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.

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..

They've been saying that since before you were born.

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.

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.

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

Precooked weight if that matters.

407kg or so short of that kind of deal.