Hmm, not sure why you and others respond so negatively on my comment. I am merely pointing out that your original reply did not account for the usual 3-3.5% transaction fee on these 0% loans. Your only mention of such fee may be the "could borrow at %1 (on the "zero interest" plans)", which isn't anywhere close the 3-3.5% that I see. So taking that into account, "safe" investments like CDs will actually give negative return.
Meta: Not only did I read your whole initial parent post, I had also not mentioned a single word about "gold". So I am really intrigued by your negative tone and accusation of me jumping on the "anti-gold argument" bandwangon. Btw, I really enjoy reading your HN posts. But that doesn't prevent me from pointing out flaws in your logic. If my original reply sounded like an attack, then I guess I should be more careful in my wordings.
You responded to someone attacking me for mentioning gold with "not only that, he..." EG: You agreed with him.
My original reply did account for the transaction fees in "pay no interest loans". I didn't use the same figure you did, but to pretend like I ignored it is wrong. If you had read my post, you would notice that I said that a "safe investment" like a CD would not give you a sufficient return at current CD rates, and so I talked about a hypothetical %6 CD.
Your original reply came as piling on, and since you didn't (and still haven't) recognized that I had addressed the issue you're bringing up, there's no way to distinguish you form the others who are jumping in and telling falsehoods about me based on their own financial ignorance.
I am quite dismayed that nobody has responded on the original point-- using arbitrage to finance your startup-- and instead people are trying to score points by attacking me as if this were reddit.
I'm already pretty hesitant to post to this site due to an expectation that I won't useful discussion in response. This is just convincing me more of it.... so, if you do enjoy reading my HN posts, know that I try my best when posting to avoid stepping on any of the land mines that will result in people attacking me, and I post as if I'm walking on eggshells. I thought that mentioning gold might be tolerated here, but I was wrong.
Meta: Not only did I read your whole initial parent post, I had also not mentioned a single word about "gold". So I am really intrigued by your negative tone and accusation of me jumping on the "anti-gold argument" bandwangon. Btw, I really enjoy reading your HN posts. But that doesn't prevent me from pointing out flaws in your logic. If my original reply sounded like an attack, then I guess I should be more careful in my wordings.