[BjoernKW]

I will never understand the idea of gold as a supposedly crisis-proof currency.

How is hoarding pieces of a shiny but for the most part inherently worthless metal going to help you during a global war?

If you're alluding to an all-out economic and societal collapse: In that case, gold will be just as useless as legal tender. Rather, under such extreme circumstances, we'd probably see a reversion to a barter economy.

[logicalmonster]

> I will never understand the idea of gold as a supposedly crisis-proof currency.

Doesn't gold have some unique material properties that will likely always be in demand? It is malleable and ductile, inert/doesn't oxidize, I believe it is resistant to fatigue, is a good conductor, and lots of others. And as a bonus, it is shiny and pretty. I'm not sure how many of those properties really matter in an active-war Mad Max scenario, but gold has been valued by societies throughout history for good reasons.

If the shit really hits the fan, legal tender will only have some use as maybe toilet paper and kindling.

[BjoernKW]

Those are physical properties rather than economic ones. Gold not oxidising (and metal elements in general being durable) makes it a natural medium for exchanging value. However, that value still is imaginary.

Without being backed by a country / an economic system, and the mere belief that it is valuable, gold has very little value, especially when considering what essentially is a doomsday scenario, in which people probably have more pressing needs than refining and processing gold.

[logicalmonster]

Thank you for your response. Based on your comment, you seem to be operating close to the idea that economic value comes from government dictate. If this is the case, I suppose there's no reconciling our respective positions. (And no problem with that, you're entitled to your opinion)

My belief is that all value is subjective in nature. Economic value is not a property of nature: it's just subjective. A thing has value in a trade not because some authority says it has value, but because everybody values what they receive in a trade more than what they give up.

[BjoernKW]

> economic value comes from government dictate

Quite to the contrary. Economic value originates from the benefit a product or service provides, nothing else.

Currency (particularly if of the fiat money variety) on the other hand, has no inherent value: You can't eat it, you can't use it to build something. Its value depends entirely on the trust people have in the issuing authority.

[eliasgriffin]

> inherently worthless

I think you are misusing this phrase. Gold has the second best electrical conductance, is virtually indestructible, highly biodegradable, a superb heat conductor, and almost impervious to the effects of water, air, and oxygen.

This is why it is heavily used in the aerospace industry and is vital to the exploration of Space.

I'll emphasize a prior point for clarity. Gold Can’t Be Destroyed, only Dissolved.

[BjoernKW]

Those properties are not what people commonly think of when they attribute value to gold, though.

In particular, the idea that gold is a crisis-proof currency has nothing to do with these properties, but rather the notion that because its supply is limited (in contrast to fiat money) and it can't be reproduced or counterfeited, it will be accepted as a medium of exchange even in the most dire economic scenarios such as a complete societal collapse.

Perhaps paradoxically, though, in such a scenario gold has particularly little - if any - remaining economic value.

[sokoloff]

Gold is not "highly biodegradable". Are you confusing that with biocompatible?

[eliasgriffin]

No, I did not mean that although it is both.

References:

(Direct quote) How Gold Is Used In Aerospace: Gold Plating In Satellites https://www.valencesurfacetech.com/the-news/gold-plating-in-...

Biodegradable Gold Nanoclusters with Improved Excretion Due to pH-Triggered Hydrophobic-to-Hydrophilic Transition https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.9b13813

Gold nanoparticles: Synthesis properties and applications https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101836472...

[sokoloff]

The innovation in the second link is an innovation precisely because gold is not biodegradable.