Physical gold vs. paper gold - my take after some serious portfolio shifts

• •I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter lately on here about "paper gold" and how it’s basically the same as holding physical.
• •For me, it was a fundamental decision to shift away from traditional equities after seeing some serious market volatility.
• •The goal wasn’t just growth, but capital preservation, especially with the economic winds changing.

I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter lately on here about "paper gold" and how it’s basically the same as holding physical. As someone who’s gone deep into this – and I mean really deep, since most of my seven-figure exit from a tech company is now sitting in gold – I feel compelled to weigh in. For me, it was a fundamental decision to shift away from traditional equities after seeing some serious market volatility. The goal wasn’t just growth, but capital preservation, especially with the economic winds changing.

My big move was about three years ago, after I sold my stake in the software company we built here in Dublin. I was looking for a bedrock asset, something that wasn't just a promise on a screen. That led me down the rabbit hole of physical gold IRAs. I looked at ETFs like GLD and even some of the gold mining stocks, but for me, the core appeal of gold was its tangible nature. If I own an amount of GLD, I’m essentially owning a share in a trust that says it owns gold. It’s still a layer of abstraction, a piece of paper, even if it's digital. With my physical gold, I know exactly where it is, what it looks like, and honestly, the peace of mind that comes with that is invaluable. It’s stored securely, off-site, and I get regular updates on its valuation. It's about as far from a "paper asset" as you can get, which was precisely the point.

Now, I get the arguments for paper gold: liquidity, lower storage costs, easy trading. And for some, that's perfectly fine. But when you’re talking about a significant chunk of your net worth, for me, those conveniences didn't outweigh the counterparty risk. The whole point of moving into gold for me was de-risking my portfolio from system failures, not just market fluctuations. If the financial system ever hit serious turbulence – think real, honest-to-goodness global economic instability – I have far more faith in the value and accessibility of my physical holdings than I do in an ETF trying to redeem its underlying assets through a potentially compromised system. Has anyone else made a similar leap from "paper" to "physical" and found it to be the right call for their specific risk profile?

I’m genuinely curious to hear what other long-term investors here think. Is the liquidity of paper gold really that much of a selling point for a truly long-term, wealth-preservation strategy, or are we just sacrificing security for convenience? Especially with everything going on globally, I can’t shake the feeling that genuine ownership matters more than ever.