Topic: Fake-branded bars slip dirty gold into world markets - page 2. (Read 611 times)

They are castigating bitcoin because they know that bitcoin will block some of this means for them, I mean the banks, and for government, they are just fighting a wring course and there are so many things that is of threat and danger to the economy more than just bitcoin. The best they would have just done for bitcoin is to regulate it as much as they regulated the gold also, prior to when gold was regulated too.

I am sure that some of these challenges would have hindered it a lot before government steps in to create regulation for it, but I believe that with time, government will serious consider bitcoin and then create the necessary regulation that will limit the crime rate in it, and maybe would be same level with gold, when it is able to pass as store of value.

This is one of the things that popular media usually ignore, when they report on Bitcoin and money laundering. The highly regulated Gold industry and trading platforms are not immune to criminal syndicates that knows how to infiltrate these institutions and how to use this to launder their "dirty" money.

The media is quick to point fingers at Bitcoin, but the formal Banking sector and large financial organizations are doing this on a much larger scale, without people even knowing this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/business/standard-chartered-sanctions-violations.html

I actually like that aspect of gold. It just requires you to melt it and then cast gold bars to get rid of any taint. This is where Bitcoin lacks, because coins that are lost are lost for ever, which can be problem long term speaking.

Gold on the other hand can be re-used even after thousands of years. It doesn't lose any of its properties. And yes, this property of gold can be and is already quite frequently abused by criminals and even central banks.

No way that central banks don't know what and who they buy from. They just don't care what brand and number has been stamped into the bar because it's still pure gold at the end of the day. It's worth just as much as their other bars.

Anytime theres a cheaper source of something that can be sold at a higher price, crime will attempt to short circuit that potential difference for profit.    Arbitrage is what crime does just with no regard to proper ownership or legal hindrance, we cant be surprised this is an ongoing problem.

What should really be happening is the gold for vaults is sourced from mines and financing is never short for honest companies.   As I hear it, mines are often left short because risks has big money preferring government and the easy win of QE programs and certain gains from that.      Thats good for me as an investor because the premium and gap in the market gives a better return for those investors who do take an interest in gold as a bull market and that central banks have been net buyers for over ten years now.

    Its a good idea to post this article to underline that pretty much every monetary type can become fraudulent and aid crime in gaining funding and profits.   The bigger the market, the more attractive it is to large fraud and rogue national agents as the money is easier to 'lose'.   BTC of course has good tracking and is open in comparison, its a poor criticism.


Common practise by those who buy in the millions, vault owners is to melt down the gold and rebrand it.   I believe thats how its done probably partly to disown any previous ownership, imagine how much gold is controlled during the previous world wars or the fall of various nations, Libya being the most recent with giant reserves as I recall.

In all this, one thing that struck my mind is that government can now see that bitcoin is not the only devil that they do see bad people send on an errand, bad things do happen everywhere in every system, and no system is a saint, it is just the ability of those who we put in authority to control and protect the system rather than criticizing it.

With all these that is happening around gold also, why has governments that has been antagonizing bitcoin not criticized it, but rather, they are doing their best to make it a safe haven by fighting of the criminal activities around it. is that not what they are supposed to do for bitcoin also, so that it can make things right with all these system that involves digital assets.

Well you know I belong to a family who is into this gold business ..so I know how easy it is .. for anyone to actually keep millions of gold at house ..money laundering ..black market ... Buying illegal things and all ...it is not tracable and it can actually be hidden all the way out ..
Many politicians and other people actually hide the money in terms of gold and it gets messy but once it's hidden good then you can use it for anything.
Also girls use the benefit of transportation of gold through aeroplanes and all so it is actually easier to play in the black market .

Based on what you said, I could assume that gold business is very bad and this despite the fact that this business is legal and is under state control in every country.  If such a situation exists in the gold market, then what can we talk about the use of cryptocurrency in criminal activity.

Organized crime syndicates are pretty good at procuring fake ID and spinning up shell companies. Any syndicate that can make counterfeits this good are highly sophisticated.

The counterfeits are also so good that any dealer would have plausible deniability. Talk to the right dealers and offer the right kickbacks in Hong Kong or Thailand and you might find the right help to get your gold into circulation.

yes that's correct and unfortunately some people in this thread totally misunderstood the idea
OP clearly explained, the gold bars are real gold metal but the markings are fake (forged)

on the topic, I understand the reason behind this is to launder conflict gold
or maybe even to purge stolen gold by melting and (fake) re-stamping to make it legit
but I don't get how it is being used to launder money
aren't gold producers/dealers/trading houses keeping records of their customers?

There are many illegal mining fields when it comes to gold in Africa and South America and all of these comes into the market, they are making replica logo to infiltrate the market and it is not that easy to stop these flow of illegal gold in the market. Glad to see these kind of topic when everyone is going after bitcoin and this market to see these kind of news  .

This happens when they start shitting bitcoin, Karma hits hard in their arse  .

Unfortunately, this happens to bitcoin also, even without regulations.
So-called "virgin" or "clean" coins, newly generated coins that are purchased directly from a miner sell at a premium, sometimes even at 20%-30% if we believe some claims which is a bit too much in my opinion but I'm certain that they are at least 5%-1% more expensive than the exchange price.


Yeah, people should really pay a bit more attention, and the OP did mention it.
It is not about fake gold making its way into JP's safe vaults but real gold with fake date and location of birth  
It's not like an adibas or nykey rip-off and more like Huawei claiming its phones are made in the US.

Seriously, does anybody care is the gold is from Australia or Somalia, if your gas is from Irak or Norway?
As long as it works and it's cheaper...less than 1% care about the origin.

Bitcoin was never used much for money laundering. Its transparent ledger makes it extremely hard to hide your wealth in it. The only advantage I see it have is easy to transfer on other side of world, but you simply cant hide it or spend/exchange that easy.

That's what a lot of people thought, too. Just because gold came from legitimate sources doesn't mean the gold per se is legitimate; there are still some that passes through inspection and sometimes, what they give you isn't pure gold and there are some elements added to it to attain that mass. Even if you have the paperwork, if you were given gold with some % of it being mixed with other metals, you are not holding an authentic gold at your hands.


Yep, and gold with cheap metals embedded within it has been more and more common in contemporary times knowing that security protocols and ways to detect gold hasn't changed much since forever. The gold market is a scary place to be in, especially those people who are not so meticulous in what they buy.

I am amazed with this story. Right now, there is a growing demand of gold as it is originally the safe haven in times of distress and chaos. The perennial demand for gold has been the very reason why unscrupulous personalities can be engaging in fake gold and even use gold to launder illegal money. So it is not anymore true to say that it is Bitcoin that is facilitating money laundering as any asset digital or not can be utilized for this activity.

This fake gold is more common in Asian country, especially china, I am even surprised that Japan is involved also because I know japan to always be after quality which is why they have one of the best quality technology from Japan.  I do buy some gold a lot from chine, some of them are actually gold, but with a very thin layer and as the article said here, they are almost more of metals, but the ones that I buy are more of metals.

I know that it could be legal sometimes because gold is divided into 10k, 14k, 18k and 24 karat, I think the 24 karats is actually what is meant to be used for gold bar and if anyone is selling anything less than that is probably practicing a fraudulent business. I think is better if people transact more on digital gold, which is safer than the physical gold.

at the end of the day, you've got kilo bars of pure gold in your hands either way. if a counterfeit is good enough to be fungible, who really cares? i have a certain appreciation for people who can beat the system.

there's a parallel to bitcoin here. some people are seeking out "legit" bitcoin and will pay a premium for it---like freshly mined "virgin" coins or coins auctioned off by the USA government. they avoid exchanges, mixers, and other services because they don't want "tainted" coins. just like gold custodians don't want "tainted" gold.

at the end of the day, i'd rather everything be fully fungible. lack of fungibility only hurts little guys like us. if it's real gold, or my node says it's real bitcoin, that's good enough for me. and i wish that were true for everyone else. that would be a truly free market.

This is why Bitcoin will never be hugely popular for money laundering, it leaves a trace that will stay there forever, waiting to be untangled, but with physical things like gold or fine art or cash, all traces can be erased. And in Bitcoin it's much harder to obfuscate large transaction.


You need the tiniest bit of Bitcoin knowledge to tell the fakes from real Bitcoin, while with gold only specially trained experts can do it.

It's funny how when there is something negative going on in the precious metals world, JPMorgan's name always pops up. It wouldn't surprise me if they have something to do with this.

Every central bank has a database of the serial numbers of each gold bar that they own, yet duplicates managed to sneak their way into their reserves. This to me looks like this shady activity is purposely condoned.

I find the reaction of people trying to poke fun of gold not really justified. They act like the bars are not real gold but that's not the case. All bars are 99.99% pure gold-- just the brand stamps are manipulated.

QR code also seems like a good idea to me. I suggested it a while ago when people were discussing whether fiat can be made so that it's impossible to fake it. Cryptos are indeed not to blame for money laundering activities. There's been various research showing that banks launder more money than cryptos (actually, this one is simply a fact) and that terrorists prefer fiat for now. Cryptos are associated with cybercrime, but it's also growing regardless of the usage of Blockchain, just because of the general advancements in tech. It's just easy to blame cryptos as something new and suspicious, and it's also an attempt of the old institutions to survive by accusing the new thing of having negative impact.

This alone is a slap on gold itself as a precious metal because this is just showing that it can be adulterated and when that happens, the end is closer than before. I wonder how possible it is to have a fake bitcoin mined from whatever place the adulterated personified individuals might want to go get one and that is an advantage I am seeing here that bitcoin has over gold and comparing them is even out of place.