News From The Future – How to get $12 billion of gold to Venezuela…
There are 99 tons already being held at the Bank of England; according to the FT, the plan is to transfer other gold to the Bank of England from custodians such as Barclays, HSBC, and Standard Chartered; then, once it’s all in one place, um, well, nobody has a clue what might happen.
What a weird problem to solve. News from the future for a few reasons 1) Makers! Post your solutions to move this much gold! From crowd sourcing to how to physically move this and via what method for cost/safety. Fuel costs, insurance, this is a fascinating problem!
And 2) This could be the world’s biggest gold heist. My idea would be to get a top Hollywood studio to make a movie about a $12 billion gold heist while they are moving the real gold and actually heist the gold using the expert team assembled for the movie. Ocean’s FOURTEEN would be the most profitable movie in history.
44 thoughts on “News From The Future – How To Get $12 Billion Of Gold To Venezuela”
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Solution #1: throw $1 billion (less than 10%!) of that dough into making teleportation real, then teleport it.
Solution #2: spend a few hundred million to build a suborbital launch platform and vehicle, load up the gold and send it on a ballistic arc across the Atlantic Ocean.
Solution #3: Destroy it in the name of human decency.
Call Gringott’s!
But johngineer’s ideas are great…
I just paíd $20.87 for an íPad 2.64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasoníc Lumíx GF 1 Cámera that we got for $38.79 there arriving tomorrow by UP S.I will never pay such expensive retail príces in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LCD T V to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from :
BidsBit.com
A sailing ship with keel and ballast of gold would seem to be the least expensive method of transport.
My answerAntonov An-225
This aircraft can carry 250 tonnes and $12 billion in gold would weigh (roughly) 215 tonnes.
THEY CAN JUST LEAVE IT TO ME. I’ll take care of all of it. sure it well be safe with me.
Or,
Just convince Venesuela that the risks far outweight the benefits.
The biggest risk is the now Presidenta stealing it all.
This could end up to be the biggest treasure hunt ever.
THEY CAN JUST LEAVE IT TO ME. I’ll take care of all of it. sure it well be safe with me.
Or,
Just convince Venesuela that the risks far outweight the benefits.
The biggest risk is the now Presidenta stealing it all.
This could end up to be the biggest treasure hunt ever.
From what I understand, the Venezuelan govn’t is concerned that the banks have “rented” their gold to others investors and if there’s a market crash the banks won’t be able to redeem all the physical gold.
I don’t quite understand all the technicalities but it’s happening in the silver market where there are more certificates for silver ownership than there is silver on the surface of the earth. That means that if everybody wants to redeem their certificates into physical silver, the banks won’t be able to fulfill their obligations (the technical term is a “short squeeze”).
I just paíd $20.87 for an íPad 2.64GB and my boyfriend loves his Panasoníc Lumíx GF 1 Cámera that we got for $38.79 there arriving tomorrow by UP S.I will never pay such expensive retail príces in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LCD T V to my boss for $657 which only cost me $62.81 to buy.
Here is the website we use to get it all from :
BidsBit.com
Convert it to BitCoin and just email it. :)
Switch ownership with gold located closer to the destination (think of home swaps and deeds exchange).
Rent a submarine for the necessary trips or a heavy guarded fleet of navy destroyers. It’s a buyers market.
Don’t. Gold is fungible.
Sell all the Venezuelan gold in Venezuela which would depress the world value of gold. Buy it in England at a reduced price.
Nothing so sexy. A million dollars worth of gold is about 36 lbs. That’s carry on size. There are about a dozen flights from London to Caracas a day. Each flight gets a shipment, each shipment will be ethere lead or gold, the carrier won’t know. When the plane lands hand off the case to the military and open the case in full view of everyone on the tarmac, so everyone can see that sometimes there is no gold.
Change bags, change people.
At 3 people per plane, 12 flights a day , you can move $12 Billion in a year. In raw gold. Double the number of people to get a %50 chance of a thief getting lead.
Nothing so sexy. A million dollars worth of gold is about 36 lbs. That’s carry on size. There are about a dozen flights from London to Caracas a day. Each flight gets a shipment, each shipment will be ethere lead or gold, the carrier won’t know. When the plane lands hand off the case to the military and open the case in full view of everyone on the tarmac, so everyone can see that sometimes there is no gold.
Change bags, change people.
At 3 people per plane, 12 flights a day , you can move $12 Billion in a year. In raw gold. Double the number of people to get a %50 chance of a thief getting lead.
Shouldn’t they just share it with poor people? You know, spread the wealth around? All of this wealth shows there is too much disparity.
That would be a lot easier, just mail an ounce or so to a lot of poor people.
Excellent idea. And they wouldn’t even need to mail it. Recent video evidence shows that there are more than enough poor people already living in and around London who are more than willing to cart away heavy expensive items from secured locations.
It is not a real issue (I Have ben involved in a bullion moving project in the past).
There are a couple of concerns – the first is the density of the gold – it ‘s incredibly heavy – Load a Brinks truck to the gunwales and you will just blow it’s tyres. Even putting it on Planes, you need to specifically spread it out across cargo areas of the plan, so as to not concentrate weight. One of the easiest ways of testing for gold, is simply it’s density. It is far denser that lead, so the old “paint lead bars with gold” trick, would not fool those “in the know”.
The second is security – Before going off the deep end – Outsource the problem – brinks or the like – they do this routinely, although not on this scale – and of course, they will be insured. Alternatively, the destination is Venezuala, and these are sovereign funds of that nation – Not a problem, Venezuala, has it’s own navy (albeit small, mainly patrol boats, but also a couple of destroyers – not to be messed with) – and you do a “blind” send multiple vessels – each taking a cargo (which may or may not be “real” ) this precludes the temptation of collusion by a vessel captain/crew to take the money and run…
(Of course, stealing that much gold is all very well to talk about, and write movies about, but in practicality, the international gold market is that well defined, and protected, that you wouldn’t be able to redeem it easily.
You see, a big aspect of the “value” of bullion, is that it has been purified, and validated as pure and of accurate weight by internationally licensed firms -(Those on the LBMA (London Bullion Marketing Association’s) “good delivery list” – these organizations “brand their work”. “Good delivery” also involves where it is stored. IF Gold goes “off the grid”, it loses it’s Good Delivery status, (these are the embossed stamps you see on the bars). In many cases, these embossings include serial numbers. which are tracked by the refiner/bank/owner. Getting that “volume” of bullion into the “system” as it existed “now” would be immediately recognized, remelting it would have to be done by one of these firms, to be recognized, and that “wouldn’t happen”. A related consideration is that normal “retail gold”, if you will, typically exists in up to 1kg bars – (worth about $60K US) these are about the half the size of an Iphone (refer to previous on weight/density). Holdings of “countries” is typically in 400 troy oz, or about 12.4kg bars (These actually vary by around 10-15% or so, such specific weight/density and purity is tracked on a bar by bar basis.)
Some alternatives though – gold is semi-virtual – Trade your gold in LOndon for Someone elses gold in the Fed Depository in NY or the Fort Knox location. That gets it a continent closer to target and avoids long flights, etc. From Say, Fort Knox – armored Train, or multiple armored trucks (or more like, spread amongst various semi’s, to get it to newport, va, navy base. and onto Venezualan navy destroyer(s).
Of course, if the Venezualans are “panicky” about leaving their bullion in london, they could move it to switzerland – personally, if it were up to me, I would just organize multiple “swaps” into a dozen or more other locations, (i.e. Switzerland, NY, Brazil, HK)… Nothing physically moves, and the risk of loss etc, (both in terms of it being assumed by the host nation of the depository, and loss in transit) is dramatically reduced….
The final consideration is (apart from the paranoia) why Chavez would want this moved to Venezuala. IF it is to ferret away personal wealth, it would need ultra security in that country. If it is to improve the “lot” of his country, then it is more important that it is able to end up in the lands of the countries with which he wishes to trade, which tends to mean that it is best not to be in Caracas. (perhaps Shanghai or elsewhere) Of course, all of this precludes such discussions as leaving it elsewhere and leveraging it’s value.
I can sum up the solution to this problem in two words
Thermohaline Circulation. Also known as the Atlantic Conveyor or Gulf Stream.
First you take the gold down to a protected military
shipyard with ocean access. You then attach electrical cables to the gold so it
acts as a massive anode in an electroplating process. With the oceans of the
world acting as your solution and setting up a cathode in the waters off of Venezuela.
Now sure, the amount of power it is going to take to suspend
all that gold in solution will be mindboggling, and the average Thermohaline
Circulation turnover rate is about 3000 years. But you can’t steal what you can’t
find!
For this to work, the Atlantic ocean will need to be replaced with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia
I can sum up the solution to this problem in two words
Thermohaline Circulation. Also known as the Atlantic Conveyor or Gulf Stream.
First you take the gold down to a protected military
shipyard with ocean access. You then attach electrical cables to the gold so it
acts as a massive anode in an electroplating process. With the oceans of the
world acting as your solution and setting up a cathode in the waters off of Venezuela.
Now sure, the amount of power it is going to take to suspend
all that gold in solution will be mindboggling, and the average Thermohaline
Circulation turnover rate is about 3000 years. But you can’t steal what you can’t
find!
surely would be sweet to take all that gold, but why don’t call it a day whit a few shipments instead, bribe someone to let me take a portion of the gold, still a few millions replace it with a placebo to avoid immediate detection, bribe another person to remelt the gold an get away whit a small fortune, of course it may be dangerous to leave all that loose ends… include some explosions, a cool vehicle and we are all set for a blockbuster
Wait for helicopter Ben Bernanke to start Quantitative Easing III. Wait for gold to sky rocket to US$4000 on ounce. This effectively halves the problem, as $12 billion dollars worth of gold now weighs less than half as much as before.