Growing up I was always told gold and silver bars are an amazing store of value and that has been true it seems to be losing transaction over the years as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies take foot.
Years ago when I first moved out I invested a bit of my paycheck into storage of value in terms of silver bars. At the time silver was $7 a oz and gold just shy of $500 a oz. I went on to later sell it for a 100% profit at about $15 a oz and just a bit over $1,000 a oz some 2 years later.
To me this was an amazing return, something many dream of in the stock world and I felt truly accomplished! In the days of losing your butt in the stock market or getting 3% or less returns in the stock market this was a clear unheard of win.
Fast forward to today in the land of cryptocurrency 100% increases happen overnight and happen daily. In fact ETH went up over 2000% in the matter of a month and a half. Those types of gains were never heard of being and when it started to happen to me I had to pinch myself wondering if I was dreaming.
What I think is going to happen later this year is either bitcoin (if these soft/hard forks) go ok and are successful a majority of that money in gold and silver will actually fall over into the crypto currency market. I wrote a post here some time back about an infographic I found that puts into prespective our current market cap in crypto as well as market caps in gold and silver. Comparing Cryptocurrency To the World Market - https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@bitcoinflood/comparing-crypto-currency-to-the-world-market
Here you can see what a dramatic impact would take place if and when gold and silver is dumped and poured into crypto.
Do I feel gold and silver are good store of values today?
Quite bluntly NO! This is my own opinion and not financial advice. To me as crypto becomes more mainstream and investors see the amazing growth and gains potential they will bail out of the falling gold and silver areas and move into crypto.
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The idea of gold/silver now is to ensure if crypto blows up, but realistically if it does, the world is blowing up, and your gold is useless metal anyways at that point, as is your money in general.
If you want to "diversify" into real life materials, diversify into high-quality rifles, ammunition, etc. If shit hits the fan you'll be lined up and shot for being a useless rich person with tons of gold.
That's the only purpose of investing in gold due to it's slow gain compared to crypto, so there you have it.
And no, the plan wouldn't be to specifically use the guns yourself, however they become in high-demand, they're shelf-stable in general, and they will be more valuable than their weight in gold if you want to fund a militia or whatever it may be.
If you can't own those legally, I'd buy them anyways, or buy a large barrel of something highly explosive, that again will be extremely valuable.
Or you know, just invest in crypto and if shit does hit the fan, great you maybe lost it all, but go join your local militia. Odds are you'll have to anyways.