[maest]

Right off the bat:

> Money is simply trust. It is not backed by anything.

This is only true of fiat currencies. Not all currencies are fiat.

> A critical piece of information is missing from our education system. A clear definition of money.

That's because the notion of what money is has changed over time and, quite often, people can't agree on a proper definition.

> Because governments are incentivised to inflate the money supply and make debt easier to pay back, the critical “trust” component of the money has a non-zero probability of erosion. That means it’s just a matter of time until the currency fails.

This is definitely not a widely held view.

The main insight the author claims is:

> If money is trust, what are we trusting? We are trusting that a dollar maintains purchasing power. Purchasing Power is what you can buy for each of your dollars when you spend them.

Again, not a widely held view, and it's not clear that's where the value of a currency comes from.

With the risk of being too harsh, the author is clearly not an economist, doesn't have any deep insight into what money (more precisely dollars, in this case) is, and also comes off as biased (he works in crypto, which usually has an agenda against "mainstream" currencies).

[s3v]

It doesn't matter if we use fiat, non-fiat, dollars, bitcoin, gold, or seashells for money. It's still a trust-based asset. We have to believe that other people will take it in exchange for goods or services. If that trust ends, whatever we use for money is worthless. Money is a collective idea, nothing more.

[netsharc]

It's weird how people think gold is like money prime, and will always have value... It only has value because people think (i.e. trust) someone else will value it (Hello cryptocoin traders). In a world where there's no food and you're hungry, gold is worthless.

[jsmith45]

Gold at the very least does have industrial uses. So even if everybody stops coveting it for jewelry, status symbolism, or treating as an alternative for currency, its value is unlikely to drop completely to zero. Indeed it would likely see even greater industrial use if it were less expensive. But of course, industrial use alone would not keep the price anywhere even remotely near where it is now.

The real trick with gold is that it has that nice shiny appearance that makes people covet it. As long as it maintains that, I'm pretty sure it will continue to sell at a significant premium over its raw industrial value. That said, I'd hardly be shocked if gold prices were to drop significantly, at some point in the future.