Interesting thing is that they constantly adjust the price of the gold bars as the price of gold fluctuates. I guess these machines need a permanent internet connection to receive the current gold price.
Who will be the first to do a MITM and adjust the price to 0.001? ;)
I always wondered where they came from until I grew up and found my dad's giant suitcase full of coins.
Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+ markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar).
Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is $1389/oz, a 10% markup.
If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice man in the diamond district for spot plus $50 cash.
When you live in a dysfunctional country, gold is consider a useful investment.
(I don't know if the US or other countries require registering identity of people buying gold in person in cash? I don't think the US does).
I'm sorry.
Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% / year.
Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds directly from the treasury carries no fees.
Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online
The only common asset class that is worse in this regard would be real estate, but unlike precious metals, real estate can at least produce income or provide utility while it is held.
At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.
For the sake of the argument, you can still initiate a chargeback even if you don't claim unauthorized use of your card: e.g. you did make a purchase but the merchant didn't deliver the product, or the product was defective and the merchant refused to give you a refund, etc. But I don't think you'll have much luck trying to claim that a bona-fide financial institution gave you something that's not gold.
