One of the most important things I learned at this year’s Casey Research Summit was that an individuals biggest risk to their safety, health, & wealth is political risk. Governments around the world are spending recklessly and making poor decisions to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the status quo. Cyprus was the signal to everyone that no assumptions can be made regarding the perceived safety of government backed financial sectors. When Cypriots woke up that fateful Saturday morning in 2013, they saw their bank accounts looted by the greedy & irresponsible hands of the TPTB (the powers that be). Some say this could never happen here, in the land of the free. They’re wrong & the dye has been cast for future theft by the scions in government.

Perceptive investors need a plan to avoid becoming victims in a similar scenario. Given that many Crush the Street readers subscribe to the “hard money” mindset, I won’t over-advocate the very real benefits of gold and silver ownership in this article. However, how and where you own these precious metals is of the utmost importance as you don’t want the looters coming after your real money, therefore, consider striking a balance between onshore and offshore storage to mitigate your risk when it comes to storage needs.

For onshore storage, try to keep the metals outside of the banks and put their safe keeping at home or in third party depositories. Hell, bury some in the back yard over at grandma’s house or at your rich uncle’s farm. The point here is to get your wealth outside of the system thereby making it more difficult for the government and their friends in banking to get their hands on. Do not assume your safe deposit boxes are safe, especially if there is a run on the banks.

Offshore storage needn’t be any more difficult. Consider using a company like the Hard Assets Alliance to set up gold and silver storage in a friendly jurisdiction like Singapore. With regular audits and real time updates, a trusted company like HAA will diversify your political risk outside of the US and could very likely serve as well planned insurance when things start heading south. HAA is not cost prohibitive & extremely easy to use – check them out at http://www.hardassetsalliance.com.

After you get your hard money in order, it’s time to be creative and innovative with storing some wealth in bitcoin. Yes, the price of bitcoin remains volatile, but if you can educate yourself regarding the underlying technology and huge upside, the cryptocurrency could serve as a useful vehicle to keep your purchasing power safe (and don’t forget bitcoin surged post Cyprus crisis). Remember, bitcoin is a decentralized currency & payment system…there is no “bitcoin” company and governments can’t just raid your account. Your best bet will be to purchase bitcoin on one of the major exchanges then transfer the coins to your own private (and ideally cold storage) wallet. With this approach, the only way you can lose your bitcoin is if you forget your wallet password or lose the private key. Check out https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet# to see the mix of wallets you might be interested in leveraging.

The risks are out there and it’s time to start preparing. Average Americans are going to get fleeced and they won’t even know what hit them when their bank accounts (or retirement accounts for that matter) are mercilessly raided for the “greater good”. Don’t be a victim. Don’t be average. Position yourself on the right side of the coming wealth transfer to get your money through the carnage in order to thrive on the other side.