83 tonnes of Fake gold!!! ????

[mflugher]

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixi ... d-in-China

Apparently this isn't the first time either, happened in 2016 as well????!!!

I cannot believe this isn't worth a $50 spike...
Someone somewhere is gonna have to replace that gold, be it the bank or the insurance co, or the original borrower etc...

[galenrog]

Counterfeiting and fraud are “business as usual” in China.

The value of counterfeit goods emanating from China make the value of 83 tons on gold look small.

Time for more coffee.

[mflugher]

Yeah, but counterfeit goods sold $1k-$2k or less at a time to unsuspecting Gweilo isn't the same thing as billions of Dollars of insured, "tested", "guaranteed" presumably rehypothecated multiple times gold bricks insured in a proper vault and all that. I wouldn't be surprised if some pretty major banks stateside or in Europe were also accidentally wrapped into this with as many times as these gold bars are contracted and swapped, pledged and whatnot on paper between these bullion banks and investment banks, governments and whatnot... For each of these gold bars there are probably 10+ "stakeholders" who have bought the rights, then resold/leased/leveraged it to some other bank that gave them money and also now has rights in it. If the $20Bn # is correct that probably has tentacles that reach out to the half trillion to trillions in potential damages, much like the subprime mortgage situation...

[Recyclersteve]

It used to be really easy to get counterfeit coins on eBay. If you typed a word like “replica” (softer language) instead of Counterfeit, you could find a bunch. Even after that disappeared for the most part on eBay, it still was a big issue on Alibaba. That was a number of years ago. Anyone able to locate any fake gold recently?

[AGgressive Metal]

I originally read the thread title as FLAKE gold and wondered if someone had finally cashed in all their little glass vials of 99% water 1% gold flakes from eBay

[Recyclersteve]

Those gold flakes would probably be a really good decoy to offer up in case someone ever put a gun to my head in the middle of the night. Thx for the idea!