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There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

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Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#61

Post by rquantz »

pessimizer wrote: post #35
Killah911 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to have quite a bit of inside info to do that & given hopefully the designers of the machine had enough forethought to not connect the thing to the open internet. To top that off they may even have programmed it to stop if the price variations get too crazy (99% drop may trigger it).

You're making the mistake of assuming that the people who built it are as competent as you are when you're relaxed and posting on HN, rather than being the lowest bidder and/or somebody's cousin and/or having a two-week deadline. It's probably implemented in javascript + nodejs w/mongodb.

It's probably implemented in COBOL.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#62

Post by cbhl »

chloraphil wrote: post #29
robin_reala wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’d never occurred to me that you’d get a note for a tooth in the US. Would be an expensive habit in the UK to give notes away.

Isn't the smallest denomination of a U.K. note £5? In the U.S. it's $1, which is currently worth about £0.60.

Gee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#63

Post by pessimizer »

rquantz wrote: post #61
pessimizer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the mistake of assuming that the people who built it are as competent as you are when you're relaxed and posting on HN, rather than being the lowest bidder and/or somebody's cousin and/or having a two-week deadline. It's probably implemented in javascript + nodejs w/mongodb.

It's probably implemented in COBOL.

One would hope.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#64

Post by vxNsr »

cbhl wrote: post #62
chloraphil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the smallest denomination of a U.K. note £5? In the U.S. it's $1, which is currently worth about £0.60.

Gee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.

same, if I was lucky it was a half dollar.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#65

Post by dustcoin »

pmorici wrote: post #50
gman129 wrote: post #48

Problem is as soon as you buy it you lose money. The reason being that if you want to sell it back you must go to a dealer he will low ball you and you will have a hard time getting the actual value of the gold. It is not like $100 bill that you could just spend on whatever you want, you are stuck with something that in order to cash out you must take a cut by selling it to a dealer.

How is that different than any asset, stock, bond, Bitcoin? The broker always gets a cut.

Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees and friction involved buying and selling compared to other assets.

Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% / year.

Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds directly from the treasury carries no fees.

Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online

The only common asset class that is worse in this regard would be real estate, but unlike precious metals, real estate can at least produce income or provide utility while it is held.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#66

Post by vxNsr »

thedufer wrote: post #53
thisisdave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone buys gold from this machine, potential thieves can guarantee that they'll be carrying at least $255, which is way more than most people take from ATMs.

People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.

I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms.

If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper.

If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's gone.

Just to be clear - a credit card should only be used as a debit card, using it like free money is only lying to yourself.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#67

Post by dustcoin »

brokentone wrote: post #52

Saw this a little while back, the novelty is fun, but the prices are really, really high. Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+ markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar). Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is $1389/oz, a 10% markup. If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice ma…

The $88 coin must be a special coin and/or in proof condition. They are selling an American Silver Eagle for $27 which is still a huge markup, but not 360%.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#68

Post by mindslight »

brador wrote: post #20

Someone in the comments: "what if someone files a chargeback on the card?". Any thoughts on this? By using the machine you've moved from a reversible transaction to an ireversible transaction. It looks ripe for scammers to abuse. At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.

Until banks begin routinely scan serial numbers of all incoming notes (and the implications of this filter through to merchants), gold and cash are about equally hard.

Re: There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street

#70

Post by sgarman »

vxNsr wrote: post #66
thedufer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.

I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms. If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper. If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's…

In SF half the places I go only take cash - so it's not always an option to use credit. Wish it was though.
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