# Executive Order 6102 **Executive Order 6102**, signed by President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] on **April 5, 1933**, forbade the "hoarding" of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates by individuals and required Americans to sell their gold to the Federal Reserve at the fixed price of $20.67 per ounce. It was a foundational act of the [[New Deal]] monetary program and a permanent grievance in the lore of [[Hard Money Politics]]. ## What it did With the country in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt's administration needed to expand the money supply to fight deflation — something the [[Gold Standard]] mechanically constrained, since dollars were redeemable in gold. EO 6102 (issued under the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Emergency Banking Act) broke that constraint by removing gold from private hands. It was reinforced in 1934 by the [[Gold Reserve Act of 1934]], which transferred gold to the Treasury and devalued the dollar to $35 per ounce of gold. The order carried penalties of up to $10,000 and/or imprisonment, though enforcement against ordinary citizens was minimal; the symbolic and structural effect — establishing the primacy of the dollar over privately held gold — was the point. ## Why it matters To New Deal supporters, EO 6102 was a necessary tool to "un-stick" the economy. To its opponents — the hard-money industrialists and gold-standard loyalists — it was confiscation and proof that the federal government would simply seize wealth to fund its programs. That reading made the order a lasting touchstone: - It is the policy backdrop to the alleged 1933 [[Business Plot]], in which industrialists allegedly schemed to force Roosevelt back onto the gold standard. - It is invoked to this day by gold bugs and cryptocurrency advocates as the cautionary tale of why money must be held *outside* government reach — the founding trauma of [[Hard Money Politics]] and a recurring reference point in Bitcoin culture. Private gold ownership was not re-legalized in the U.S. until 1974. ## See also - [[Gold Standard]] · [[New Deal]] · [[Hard Money Politics]] · [[Business Plot]]