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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2850 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

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I find de-banking to be a significant enough risk to outweigh the downsides of physical gold. Not enough to build a bunker, or to put my entire net worth in physical gold, but enough to have a few thousand dollars in solid assets that can't be frozen or confiscated with a few keystrokes. The functioning US legal system is the risk that physical gold hedges against, it could be targeted against you for a variety of reasons.

I do find it funny when my father asks how we would prove his stocks belonged to him if Fidelity's "computers crashed." Dude, if Fidelity suddenly and irrecoverably lost all its data, a little stock certificate isn't going to save you, ammunition will be the new currency.

FWIW: I think a big part of this disagreement likely goes back to living situation. If I lived in an apartment and worked in an office building I would probably feel differently.

For United States, we're not there yet for confiscatory debanking yet, all the debanking cases I've heard of were of the sort "take your money and gtfo", not "we will now take your money". If the US ever gets there, and you upset people that want and are able to disconnect you from financial system, your only alternative will probably be cash, but how long can you hold out on your gold reserves, without the ability to hold any non-shitty job (there are probably jobs that don't check IDs but I don't think there are any non-shitty ones) and without access to pretty much any place that checks ID. But yes, for this scenario having a substantial gold reserve in small denominations would work, if you know people who would buy it from you without turning you in.

That said, if you look the part, probably moving to California and pretending to be illegal immigrant would also work. You may get yourself an entirely new identity eventually, get a bank account and even vote (which ironically wouldn't be illegal if you were a citizen before).

if Fidelity suddenly and irrecoverably lost all its data, a little stock certificate isn't going to save you, ammunition will be the new currency.

That said, internal corruption is also a plausible scenario. It's not hard to track if the company is willing, but large bureaucratic corporations are very lazy so it's not impossible that they may refuse to deal with the problem until given the undeniable proof it exists. So downloading statements once in a while and keeping them somewhere on the backup drive may not be a bad idea.

That said, if you look the part, probably moving to California and pretending to be illegal immigrant would also work

Time to get a tan and work on my Spanish accent.

That said, if you look the part, probably moving to California and pretending to be illegal immigrant would also work. You may get yourself an entirely new identity eventually, get a bank account and even vote (which ironically wouldn't be illegal if you were a citizen before).

If I claimed to be from South America, the "when exactly did your grandparents leave Germany?" jokes would write themselves.

RE: Debanking

I mean we don't know what debanking will look like when it happens, because it hasn't really happened yet, but it's not all that uncommon to see accounts frozen but not closed or confiscated as the result of lawsuits. Particularly against businesses, in cases involving tax debts, where the funds are frozen and can't be accessed until the lawsuit is concluded. This is where half the traditional folk-wisdom of keeping some money in precious metals comes from in my family: among small business owners it's a sort of common sense theory that if you have some non-banked assets you can cover bills enough to keep in business for a while and stay afloat. The other half comes from the refugee corners of my family, who figure you're better off fleeing with a bit of gold than without it.

because it hasn't really happened yet,

Oh, "take your money and gtfo" debanking is happening all the time now. It started with "undesirable businesses" - payday loans, pawnshops, firearms dealers, porn, legal marijuana, that sort of thing. The feds strongly "encouraged" banks to cut them off from the banking system. See 'Operation Choke Point". Then after the Great Awokening and Summer of COVID Love happened, it spread from generic "shady businesses" to political undesirables. Trump businesses were kicked out of many banks. Same happened to various Trump-adjacent people. This is a "soft" variety though - it may destroy a smaller business and make life very inconvenient for you for a while, but as long as you stop being annoying to Powers and hide under the rock, you can survive. In fact, if you're billionaire, it probably would be just an annoying inconvenience for you - there always will be some bank willing to hold your billions.

What hasn't happened in the US, but did, say, in Canada (which of course is using the abovementioned debanking widely, but moved on to more severe approach) is full asset freeze, where you are just told "your money is now ours, good luck living without money". And with most woke countries (Canada, EU, etc.) increasingly trying to delegitimize cash, it may be very hard to maintain any semblance of normal life in that scenario. Which is exactly the point of it.

... ammunition will be the new currency

It seems like in any event where physical gold is more valuable than paper gold, ammunition (and food/tools/etc) will be more valuable than gold.

I highly doubt this. Gold has always had value, and in any future primitive society would retain that value.

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