In 2003, Vietnam removed four zeros from its currency. Old notes (10,000 VND) became new notes (1 VND). The government simply "lopped off the zeros."
Vietnamese bloggers frequently warn that the State Bank of Vietnam could "LOP" the SJC brand—forcing everyone to exchange their SJC bars for a new brand at a 50% loss. This actually almost happened in 2012-2014 when the SBV tried to monopolize gold production. lop gold blog
It forces you to ask: If my government reset the value of my bank account to zero tomorrow, do I have a backup that weighs the same as it did yesterday? In 2003, Vietnam removed four zeros from its currency
In Vietnam, the government doesn't just regulate gold; it brands it. SJC bars are the only "legal" gold bars for hoarding. Private minted bars (like PAMP or Credit Suisse) are viewed with suspicion. This actually almost happened in 2012-2014 when the
To the uninitiated, "LOP" sounds like a haircut. To the initiated, it is a nightmare. And when you combine “LOP” with “Gold Blog,” you aren’t just reading about economics. You are reading about the collective trauma of a nation’s currency redomination and the paranoid, often brilliant, logic of holding physical metal.
If you have spent more than a few hours in the deep end of the gold bug community—specifically forums like GoldRefiners, Vietnam Gold Trading groups, or certain sections of Reddit’s r/Gold—you have likely stumbled across the cryptic acronym: LOP .
The value of the "LOP Gold Blog" genre isn't in its predictions—most of which are hysterical and date-stamped 2010, 2015, 2020 (all wrong). The value is in the .
