The new anti money laundering regulations have arrived! Starting from August 1st, cash purchases of gold exceeding 100000 yuan must be reported! The biggest advantage of physical gold is that it is not only a natural currency, but also has good liquidity and anonymity. Now we want to target and block anonymity. The liquidity of physical gold goes without saying that it can be easily traded and exchanged in large amounts with a very small volume. The anonymity of physical gold is actually easy to understand, because physical gold does not have a serial number like physical paper currency, nor can it leave traces like online transactions. Moreover, gold can be divided or remelted at any time, so it is difficult to trace a piece of physical gold after it is traded, and there is no way to lock its next transaction. So when we see the content stipulated in this new regulation, it actually adds a "cash" condition, which is that "cash purchases of gold exceeding 100000 yuan must be reported". The key is that transactions based on legal tender can be traced. So this new regulation is not an isolated measure, but a part of a systematic crackdown. In fact, with the continuous strengthening of various measures in the name of anti fraud in recent years, the traceability of legal tender transactions has become increasingly strong. Firstly, the difficulty of obtaining physical currency is already quite high. Just "large withdrawal reservation registration" and "setting ATM withdrawal limits" can greatly restrict withdrawal behavior. Therefore, the difficulty of identifying the remaining fewer withdrawal behaviors is greatly reduced. The same principle applies to the limit for non counter transfers, so we won't delve into it. The vast majority of trading activities are still conducted through legal tender, and the price of gold denominated in legal tender is constantly changing, making it even more difficult to find another general equivalent for gold trading. The big network for regulating legal tender has been established and the conditions are ripe, so it is now possible to release new regulations on gold trading regarding the anonymity of physical gold. In other words, controlling legal tender is actually controlling the anonymity of gold. It is becoming increasingly common worldwide to have stricter regulations on precious metal trading, and domestic gold trading centers like Shenzhen have been strengthening their supervision of gold trading since last year, requiring real name registration once a certain amount is reached. The current new regulations are not completely new, but rather promoting real name registration supervision on a larger scale. The new regulations mention that strengthening supervision of gold trading is for anti money laundering purposes. In fact, money laundering does not necessarily require the attribute of "general equivalent", and very obvious "non-standard items" such as art, luxury goods, and antiques are often used for money laundering crimes. Of course, we are not denying that some criminals are indeed using the anonymity of physical gold for money laundering, but we should also note that the anonymity of physical gold can actually be used for tax evasion, and this part of the demand requires "general equivalents" and cannot be turned to non-standard products - this is actually another implicit intention of strengthening gold trading supervision. Therefore, the demand for anonymity in physical gold will only be suppressed by new regulations, rather than disappearing. So before the new regulations are fully implemented, there will be a wave of rush buying demand, and the selling behavior associated with these buying behaviors will also form a relatively short long tail effect; And in the long run, what kind of alternatives can have (relative) anonymity, monetary attributes, and good liquidity?