A US $1 weighs 1g according to a random website I found on the Internet. I tested and it's close enough.

As of today 2026/06/02, a gram of gold is worth about $140 assuming it's minted and the purity is known.

That honestly surprises me. It means that gold and bills (assuming c-bills) are within an order of magnitude of each other.

Worst case with bill denominations: half a million. Best case with bill denominations: 50 million dollars.

Worst case with gold: $140/g less 10% worst case for verification and bulk buy discounts. $120/g ballpark. $60 million. Best case with gold: ~$70 million dollars upper bound for known minted purity.

So gold has the highest potential return but also the highest overhead.

I'd probably go gold. Even if I lost 50% due to overhead, I'd be able to pay my mortgage and my brother's student loans and for my mum to live in a nice place.

Honestly, any of them would be a life changing amount of money.

78ish million for the gold, and 50 Million for the money.

You can see they're in 100s

a hundred dollar bill weighs a gram and is worth $100, a gram of gold is worth $145. However you'll pay income tax on the gold profit when you sell to get your cash.

If the gold is in an accepted standard form, such as krugerrands, you just need to find a precious metals dealer. If it’s just a pile of gold, then there’s a lot of hassle. I imagine ingots of the sort national gold reserves hold would be somewhere in between.

Shifting a large quantity of gold may require a non-optional explanation of its provenance, with “I woke up and it was just there” or “a genie gave it to me after I did an online quiz” not being adequate, and an inadequate explanation resulting in its forfeiture if not more serious legal hassles. With a large pile of gold and no good explanation, you may be reduced to smurfing small pieces of it to different dealers, moving around a lot and avoiding the attention that such a pile would inevitably draw.

Besides, you never know when the FBI might show up.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fbi-arrests-former-cia-officer-seizes-40-million-in-gold-bars-from-his-home/ar-AA24htDu

wolframalpha says the gold is worth about $22m more, but it's a no-brainer. gimme the cash ($50m). the extra 'value' in the gold is not worth the extraordinary measures needed to deal with it.

But the cash is more liquid. Selling $70M worth of gold is a hassle and would invite unwanted attention. $50M in cash you can spend right away.

Around $140/gram currently for those curious

So only go with bills if they’re in denominations >$100. I guess this would work better with euros.

Ok. 500 kg of dollars, 500kg of gold or 500kg of cheeseburgers. Which do You choose?

Precooked weight if that matters.

Gold would be given in troy ounces

What about 500 kgs of your momma!

Ez! Find your local CIA agent, exchange the gold for cocaine, go to you local financial district, exchange the cocaine for stocks, sell them immediately at double the price (that's just how the market works when all are motivated by greed), pay capital gain taxes, cash out at a local bank that will charge you like 10% in fees (+10% for the local FBI agent that doesn't want to believe), weight the money, it's exactly 107 bald eagles.

First off, it feels fully wrong to hear about "US notes" instead of bills. I know they are notes, but it feels like hearing someone say exclamation mark instead of point or vice versa. One feels natural to some people, the other for others. Just feels so weird.

Also, depending on how you're obtaining these 500kg of US notes, anything above 100 dollar bills is basically just for bank transfers and you'll have a helluva time using it for anything if it wasn't obtained legally. They're tracked pretty well. The vast majority of Americans don't even know they exist, I'd say, and have surely never seen one.

ETA: I'm mistaken! Apparently those larger bills were legal tender, just rare. It's the 100k gold certificate that was only for bank transfers