You're off by more than an order of magnitude. $50 million is 3,382 lbs (1534 kg, 1.6 US tons) of gold at current prices.

You're right; I was calculating based on the per-troy-ounce price, thinking it was the per-gram price. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Your point is still valid: it’s difficult to carry enough gold on your back to survive the rest of your life in the comfort that you’re used to.

Let us know how you get it through airport security.

I have carried several kilograms of gold through TSA screening checkpoints a half dozen times. I know that GP pre-edit was talking about $50mm but it is practically quite straightforward and entirely legal to fly domestically in the US with $0.5-1mm in gold. The risk of civil asset forfeiture is another matter but in 6-8 times I have never personally felt at risk from such.

>Let us know how you get it through airport security.

How you get it through what now? Private aircraft don't deal with that. GP did specify "billionaire", and at that level at least fractional ownership in private long distance transportation is not a reach either.

The point is that transporting large amounts of money that can be physically confiscated is a problem, even if it somehow fit into a suitcase.

Debating the logistics of potentially being able to evade some of those difficulties by having even larger sums of money (to afford private airliners or private security, even in times of unrest) and accepting larger risks misses the point.

Presumably I won’t exchange it all at once, so now i’ll need a mix of coins and bars, taking up more volume.

The billionaire looking for security would already have a cache of stone and gold, but would appreciate other new forms of diversification.

unless you have to cross a border with it?