James Wesley:
Can you provide any insight on the banking services and the Lakota [copper, silver and gold] coins from the Lakota Bank? Thanks, – Bryan E.
JWR Replies:
They are to be commended for their pluck, but their fees are high. More importantly, their arbitrary Cu/Ag/Au ratios (2/50/5,000) will certainly come back to bite them. (Fixed ratios are a bad idea! The silver-to-gold ratio is constantly changing. I expect to see a 10-to-1 ratio by the middle of this Century. Anyone that locks themselves into a fixed bimetallic ratio is sowing the seeds of their own downfall. The Liberty Dollar folks made the same mistake. (But they were shut down by the Feds long before the fixed exchange bimetallic ratio caught up with them. In their case, it was their use of the word “Dollar” and the Dollar sign ($) that cost them.)
The concept of selling a 1-ounce .999-fine copper coin for several dollars is laughable for anything other than perhaps a collector’s piece. Copper is a base metal (not a precious metal), and its price ratio to silver is FAR, FAR, FAR from 50 to one! (Copper is priced on the futures market by the TON, rather than by the Troy ounce.)
Sadly, they will likely to get shut down by the IRS, for money laundering and/or constructive tax evasion. The same thing has happened again and again to other warehouse banks inside the United States. See, for example the sad story of Richard Flowers and the Christian Patriot Association.
For the present time, it is far better to anonymously buy one ounce silver rounds at just over spot on the open market and store them at home.