Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Gold. Now to be clear, we are talking about Thai Gold. For those who are unaware, Thai Gold has a different weight and measure, the Baht weight and a different purity so weight and measure which is mentioned in the Constitution and wasn't really until I got to Thailand, and when I say the constitution of US Constitution, it wasn't really until I got to Thailand that I realized just how important weight and measure is. Thai Baht weight Gold operates on a different weight and measure than the sort of international standard which depending on who you talk to but LBMA I believe it is sort of the standard weight and measure of bars that are sold into the liquid gold market on the London Gold Exchange I believe. In any event, Thai Baht weight is not on the international standard, it is not on the international weight and measure of the rest of gold which there are upsides and downsides to that. One of the big upsides in my opinion is it doesn't fluctuate as wildly with the market that the international Gold market operates on. I am not saying it doesn't fluctuate, it's correlated but it's not directly impacted by the international market in gold. Meanwhile, yeah there are some fungibility issues. The fungibility issues here in Thailand there are none in my opinion. You just go into a Thai gold shop, you exchange money for gold and then you can walk back in and exchange that gold right back for money. It might take a minute or two, that is some paperwork, but it is pretty straightforward, not the most difficult thing in the world. 

So with respect to silver, what are we talking about? Well I'm just talking about my own thinking on gold generally. If you can't tell because I make these videos every once in a while talking about gold, I'm a bit of a gold bug. I have just always kind of liked gold; I don't think gold is the end all, be all. I am not one of these people on the internet that "everything's going to collapse tomorrow, put everything in gold, live in your bathtub till it's all over" that's not really how I think, but I do like precious metals. I think that they are an interesting asset and there's no counterparty risk with them in the sense that once you own it, it is a financial asset in the sense that it is traded on financial markets but it doesn't have any counterparty risk in and of itself, so it's interesting. 

Now there are those out there that look at gold and then they look at silver. Here in Thailand, I just don't see where silver has quite the same allure as especially Thai Gold, but as Gold or Thai Gold in this particular jurisdiction most notably because as we have noted in other videos, Gold is actually VAT exempt in Thailand, silver is not. Products dealing in silver have VAT on them. I know this because I have bought silver in Thailand before and you have got to pay VAT whereas if you buy Thai Gold, most notably it's VAT exempt. Now International standard weight Gold, yeah it is still not an issue there but you get into International weight gold buying in Thailand you get into a whole different kind of analysis because there's kind of a premium on it, it's not part of the market here, it really is not quite the same thing. 

The point of the video though is some folks have asked me over the past year or so what I think of silver. I don't have any problem with silver, in my younger days I bought some silver. I am happy I have it. I especially have some really nice numismatic coins that I really like that are in fact silver but in my mind, I kind of look, when I look at precious metals I say "Look, I have got my International Gold and I have got my Thai Gold”. As far as silver goes, I just don't see where that fits into my needs here in Thailand. Now this video isn't going to really apply to the vast majority of folks that are across the world because they don't live in Thailand so it's a different analysis for those folks but I think Thailand is kind of unique where one could say that look you kind of have one kind of Gold and another kind of Gold.