[mpyne]

> I would expect at the least, American readers to be familiar with the "Continental currency" and its devaluation to 1% of it previous value

Indeed, we're all taught in high school about things "not being worth a Continental" during the American Revolution.

This doesn't really disprove my point though. No one believed in the government backing the Continental currency (for good reason as it turned out, the Articles of Confederation later gave way to the Constitution).

You're saying gold is valuable, but again, it's because people give it value. Whatever contribution of value gold makes to our electronics is included in the component cost, you could as well be arguing that plastic, glue, or lithium is intrinsically valuable.

And if we theoretically started finding gold nuggets in every square meter of soil in every home in America then guess what: the perceived value of gold would drop. This has happened throughout history: The Roman Empire switched to using gold coins instead of silver in response to an oversupply of silver being found in their new colonies. The finding of gold in the New World caused prices in Europe to shoot up as a result (people had more gold money to spend but the same amount of goods to buy, so the goods simply became more expensive).

Gold, like _everything else_, is worth exactly what people think it is worth.