Is There A War On Cash And Precious Metals In 2024

There may be additional info to help us all understand better, but it appears that the OP backed himself into a corner. The loan officer, based on all statements and balances, sees that OP needs to pony up 5k to complete escrow and he doesn't see it ANYWHERE. It may be that with this type of loan, the face amount of the loan is fixed. I think ordinarily any fees and closing costs can be folded into the loan (i.e. increasing the face amount of the loan). Although not great for the borrower because he has borrowed more and his monthly mtg is a tad higher, it greater simplifies the process.

With the benefit of hindsight, many months ago the OP should have made all his balances fat, happy and liquid in anticipation of escrow.

Glad to see you got it all sorted out.

They know that too. Stores track all your purchases now and are apparently sharing with the government (search gun sale tracking).

This is indeed enlightening. Perhaps selling your bullion in the BST or to a local shop could avoid some of the scrutiny. That said, I am not sure why the mortgage company is concerned if you pay your gains taxes or not. My broker does not check to make sure that I pay capital gains on stock sales.

That is not what the OP said:

These are the "words", but they were looking for proof of the source of the money, they don't care what taxes were paid.

The sale could have actually produced a loss. It is the amount of the sales price being $5,000 or more that they are looking for.

Well there is indeed a war on cash.
In fact in July of 2023 Fednow went live which means anyone from JPMorgan to a mom and pop diner can now pay and get paid instantly via the Fednow network.
The Fed set up Fednow because it wants to make the dollar into a CBDC ... a Central Bank Digital Currency.
The Fed and other Central banks are very scared of the cryptos and they really want to curb them in. The way they will do that is via creating their own cryptocurrency which is just a digital dollar and then they will go and shut down bitcoin once everyone is on their network.
This will of course start out as optional and the digital dollar will basically transact side by side with cash but at one point once a critical mass of people are on Fednow and use the digital dollar the US will basically declare all notes no longer legal tender. Other countries do that all the time whenever they have new notes. Some like the UK would still honor any old note at face but only if you physically take them to the Bank of England in person. Others like Switzerland actually void their banknotes completely. Regardless the US will eventually do this also but probably not for a while.
The first thing to happen will be for the USD to become digital. If Biden wins again this year it will happen in his term, if Trump wins then it won't happen then but will do when the next Dem becomes POTUS at the latest.
It is true that not allowing cash can give SOME protection against criminals but they usually have some alternative way of transferring money such as cryptos or even "fine art".... in reality a digital currency will give unprecedented control to any government. And that is seldom a very good thing.

Interesting.