The gold confiscation of 1933

[paxmao]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Executive Order 6102 required all persons to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 (equivalent to $413 in 2020)[5] per troy ounce. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the recently passed Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, a violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 2020),[5] up to ten years in prison, or both.

This has to be more widely know particularly for younger people who have lived in an era in which banks seemed solid, money seemed to be of some value and most governments somehow seem respectful of private property. There is no haven, no absolute safety and you should not take anything for granted. Bitcoin may help you protect from these cases, yet, again, nothing is watertight.

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[magneto]

You're right.

Bitcoin has substantial advantage over gold for this simple reason - you cannot simply say that you're going to confiscate it as a government because everything is anonymised and such.

It's a shame that no one seems to care about these things and everyone is putting blind faith into the government, which is rarely rewarded.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Bitcoin has substantial advantage over gold for this simple reason - you cannot simply say that you're going to confiscate it as a government because everything is anonymised and such.

I wouldn't put too much faith in bitcoin's anonymity, because if any government decided they wanted to seize their citizens' coins, I'd imagine they'd find a way to trace who owns what (at least for a lot of people, and especially those who use exchanges like Coinbase).  Hopefully it'll never come to that, because OP is indeed correct that the gold confiscation that happened shows you how much power the government has.  I mean, hey....they make the laws, and it would just take the stroke of a pen to make us all outlaws.

It's a shame that no one seems to care about these things and everyone is putting blind faith into the government, which is rarely rewarded.

You live in France if I'm not mistaken, so I don't know how it is over there with government and people's faith in it, but here in the US I'd say there are tons of people who don't trust our government--and they're right not to.  There are so many examples of politicians and other government workers perpetrating all sorts of misdeeds (in addition to all the bullshit policies that have been enacted) that I don't understand how anyone could trust them.

I don't think I was ever taught about the gold seizure of 1933 when I was a kid in school.  Those are the types of things that don't make it into standard textbooks of American history unfortunately.  Hell, I'd much prefer that subjects like that weren't even taught in grammar and high schools in the US.  What's the point of memorizing all of the US presidents, anyway?

[dothebeats]

If there's an important lesson that history will teach us about how governments work, it is that it's almost always certain that they will fuck up and cross the boundaries that they also have set initially. Bitcoin at the least provides some assurance that we will be protected from this event somehow, but you can never be sure until when will the government be able to hold the fort and not do the same shit over again.

[Hydrogen]

Gold, precious metals and economics used to be a much larger part of global culture. The 3rd James Bond movie Goldfinger featured a plot to make the united states gold supply radioactive in an attempt to neutralize its stabilizing affect on america's economy for a time.

Around 1940 nazi germany launched something called operation bernhard. It was an attempt to flood the UK with counterfeit fiat currency that was indistinguishable from legit currency. In an effort to destabilize and crash the UK economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard

Topics like these have slowly but surely drifted out of the public consciousness.

I'm not 100% certain on the politics behind the gold confiscation of 1933 but thanks for bringing it up, I'll definitely look into it.

[Findingnemo]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Actually I didn't know that, something like this happened in the history so yes your thread is going to serve the actual purpose of creation.

Imagine, what will happen if same kind of law has been passed in 2021 or 2025? It will create a chaos for sure among the people and there is possibility of such law can be passed at any time because government solely hold power to do anything as what they want. Yes, bitcoin may save but governments already broke the anonymity by stick KYC regulations for the exchanges so they will know who actually have bitcoin in their portfolio or can sentence the penalty if the people didn't obey them.

[philipma1957]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Executive Order 6102 required all persons to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 (equivalent to $413 in 2020)[5] per troy ounce. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the recently passed Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, a violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 2020),[5] up to ten years in prison, or both.

This has to be more widely know particularly for younger people who have lived in an era in which banks seemed solid, money seemed to be of some value and most governments somehow seem respectful of private property. There is no haven, no absolute safety and you should not take anything for granted. Bitcoin may help you protect from these cases, yet, again, nothing is watertight.

All governments have Lawyers guns and money.

They can always send men with guns to take your money.

The only way to be free from this is to be dead.

Most of us do not want that option and we do what we can do to get along. ie sheeple

[Obito]

There's no compensation needed here, I think that it's a reasonable thing to do because that's a wartime plus it clearly mentions in the Wikipedia article that it was issued because they want to make sure that the economic depression won't get worse and that the hoarding of gold causes he growth of the economy stunted. Yes it's a bad thing but given that at that time it's a desperate times, I think that desperate measures are going to be involved.

[ChiBitCTy]

As a coin collector this is something that I've come across before and have seen the actual "notices" that were sent out by the Government.  It's funny to think about today being that there is absolutely NO WAY in hell that the government could get anyone to turn in their gold or precious metals of any kind for that matter.  They can come try and take it, otherwise, not a change.  Crazy to see how much things have changed, and I would argue progresses, in that sense.

[Charles-Tim]

Bitcoin may help you protect from these cases, yet, again, nothing is watertight.

Yes, to many extent. But old bitcoin users would be disappointed that new bitcoin users do not know what privacy is. Many if not most recently bitcoin users do not even know that bitcoin can give privacy, they have preferred to make use of custodial wallets and custodial exchnges and many other crypto related custodial services while making use of bitcoin. Many of them can not even differentiate between custodial and noncustododial wallets, centralized and decentralized exchanges.

But actually bitcoin can help, bitcoin users can still manage to do their thing and have the privacy they want if they know the right way to go like making use of open source noncustododial wallets, decentralized exchanges, privacy browsers, VPN or DPN but preferably Tor while making sure the relay circute is changed before accessing different wallets, addresses and the likes or using full node wallets like Bitcoin Core etc.

Ways to privacy can be easy but it has to be learnt.

[fiulpro]

I will be honest: I had no idea about this, literally none.
I do think that this did prove that things might turn for the worse anytime, the government is actually super unstable right now, they are printing money, taking loans and at the same time they are taking new projects. With the mass resignation of the workers I do think that it might be a super hard thing to trust that they won't stoop to this level.
-Privacy for government is a joke most of the times they track every single person who has an ID card.
-With KYC as well, you give them full access of your money transactions/in and out
-i do think that bitcoins can give users a backup undeniably, this is far more likely to happen sooner or later. The government might not return your money kept in banks, who knows what's going to happen. Better be safe than sorry.

[abhiseshakana]

There's no compensation needed here, I think that it's a reasonable thing to do because that's a wartime plus it clearly mentions in the Wikipedia article that it was issued because they want to make sure that the economic depression won't get worse and that the hoarding of gold causes he growth of the economy stunted. Yes it's a bad thing but given that at that time it's a desperate times, I think that desperate measures are going to be involved.

FDR took this policy to avoid hoarding gold which was allegedly the cause of the economy not turning and the economic depression. In addition, FDR wants to limit the flow of gold to Europe. Learning from this case, the problem is not the gold, but the practice of hoarding and monopoly causes the economy to not turn and the concentration of wealth in certain people. This causes economic inequality.

[dkbit98]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

I think that something similar happened in Weimer republic when they removed gold peg, and they first announced how exchanging gold for paper fiat bills was only voluntary.
We know that gold was confiscated in United States, but I think that same thing was done in other countries and colonies around the world.
Think about this, if they could take away and confiscate gold in theory they could do the same for anything else like guns and bitcoins.

[pinggoki]

If there's an important lesson that history will teach us about how governments work, it is that it's almost always certain that they will fuck up and cross the boundaries that they also have set initially. Bitcoin at the least provides some assurance that we will be protected from this event somehow, but you can never be sure until when will the government be able to hold the fort and not do the same shit over again.

I don't get how people are still supportive of their own government though, as if they really care about them that they die fighting for them. Man, I do hope that these lessons would go through many people because our current generation is becoming willfully ignorant and woke at the wrong things. Setting aside my hatred of governments that sees their citizens as pawns, I think that the confiscation is a good thing, the article briefly mentioned the prevention of trading with enemy states and that they see that hoarding is going to affect the bounce back and growth of the economy in the long-term so they did this.

[TheNineClub]

What they did back then with gold could be done today to crypto by neutering it with regulations, not being able to actually do any payments with it, high taxes on crypto investments, so on and so forth. They might not be able to confiscate it, but they can sure as hell make it hard for you to get anything out of it. It seems they have no interest in doing that, but that doesn't mean they can't

[el kaka22]

I would guess that gold standard played a big role in this and today we do not have that gold standard. In May of 1933 they confiscated "all" they could, not all of them of course since people were hiding gold anyway, and by June they realized that they can't just do it and gave up and moved out of gold standard.

This is the way that the world works, you try your best and if you fail you just remove that rule if you are the government. Whatever is illegal for you and me, is not illegal for a government because if they want to do something then they could simply make it legal and do it. Today we do not have the same problem, sure we have problems but nothing regarding getting our gold's confiscated because gold is an asset right now and nothing more, would be similar to confiscating all stocks, but back in those days it meant the power of economy for the whole government.

[V-t.Ester]

That was really the crucial time in history, when USA government took under control all money of the country. By the way, not so long ago all banks had gold reserves. That was considered very prestigious for the country to have gold reserve, like they have something stable and for me that always sounded like paper money are back by gold but not just officially printed paper sheets. Unfortunately that has changed. Gold reserves vanished somewhere from national treasuries of many countries. History, of course, conceals where everything had vanished.

[aysg76]

I wouldn't put too much faith in bitcoin's anonymity, because if any government decided they wanted to seize their citizens' coins, I'd imagine they'd find a way to trace who owns what (at least for a lot of people, and especially those who use exchanges like Coinbase).  Hopefully it'll never come to that, because OP is indeed correct that the gold confiscation that happened shows you how much power the government has.  I mean, hey....they make the laws, and it would just take the stroke of a pen to make us all outlaws.

That's right and some people still believes it's completely anonymous and you can't trace the transaction routes but in reality it's pseudo anonymous and we have many threads informing the members about the same but still less care to read them.The government can have some ways to trace it like they also confiscated large amount of bitcoins at the time of Silk road case but yes private cryptos like Monero have complete intraceability but it's not widely used.

The government can take away your gold bonds anytime they wish but in actual sense they will portray it as an emergency situation like this happened in 1933 case.But there is something which is worth noting that is :

Executive Order 6102,forcing citizens to sell at well below market rates. Immediately after the “confiscation”, the government set a new official rate for gold that was much higher as part of the Gold Reserve Act 1934.

The highlighted part shows people were forced to sell at low rates and later on when they have it the prices were increased with new Act in 1934 and Gold Reserves Act was made but still today also it's central own financial assest which is not at all safe to invest now.

The other big reason why i don't like gold investment is no returns with rising inflation at all but to contrary there are negative return over it over a decade which is surprising but still for some people it is good investment.I recently made a topic about the same here because for me Bitcoin is the best part and all these inflationary things to keep away and secure my future and more you understand it more you love it.

Gold is not safe heaven any more

I don't think I was ever taught about the gold seizure of 1933 when I was a kid in school.  Those are the types of things that don't make it into standard textbooks of American history unfortunately.  Hell, I'd much prefer that subjects like that weren't even taught in grammar and high schools in the US.  What's the point of memorizing all of the US presidents, anyway?

They will never teach about their own worst decisions ever because how come they teach you how to fucking reveals the government dark works and loot the normal people as we also thought some economic stability can lead to economic downfall but they never said it was due to recklessly printing money and political grudges and weak political leadership so we live in an illusion under their show and always believed fiat is best for saving and if you have gold you could have safe future but when you realise you come to know bitcoin is the future for us.I was surprised to see some schools in Slovakia teaching kids about bitcoin and also shared the same here :

That's really awesome

When you make them aware about bitcoin at an early age they will come to know the reality otherwise they will be living with the same hyperinflation that's coming their way and your gold coins and other financial assets will not help a lot and government will again be asking people to submit their coins and cash all that so be safe for your future.

[DrBeer]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Executive Order 6102 required all persons to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, all but a small amount of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates owned by them to the Federal Reserve in exchange for $20.67 (equivalent to $413 in 2020)[5] per troy ounce. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the recently passed Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, a violation of the order was punishable by fine up to $10,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 2020),[5] up to ten years in prison, or both.

This has to be more widely know particularly for younger people who have lived in an era in which banks seemed solid, money seemed to be of some value and most governments somehow seem respectful of private property. There is no haven, no absolute safety and you should not take anything for granted. Bitcoin may help you protect from these cases, yet, again, nothing is watertight.

I know for sure - this happened in the USSR, and more than once. They took not only gold. There were laws according to which livestock or grain was taken from the villagers ... throughout the country. There were laws according to which all the jewels were "confiscated" ...

Bitcoin's anonymity ... well, that's a very dubious statement. On the one hand, it seems like yes. But if you bought on the exchange, and the exchange operates in the legal field, then you passed the KYC, and those who want to be "withdrawn" will not be interested in anonymity, they will only be interested in the fact that you have withdrawn X bitcoins from the exchange, and then, as they say, " a matter of technique "how to force them to give ...
No, I'm not talking about the whole world, but definitely about totalitarian regimes

[Ozero]

This is an episode of the US history that is known yet perhaps not widely enough. The executive order 6102 signed by the US president Roosevelt, basically confiscated all the privately held gold in the US giving a clearly insufficient compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Actually I didn't know that, something like this happened in the history so yes your thread is going to serve the actual purpose of creation.

Imagine, what will happen if same kind of law has been passed in 2021 or 2025? It will create a chaos for sure among the people and there is possibility of such law can be passed at any time because government solely hold power to do anything as what they want. Yes, bitcoin may save but governments already broke the anonymity by stick KYC regulations for the exchanges so they will know who actually have bitcoin in their portfolio or can sentence the penalty if the people didn't obey them.

This could theoretically happen, but with cryptocurrency. True, I'm not sure that in this case, citizens will be able to receive some kind of compensation. Most likely, if most states plan to ban cryptocurrency, a certain period will be given, after which the cryptocurrency will be declared illegal, and exchanges and exchangers will be closed. This, of course, will not destroy the cryptocurrency, but will drive it into the shadows, because of which it will lose a significant part of its value. It is better, of course, that this does not happen.