If the gold is in an accepted standard form, such as krugerrands, you just need to find a precious metals dealer. If it’s just a pile of gold, then there’s a lot of hassle. I imagine ingots of the sort national gold reserves hold would be somewhere in between.

Shifting a large quantity of gold may require a non-optional explanation of its provenance, with “I woke up and it was just there” or “a genie gave it to me after I did an online quiz” not being adequate, and an inadequate explanation resulting in its forfeiture if not more serious legal hassles. With a large pile of gold and no good explanation, you may be reduced to smurfing small pieces of it to different dealers, moving around a lot and avoiding the attention that such a pile would inevitably draw.

Besides, you never know when the FBI might show up.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fbi-arrests-former-cia-officer-seizes-40-million-in-gold-bars-from-his-home/ar-AA24htDu

I'd choose gold. AFAIK most all money laundering rules deal with cash.

Even if a geine were to give you 500 tons of cash or gold, some governments may have a problem with that and choose to redistribute it.

Choosing gold makes the value much more liquid in my opinion.

Not to mention that gold doesn't rot (unlike USD). In today's economy gold is probably more value-dense (as in, a pound of gold is worth more than a pound of hundered-dollar bills).

Currencies also come and go but gold stays. If you're thinking long-term, gold is the vastly better choice.

You don't sell the gold. You take 10x loans of gold's worth and use it as collateral. Like banks and billionaires do. Well maybe 100x..

you can visit my local pawn shop, they give cash for gold

70m in gold pls

Depending where you are you might not be able to put a that amount of cash in your bank, although it’s easier to use.

Around $140/gram currently for those curious

But the cash is more liquid. Selling $70M worth of gold is a hassle and would invite unwanted attention. $50M in cash you can spend right away.

wolframalpha says the gold is worth about $22m more, but it's a no-brainer. gimme the cash ($50m). the extra 'value' in the gold is not worth the extraordinary measures needed to deal with it.

So only go with bills if they’re in denominations >$100. I guess this would work better with euros.

I agree: you'd probably pawn the gold off to some billionaire for some nominal amount less than its face value. (Would the government let you as a private citizen just sell them like $70 million in gold?) I'm assuming this is legal and in-the-clear, and it doesn't matter if we assume it was created out of thin air.

I say "less than" because the buyers know you probably lack connections and just want it gone ASAP so you're not robbed or worse. Still, whatever percentage hit you take can't be anywhere near the 40% difference between the cash and the gold, and you'd probably dump it so quick that the investment opportunity cost wouldn't matter.

Edit: Although if we assumed this was secret but entirely legal (like I somehow had $50 million but nobody but the revenue service knew), then I could maybe stomach the $20 million loss in exchange for less attention. Still, you'd be drawing a lot of suspicion trying to get that 500 kg of $100 bills into an account (or multiple) before you get found out.

Yeah by my calc a 1kg of $100 bills is about 100K, but the kg of gold is roughly $140k-150K (I just checked and its $144K)

But then I'd have to sell the gold…

Good luck liquidating 500kg of gold without someone taking a decent cut. Gold doesn't always increase in value, it's a highly volatile commodity and atm is highly over speculated. More than likely whenever trump dies or leaves the office the market will correct itself to pre-pandemic pricing.

When people who don't understand what fiat currency is get scared by geopolitical instability they buy gold. Whenever those geopolitical instabilities absolve themselves they sell.

You'd probably be better off taking cash and investing it into index stock then taking the time and money to store, transport, and sell that much gold. There's a reason why billionaires are building Scrooge McDuck vaults and swimming in bullions.

But I'm lazy and would just leave the gold in a closet rather than having to deal with selling it. And $50 mil is more than enough for me.

Gold increases in value. The dollar is decreasing in value.

Most of gold "increasing in value" is really just the dollar decreasing.

A US $1 weighs 1g according to a random website I found on the Internet. I tested and it's close enough.

As of today 2026/06/02, a gram of gold is worth about $140 assuming it's minted and the purity is known.

That honestly surprises me. It means that gold and bills (assuming c-bills) are within an order of magnitude of each other.

Worst case with bill denominations: half a million. Best case with bill denominations: 50 million dollars.

Worst case with gold: $140/g less 10% worst case for verification and bulk buy discounts. $120/g ballpark. $60 million. Best case with gold: ~$70 million dollars upper bound for known minted purity.

So gold has the highest potential return but also the highest overhead.

I'd probably go gold. Even if I lost 50% due to overhead, I'd be able to pay my mortgage and my brother's student loans and for my mum to live in a nice place.

Honestly, any of them would be a life changing amount of money.

70ish million for the gold, and 50 Million for the money.

a hundred dollar bill weighs a gram and is worth $100, a gram of gold is worth $145. However you'll pay income tax on the gold profit when you sell to get your cash.

You can see they're in 100s

Drop it on your foot to see...

Only if you can live with you've done to those poor birds.

For context:

500kg cash in 100 USD bills (like on the picture) would be roughly 50.000.000 USD.

And 500kg of Gold would currently be 71,396,000 USD.

Hey please explain the microwave comparison. I didn't understand that part.

Ok. 500 kg of dollars, 500kg of gold or 500kg of cheeseburgers. Which do You choose?

Precooked weight if that matters.

3000 in weight.
3500 in volume.

But I would assume solid gold bald eagle egg metric is needed?
290.

Perhaps three fiftieths (6%, atm) of a ballroom budget?

5 and a half hours worth of ammo for a vulcan gun?

It’s 500 gold bars about the size of an iPhone 6

Gold would be given in troy ounces