When a good friend of mine told me about Bitcoin back in 2011, it took me quite a while to take him seriously, because - as an asset manager - I was suspicious about some funny digital internet token. I could not understand how you prevent it from being multiplied at will. Since I have no clue about coding, I did not really understand what he was talking about, until he explained it to me as "digital Gold" and how it was designed that way. As a voluntarist in the tradition of the "Austrian School of Economics", I was instantly thrilled and Bitcoin and the whole new cryptocurrency universe became a passion.
That being said, after having spent almost 20 years of research of monetary theory, I consider myself as a monetary agnostic. I don't know what the best money is. But for my subjective taste and needs, Gold and Bitcoin are two pretty good challengers in the currency competition and I like holding both.
As a global-macro fund-of-fund manager, I was used to check any imaginable form of Gold investment, from physical to ETFs and all kinds of derivatives with more or less close link to actuall real Gold and there is not much I would wholeheartly recommend. So when I first heard about a company called "Vaultoro" and checked their service for the first time about two years ago, I was very impressed by the high transparency standards and low costs.
In the meantime, Josh Scigalla, CEO and Co-founder of @vaultoro, has turned into a good friend of mine and yesterday I spent a greet day at the Oktoberfest with him and Erik Voorhees of Shapeshift, when it occured to me that thanks to their combined companies, Steemians can actually turn their liqid STEEM into physical gold!
The best thing: it is surprisingly easy.
Just open an account at Vaultoro.com. If you follow this link, you'll use my referral link, a nice feature you will be able to use too if you become a fully verified user:
But you don't have to! At Vaultoro.com, you can buy up to $ 5.000 Dollars worth of Gold with Bitcoin, without having to do the full KYC process. Just make sure to activate the account protection with Google Authenticator.
Once you have your account you can convert your liquid STEEM into physical Gold in a few easy steps. I will show you the easiest way. There are also a lot more advanced settings for experienced traders.
Go to "Deposit/Withdraw" and choose "Instant order on deposit"
Then click on "Deposit with Altcoins", pick "STEEM" in the dropdown menue and hit "submit":
Now you see how much STEEM you can convert and where to send them:
Copy and paste the address and memo into your wallet and voila, seconds later the STEEM are being converted to BTC and sent to Vaultoro:
After 6 confirmations, I now am the proud owner of 0.332 g of pure Gold, stored for me in the Swiss alps by Josh and his team:
Thanks you guys for the excellent service and here is the proof that Josh and Erik can also handle liquid Gold.
Prost from Munich!
Wow! Thanks for the great write up and tutorial Fabio.
One thing I would like to say that the clients gold is secured in thier name as thier property off our balance sheet in the second largest vaulting facility in Europe by Pro Aurum. This is important because even if somthing happens to Vaultoro even liquidators can not touch our clients property. As soon as the trade is done its not ours. This is very different to fiat exchanges. :)
It was an absolute pleasure hanging out with my crypto mates and drinking giant beers!
Long live steem! Prost!
"here is the proof that Josh and Erik can also handle liquid Gold." xD
great!
Very interesting. resteemed :)
really interesting!!
To me, the only way to own precious metals is to physically have it in my possession.
Hi Chris, I think it's great to have gold at home and somthing everyone should do a little of but I can say one thing. Insurance companies understand risk, that's all they do all day is calculate risk. If you get a quote for insuring gold at home it is vastly more expensive than if you insure it in a professional top - tier vaulting facility that is audited by one of the largest auditing firms in the world. :)
At the end of the day, in a shit hits the fan global collapse I think the best thing to hold at home is whiskey. Why? Because it's far more divisable than gold :) Linn
I totally understand you! But this to me is the next best thing. You get the best of both, Gold's stability and Bitcoin's flexibility.
PS: They deliver the Gold if you want to store it yourself.
This is pretty helpful and you made it really easy for people. Good post!
I found it interesting the way you said how, in 2011, it took you a while to take your friend seriously. That's exactly what happened to me. I just wrote a post about it.
This is probably why a lot of people aren't into crypto yet. Their friends and family tell them things, but I guess they are waiting for the TV to say it? I don't know.
Informative post @fabio
Wow, nice!
Thx für den Hinweis.
Wow Fabio, great article and a great idea! It was so great to meet you in Munich the other day and I agree with you that Josh of Vaultoro is a very impressive person! I had a nice conversation with him and will definately be looking into holding some physical gold with his company!
@kus-knee
It just dawned on me....I urgently need to learn how to distill whiskey!
Thanks for the advice.
Great article.
Interesting post!
Greetings Fabio! Thanks for your support of Steemit.
I am investing a lot here in the form of technical knowledge, time, creativity and tech hardware as I am now a witness for Steem. :)
I noticed that you are voting for @tdv.witness - but that tdv's witness server is offline and of no use to Steem (for quite a long time as far as I can tell).
I would really appreciate if you would support me with a vote to give me a chance to show what I can do for Steem and Steemit. I have a long background in software engineering and also in running social networks.
My witness application post is here.
Cheers!