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I wonder how many are attempting to smuggle gold that is dissolved in a liquid (I'm guessing that's a lot harder to detect)
by jack_riminton 2y ago
I wonder how many are attempting to smuggle gold that is dissolved in a liquid (I'm guessing that's a lot harder to detect)
- GordonS 2y agoWhat liquids are gold soluble in, and how much gold could you dissolve per litre?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoAqua regia. Famously used to dissolve Nobel prizes to hide them from the Nazis[0] When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.[12][13] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia
- GordonS 2y agoWow, that's actually pretty cool!
- coffeebeqn 2y agoAqua regia? I think that would look a lot more suspicious
- reactordev 2y agoZero. The volume needed would make that completely impractical. Smuggling 100L for 10oz is definitely conspicuous.
- jack_riminton 2y agoI think you're off by several orders of magnitude https://www.finishing.com/236/27.shtml#:~:text=The%20amount%20of%20gold%20per,the%20temperature%20of%20the%20solution https://www.finishing.com/236/27.shtml#:~:text=The%20amount%.... Correct me if I'm wrong but 100 litres would be able to dissolve about 23kg of gold which is more than 800oz
- reactordev 2y agoYeah, my only knowledge is from watching sreetips on YouTube and his process for refining. My point was about the volume of aqua regia required. I’m not a chemist. Wouldn’t that scrap need further refinement into pure(er) gold? To get 99.9?
- jack_riminton 2y agoWell you wouldn't start with scrap
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoEven with your numbers... 100L is about 25 gallons. 10oz is about $23,000. That seems perfectly reasonable to attempt. With the corrected numbers, 25 gallons to move 800 oz, which is nearly $2 million? Yeah, that seems quite enticing. The secret may be that you have to look like you're smuggling hazardous chemicals into the other country, rather than smuggling money out of the country of origin. I have never attempted either side of this, but I suspect that the bribes for smuggling small[1] amounts of hazardous chemicals is smaller than the bribes for smuggling money. [1] Small by industrial standards.
- jack_riminton 2y ago
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoBootleg Goldschläger.
- wmeredith 2y agoGold is already hard to detect and it's very compact for its value. Dissolving it in liquid would likely defeat the purpose.
- jack_riminton 2y agoHow would it defeat the purpose?
- petre 2y agoIt's strong acid, no sane shipping operator will transport it.
- jack_riminton 2y agoThen how do you think strong acids get transported to countries that don't make them?
- petre 2y agoBy using proper insurance, import documents and inspections which would make acid dissolved gold quite obvious.
- jack_riminton 2y agoYou think every liquid brought into a country is tested in a lab?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]