When I was in high school, I had a good friend whose family had a lot of assets in the cash economy and they conducted a lot of business that way--doing barter and trade and buying things with big wads of $100 bills. If you're able to start young and earn income outside the banking system and the gaze of tax authorities, you can actually build a large pile of tangible wealth in the form of vehicles, tools, collectibles, antiques, etc... that's an alternative to putting money in a bank. Some of that stuff is relatively easy to liquidate and if you're shrewd, you can even make a profit on trades. However, if you're not shrewd, or need money in a hurry, you can lose big.
Precious metals and crypto currencies are supposed to serve as alternatives to cash but in practice it can be difficult to liquidate precious metals without paying a significant fee, and it is also rare to find someone who will take PM's in exchange for goods or services. (I did see a craigslist ad for a tractor that had a 20% discount for precious metals purchase.) In my area, only about 1/1000th of craigslist ads are marked to indicate they accept crypto.
PMs and crypto are, to me, akin to stock or commodity trading where there is 0% chance that you can have any knowledge advantage or any other type of advantage versus anyone else in that market. (I stopped trading stocks a few years ago for that reason) With tangible assets, though, you can gain actual useful knowledge and either add value to a thing or at minimum have an advantage in a trade.
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