[smt88]

Gold isn't intrinsically valuable as currency or jewelry. Those are cultural attachments that can disappear.

It is, however, intrinsically valuable because of its many medical and electronic applications, which means its value can never theoretically reach zero (unlike a crypto token).

[CPLX]

People always say that. But the fact that gold was considered incredibly valuable by literally every civilization for thousands of years makes it a lot more durable than, like the English language, or books.

I mean like when the Europeans arrived in pre-Colombian America looking for gold, the people they encountered also had it as a major cultural attachment too, without any coordination whatsoever.

I’m not sure there’s a better definition of intrinsic value than that.

[smt88]

I gave a better definition of intrinsic value in the second paragraph: it has unique applications for extremely important categories of goods.

I agree it's not a coincidence that most societies valued gold, even without contact with each other. But that's also because of its elemental qualities.

Silver and most other shiny metals will tarnish. A lot of metals are difficult to shape into jewelry or stamped coins. And other metals are denser and heavier, making them hard to transport.

Gold is better than other metals for coins and jewelry for many reasons.

That doesn't mean its current price is 0% cultural or that that cultural element is permanent.

I agree it's likely going to last for as long as society does, but I don't think that's a guarantee inherent to gold as a metal.

[pezezin]

> And other metals are denser and heavier, making them hard to transport.

Gold is the 8-th densest chemical element, and by far the densest element know to mankind until the discovery of platinum and tungsten (slightly less dense, but very close) in the 18th century. I don't have a source for this, but I suspect that part of its popularity was because being so dense made it impossible to counterfeit.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_elements (sort the list by density)

[otikik]

Aside of its cultural preferences (high luster, desirable yellow color), gold is valuable as jewelry because of its tarnish resistance, ability to be drawn into wires, hammered into sheets, or cast into shapes. Other than that I agree with you.