US' problems, I hope everyone in other countries thinking "that can't happen here" realize that's what most Americans thought just a decade ago too.

Turn that disgust with the disease into preventative treatment.

Frankly, the government that America has right now is nowhere near as extreme as AfD. I wouldn't be surprised or sorry if the next President of the US sanctioned goods out of Saxony. But we have both types of populism here. Both of them incredibly stupid. Our true war is against the foreign social/mainstream media saturation which is pushing our population away from reading and away from analytical thought, manipulating them into the arms of either type of extremism, for the benefit of the autocracies who want to cause us to fight amongst ourselves. Trump is just one manifestation of that. "It can't happen here" relates to a particular sort of fascist or authoritarian takeover of society, and I still think it can't in America. Trump's approval rating is under 35%. I live in Oregon, the most progressive state in the country, and spent 2 hours on the phone today buying insurance from a guy in Georgia who got excited talking about what guns I owned (and what he owned). I think the idea of a hard takeover in America by the far right is ...bullshit. And I even wrote a novel about it happening 20 years ago. But the rest of the world can't keep going through the vicissitudes of America's increasing whiplash at being manipulated and dumbed down this way. What has to change is something in the American mind before it allows its empire to collapse.

I bought that initially, but Trump is causing real harm. The abandonment of WHO and USAid programs, stepping out of the paris accords etc. etc.

But the real issue is that he has been elected twice, it is not some one-off freak accident, a lot of americans just care more about transphobia or pizzagate than climate change or geopolitics and thats why its now clear to the rest of the world that we can’t trust the US any more.

> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

We're at the point where the two countries, with most wars between them in history, stood side by side, ready to defend Greenland against a U.S. invasion.

The monkey has a hand grenade. You lot gave it to him. Twice. You might find that it's a bit late for "relax, he's only kidding".

Except that “crazy old man” (I’d have gone with corrupt criminal malignant narcissist to be honest) isn’t just shouting at pigeons in the park he already screwed up the world economy by starting a war he can’t figure out how to exit and dozens of other things.

When the pigeon shouter threatens to annex Canada/Greenland you can shrug it off, when the leader of the largest economy and military says it, you can’t.

Words matter.

I’m British, We are often regarded as one of the US’s closest allies, I’m fucking furious with Trump and the people who support him, I’ve been boycotting everything US made that I can and I essentially see the current US as a globally destabilising force.

Are there decent Americans appalled by what they’ve become, sure, doesn’t make a difference to the outcome though.

Trump isn’t the main problem, he’s a symptom of the disease that is the main problem, the US elected him twice, that rot goes to the core.

> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

Tell that to Iran. Or Canada. Nobody in Europe is certain that he won’t do anything stupid in Greenland, either. We’re already in a trade war (mostly one-sided but still).

>But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

Wow you guys really don't get it, do you? It's not nonsense to us.

The article truly looks like an AI slop, instead of getting to the point it just keeps on rambling and jumps back and forth.

Also it says about Germany moving gold 10 years ago (2016), but no financial crisis happened back then.

Because it is theirs?

Would you keep your food or car in someone else's garage?

Everyone here keeps their money in bank or brokerage accounts, because we trust the law to protect us if the banks try to steal our stuff.

We are seeing that foreign countries no longer believe the USA is still a nation of laws.

Before asking "why", ask "if".

That doesn't make sense to me. It's already happening.

Same reason they moved it out of Germany in 1930-1931?

the pull out then was an reaction to the black friday.

Please don’t tell me this is just the beginning…..

Well, who knows? The trajectory has been set in and it is downwards. After Nero and the year of the four emperors the Roman Empire still had ways to go. So, I would say also the US can potentially recover. On the other hand the saying 'it cannot possibly get worse than this' has also been disproven may times in history. In any case, I like to sum it all up by saying "The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country".

What is moving the gold reserves to the UK, whose entire political "class" are pathetic US lapdogs, going to solve?

So far for "Russia will invade Europe". The USA seems a bigger threat.

Russia is invading Europe. They started years ago.

The US is enabling Russia.

In fact, the USA is supporting Russia. This might not be entirely intentional, and a lot of ways of trying to excuse it, but it’s what the reality on the ground adds up to.

After Bernie’s Bros have run out of other’s money, they’ll run out of other country’s gold.

Because Trump is tasked with ending American hegemony and Europe is getting ahead of that.

The US empire is ending.

Probably when the Chinese burst the AI bubble the whole fake web economy will come crashing down and close this 30 years of inflated money.

Three EU countries versus some random on the Internet calling them "foolish", I'm pretty sure your take is bad.

Last time this happened, the us refused to give back the gold and then removed the peg to the gold, so I'm sure your take is ignorant.

That must be why von der Leyen renamed the Mediterranean to Lake Europe recently.

Give me a break. In the present situation, the US is a lunatic asylum on fire, and the EU is a regular ol' boring place with boring problems.

lol, we(america) were the ones who fucked with the gold standard and had the system collapse due to lack of trust in the first place[1]

Please explain your logic behind the idea that European countries needed to have adopted the gold standard that the US unilaterally changed the rules on, to be independent from the US.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

I guess he means the Bretton Woods system, where the US dollar was backed by gold and everything else was backed by the US dollar, wouldn't have existed. Everything would have been backed by gold, instead.

Why? Honestly, how it will help?