GoldMoney

Read this write up about GoldMoney and find out all about them before you buy any gold.

Who are GoldMoney
GoldMoney.com, based in St Helier, Jersey Channel Islands (UK), was started up by Mr James Turk. James Turk was in international banking, finance and investments for many years after graduating in1969 from George Washington University with a B.A. degree in International Economics. Mr. Turk Founded GoldMoney, in September 1997 and it has grown and become one of the mainstays of the gold industry over the years with Mr. Turk being an acknowledged expert on gold and finance markets.

Since 1987 Mr. Turk has writing and issuing the Freemarket Gold & Money Report, an investment newsletter that publishes twenty issues annually. His innumerable articles have appeared in many financial publications. He frequently speaks at investment conferences on gold, money, and the international banking system, and often appears as a featured guest on radio and television. His latest book, "The Coming Collapse of the Dollar" was published in December 2004.

Opening an Account with GoldMoney
To use GoldMoney you need to have an account with them. GoldMoney acts as a custodian for account holders who buy, own and sell or trade with gold and silver bullion. One of the many advantages here is that there is no minimum or maximum of precious metal one can buy or trade or with another account holder. One can also buy and sell gold or silver with GoldMoney also.

Anyone can open an account and use it to accumulate and move gold around to a limited extent. However, GoldMoney has a Customer Acceptance Policy set up to ensure GoldMoney complies with anti-money laundering legislation. This requires that GoldMoney knows the identity and residential address of each of its customers. By providing the requisite information a new customer can obtain a CAP-Verified status for their Holding. This then gives them full access to the range of capabilities in GoldMoney.

Opening an account at GoldMoney is free, there is no minimum balance required and you can always sell your gold and silver back to GoldMoney anytime at the Current Spot Rate with no exchange fee required. You can also swap or exchange between precious metals with no additional fees.

You can open an account here 24 hours a day seven days a week.
GoldMoney.com

How Does GoldMoney Work
Once you have an account open, you always have 24/7 online access to your account at GoldMoney. Some of the capabilities you have with a GoldMoney account include:

buy gold online, anytime, day or night.
Easily transfer funds from and to any of your bank and brokerage accounts.
Earn interest on your funds (USD, GBP, EUR, CAD) in GoldMoney’s Customer Segregated
Funds Accounts while you wait to buy.
Adjust your gold and silver holdings by directly exchanging one metal for the other.

In addition, GoldMoney recently announced that there is now a new and tax efficient way for US customers to hold their gold and silver in an IRA. GoldMoney have now set up a facility for Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) for US customers. Further information is available on site.

GoldMoney has a patented payment system set up to add value to an account holders precious metal.

Whereas an investment portfolio may already include significant holdings in precious metal ETFs, mining stocks, or even precious metals stored personally in a vault, if an emergency situation were to occur where it was important to quickly convert "paper gold" into currency, making payments with bullion not in your physical possession or to easily convert a bullion bar could become a problem.

However, to off set this problem, GoldMoney has established a patented currency, goldgrams® (1 goldgram = 1 gram of gold), in order to give account holders the ability to make gold payments to each other electronically.

This is a unique advantage to GoldMoney over other forms of gold storage and transfer.

So although account holders with GoldMoney can send and receive funds to their GoldMoney account via traditional financial institutions, such as banks and brokerage companies, this utility by GoldMoney is not entirely dependent upon the network of such institutions.

GoldMoney Security
GoldMoney point out that, “You, not GoldMoney, are the absolute owner of your gold and silver. GoldMoney stores it securely on your behalf.”

When you buy gold from goldmoney.com, you are buying actually gold. It is not a “paper product”, so is not dependent upon a ETF, Certificate or pool operators ability to obtain or redeem gold when you want to sell. There is no fractional system here. This is very important, particularly if there was a “rush” and the program operator did not have sufficient bullion for all their customers to redeem it.

According to GoldMoney, "Nearly all of these types of "paper metal" programs work on a fractional reserve basis, so if the majority of the program's customer wanted to redeem their metal for cash, the program operator would not be able to meet all of its obligations. In other words, "paper metal" products represent merely a promise to pay metal; they are not products that give you direct ownership of metal, and therefore expose you to counterparty risk since you are dependent upon the program issuer's ability to meet all of its obligations."

"Contrary to the fractional reserve nature of "paper metal" programs, the quantity of customer metals recorded in GoldMoney's database is always equal to the quantity of metals in the vaults. GoldMoney guarantees it."

The gold, and silver bullion is all stored in two depositories. The VIA MAT vaults in London, England and Zurich, Switzerland. VIA MAT International is part of Mat Securitas Express AG, of Switzerland, one of Europe's largest and oldest armored transport and storage companies. A policy, underwritten by Lloyd's of London insures all precious metal from theft from the vaults.

GoldMoney's operational procedures include a regular audit by a Big Four accounting firm. This includes the precious metal bar inventory at the vaults and metal circulating electronically in their system. These SAS 70 Type II reports are also made available to GoldMoney account holders when requested. quarterly audits are also provided for precious metal held by account holders.

In addition GoldMoney has a clear governance policy and audit trail with such parties as VIA MAT International and Euro-Dutch Trust Company, independent third parties.

The administration of all metals is provided by an independent party (Euro-Dutch Trust Company) to safeguards the account holders metal by ensuring that any gold and silver is only removed from the vaults under the direction of its owner, i.e., GoldMoney's account holders or customers.

GoldMoney evidently set this up this way to provide assurances to account holders that their precious metal was safe.

How Much Does GoldMoney Cost
Compared to buying gold from dealers in the form of gold coins and bars, GoldMoney is relatively inexpensive. There is a small premium for buying gold from GoldMoney. This covers the purchase and fabrication costs. It is generally less than 2% of the spot price of gold.

The other cost is the account fee which includes storage and insurance for owning the gold.

If your gold is stored at the London vault the fee is a flat 1/10 of a gram of gold per month, This amount depends on the spot price of gold of course but is regardless of the amount of gold you own. In others words, you could own US$1,000 worth of gold or US$100,000 worth of gold and your storage fees would still be only 1.2 grams of gold per year.

For storing gold at the Zurich vault, the storage fee for gold is just 0.24% per year, and for silver only 0.99% per year. Again, this is regardless of the amount of precious metal stored.

These fees are less than the storage and insurance fees from most dealers and pooled accounts.

Who Owns the Gold Held by GoldMoney
The GoldMoney account holder or customer is the legal owner of the gold or silver, the value of which is reflected in the account ledger. GoldMoney is a custodian and stores the gold on the customers behalf. The gold or silver is, at all times, in the account holders name.

The gold and silver bars used all meet the standards established by the London Bullion Market Association and the Chain of Integrity requirement is designed to ensure that all forms of physical bullion in the vaults must, in all respects, meet the London Good Delivery standard established by the London Bullion Market Association.

The London Bullion Market Association "…is the trade association that acts as the coordinator for activities conducted on behalf of its members and other participants in the London bullion market...A primary function of the Association is its involvement in the promotion of refining standards by maintenance of the London Good Delivery List." (Source: LBMA website)

More Information About GoldMoney
GoldMoney has gone to great lengths to offer transparency about their operations and the safety and security of the bullion stored on behalf of their customers.

Opening an account is free and can be done by going to GoldMoney.com.

GoldMoney is a good way of accumulating gold relatively inexpensively and in safety,
Security and will a minimum of fuss.

If you have an account at goldmoney.com and have bought, sold or traded gold with another account holder online, please feel free to leave your feedback on the quality of service and products including any goldmoney.com on line complaints and special attention or service given by GoldMoney.