I bought my first two pieces of gold today. I posted it on Reddit and got quite a few entertaining responses :) .Here are pics:
Apart from these two pieces, I’m also putting money into Kinesis. A platform that holds your gold in secure vaults around the world, and lets you spend it digitally. The link above is a referrer link, so I get credit when you sign up. If you feel that’s weird, just edit the URL to remove everything after and including the question mark (?) .
The parent company of Kinesis is ABX – a bullion exchange company, so the firm is legit and has serious experience in this domain. A Reddit user did their due diligence on Kinesis, and it’s an instructive read.
Why I’m Investing my Gold with Kinesis
It’s been a long time since I posted my last net worth account way back in 2015. I’ve long since hit my goals, and now I get to play around with what I have. With governments around the world printing money like mad, inflation was seriously cutting into my bank deposits. I already have large chunks of cash in shares and mutual funds, so I thought I’d place some money as a hedge against inflation and a financial crash. Gold seemed like the perfect choice.
Especially since my site on web hosting is bringing in regular cash, I need a good place to deposit my income.
Gold ISN’T an Investment
To be clear, gold has never been a good investment. You don’t get returns (well, you do with Kinesis, but more on that later). The price of gold has fluctuated wildly over the past 100 years, and you would have had better returns investing in the stock market.
But gold has a benefit that stocks don’t have. Namely, as a store of value. If an economic crisis hits, my gold will still be worth something. If hyperinflation ever becomes a thing, I can still rely on gold to get me what I want. So I feel that something like gold is a great idea to have in your portfolio once your other goals are met.
Kinesis Lets Me Spend Gold Instead of Cash – It’s Cool!
Gold as a currency has been problematic because it’s so valuable that you can’t make small payments with it. You can’t split a gold coin and spend a few shavings for a cup of coffee. But technology in the 21st century has solved this problem. Kinesis lets you spend gold instead of cash, instantly converting the amount you spend into gold, and deducting the sub-milligram value from your gold stock.
So in the case of inflation, it just means that lesser and lesser gold will be deducted from what you own. You don’t need to bother with inflation at all!
Kinesis Gives a Yield – Solving the Biggest Problem with Gold
One of the biggest obstacles to traditionally holding gold is that it doesn’t give you a return. It might be a store of value, but it doesn’t yield anything. Kinesis solves this problem by redistributing 57.5% of its transaction fees back to users. 15% of the entire transaction fee pool goes to people who just hold gold in Kinesis in proportion to the amount held. So your gold is always increasing slowly.
Holding Currency in a Bank Just Loses to Inflation
What finally pushed me over the edge to buy gold in Kinesis is the fact that inflation even in the developed world has started to push up. Combined with the non-existent interest on savings that banks give, this means that I lose anywhere between 4% and 7% of my currency value if held in a bank. Now I don’t want to put everything into stocks, so what’s the best option?
For me, that option was Kinesis. I can convert my gold into currency whenever I wish, so there’s no downside.
Kinesis Has a 1:1 Gold Backed Asset Allocation
Unlike regular banks that lend out way more than their actual deposits, all the money you have in Kinesis is backed by physical gold. At any point in time, you can ask them to ship the gold to you, and they’ll send it to your address! Plus, unlike other companies, there’s no storage fee.
So for now, I’m putting at least 10% of my wealth into gold via Kinesis. Apart from looking cool, it just seems like a smart thing to do.