It is interesting that gold was able to retain its value after the industrial revolution. It could have gone the way of aluminum, once twice as valuable as gold, but now used in disposable drink containers. At the time of the alchemists, there was no way to know that some metals were actually distillable from common rocks and others genuinely rare and impossible to manufacture with even quite advanced technology.
EDIT: Aluminum itself may not be the best counterexample to gold as it was not discovered until the industrial revolution was well underway.
>Aluminum itself may not be the best counterexample to gold as it was not discovered until the industrial revolution was well underway.
I think also the scarcity plays a factor, the estimates that I'm seeing after short search being that there's about 10,000x more processed aluminum in the world than gold.
This is because of what the comment you’re replying to was saying. Aluminum was a scarce resource prior to the electrolytic process being invented that made it “distillable from common rocks.”
The cap on the washington monument is aluminum, because at the time it was still a precious metal.
The guy who figured out how to electrolyze it out of ore went on to create the main company in the US that produced it, and chose to call it aluminum instead of aluminium, thus leading to the split in spelling. That story may be apocryphal though.
I've read elsewhere that one of gold's biggest virtues as a store of value on planet earth is that it isn't so rare as to be useless, but it's rare enough that it functions as currency or high value storage. A goldilocks material for the purpose of wealth transfer and storage.
Yes! Exactly - there are plenty of other rare metals but many of them are really hard to work with. Iridium, Rhodium and Platinum are plenty rare but mankind has lacked the technology to do anything with them for most of history
It's also chemically inert and very dense, so a coin/ingot that weights a certain amount is smaller and can be stored for long periods of time. It's so dense that it's pretty much forgery-proof, as any material you use in the forgery is either more expensive or less dense.
I think the point is that when it comes to investment vehicles, gold generally beats cash. Oh and that means that in the last 20 years or so (ie. including the period where it didn't appreciate much), physical gold beats a balance in bank accounts.
Inflation means "interest" on gold, measured in reliable currencies like USD or EUR, is at least 4%. Far more than you will get from any bank.
Of course this goes for anything, so you might want to select something with less regulation attached to it. On the other hand, gold is really dense and "liquid" (easy to sell), which are great advantages to have for a store of wealth. And then there's the recent history of gold prices (which is due to the third world attempting to use anything but dollars but not succeeding at it, but one assumes it will end)
But yes, gold makes less than you'll probably get on the S&P500.
No the thesis of cash is that it's a legally enforced means to extinguish debts within a certain legal jurisdiction.
A court cannot generally find that I must furnish someone with some weight of gold for example but they can find a monetary value in sovereign currency which I must supply.
The thesis of cash is that governments and their influencers can turn some knobs and decrease its value and enrich themselves simultaneously by creating more of it. A lot of it as debt for the normals.
Only for very large amounts of money. It can't easily be subdivided. Oh and this is illegal in most countries.
But yeah, what people forget is that gold is incredibly dense. Nearly double lead's density. This means 1kg of gold is about the size of a nokia 3360, and worth close to 150,000$. A very large amount of gold doesn't take up much volume at all.
... which also means that people "stealing gold" like in the bond movies is totally unrealistic. If you loaded a pallet of gold bars (12.5 kg a piece, 200 gold bars, about 2.5 tons, 375 million USD) into a standard van, that van would probably just break down. And carrying 10 gold bars, 20 million USD in a backpack? Not happening.
(which frankly Trump is abusing because of course the density of gold means that any facility storing gold, including Fort Knox, is going to "look empty")
You don’t get any of the FCF or earnings for owning equity, if a stock doesn’t pay dividends it’s the same thesis that someone will pay more for it later
You have a point. And yet, today, you can buy even more bread and clothes and materials with an ounce of gold than you could 2000 years ago. Meanwhile, what happened to all of the businesses and currencies over the last few millennia? Where will the FCF of any random company be in 50 years? Will gold still be valuable then?
“Mr Bond, all my life I have been in love. I have been in love with gold. I love its colour, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I love the texture of gold, that soft sliminess that I have learnt to gauge so accurately by touch that I can estimate the fineness of a bar to within one carat. And I love the warm tang it exudes when I melt it down into a true golden syrup. But, above all, Mr Bond, I love the power that gold alone gives to its owner — the magic of controlling energy, exacting labour, fulfilling one’s every wish and whim and, when need be, purchasing bodies, minds, even souls. Yes, Mr Bond, I have worked all my life for gold and, in return, gold has worked for me and for those enterprises that I have espoused. I ask you,’ Goldfinger gazed earnestly at Bond, ‘is there any other substance on earth that so rewards its owner?’”
I have mentioned this in the past, we are on an "energy" standard as opposed to a "gold" standard and to me, in reality, we have been since the industrial revolution. Just Gold and Currency is a means for people to access energy.
Until recently it was an "Oil Standard". But now we are in transition from Oil to Renewals. I think that transition is causing some if not most of the political issues we are having now.
With renewals, the source is always available and everyone just needs to purchase the means of accessing it once. With Oil, you need to constantly "pay" someone to get that energy, so many people/companies know their gravy train is ending and they are doing all the can to keep us using fossil fuels.
Also there is an on-going struggle on who produces the items needed to access sun and wind power. Right now China is easily winning that struggle.
Why is everything "wild" and "cooked" and "dead" these days? It seems that every title or text I see has those words. I guess it's the Claudeification of everything.
I’m gen-x and used wild in of my my HN comments and it seemed to trigger some responders. I was using as a synonym for unexpected. Next time maybe a
I’ll use whacky instead.
The fear of GOD is pure,
abiding forever;
the judgments of GOD are true,
righteous altogether,
more desirable than gold,
than much fine gold;
sweeter than honey,
than drippings of the comb.
Better than gold in what aspect?
Good luck trying to move to a different country and bringing all your gold with you without filling out a hell of a lot of forms and risking confidcation for "money laundering". Bitcoin doesn't have this problem
The supply of gold is always inflating. One day we will have asteroid mining of gold and it will be inflated even more. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem.
Nobody will accept your gold for a cup of coffee in day to day life, but restraints and coffee shops will increasingly take your bitcoin over lightning.
https://archive.is/ShyUM
Article is a brief review of the book "The Secret History of Gold" by Dominic Frisby.
It is interesting that gold was able to retain its value after the industrial revolution. It could have gone the way of aluminum, once twice as valuable as gold, but now used in disposable drink containers. At the time of the alchemists, there was no way to know that some metals were actually distillable from common rocks and others genuinely rare and impossible to manufacture with even quite advanced technology.
EDIT: Aluminum itself may not be the best counterexample to gold as it was not discovered until the industrial revolution was well underway.
>Aluminum itself may not be the best counterexample to gold as it was not discovered until the industrial revolution was well underway.
I think also the scarcity plays a factor, the estimates that I'm seeing after short search being that there's about 10,000x more processed aluminum in the world than gold.
There is now, but it wasn't really extractable at all until electrochemistry.
This is because of what the comment you’re replying to was saying. Aluminum was a scarce resource prior to the electrolytic process being invented that made it “distillable from common rocks.”
The cap on the washington monument is aluminum, because at the time it was still a precious metal.
The guy who figured out how to electrolyze it out of ore went on to create the main company in the US that produced it, and chose to call it aluminum instead of aluminium, thus leading to the split in spelling. That story may be apocryphal though.
I think gold's chemistry actually is why gold has been and remains a store of value.
It is rare, inert, malleable, has a low melting point and has a distinct unique colour.
All of these are quite useful for being a store of value:
- inert: gold from 10000 years ago is basically exactly the same
- malleable: it is easy to subdivide for coinage (compare with diamonds for an extreme example)
- low melting point: easy to purify (and melting temp is a decent purity check)
- distinct colour: less useful now but being so distinct from other metals makes it easier to spot vs the many silvery coloured metals
The funny thing is that all these store of value properties also make it less useful: inert means it's not reactive and has fewer forms/compounds
Malleable, lower melting temp and rare makes it a poor choice for typical metal usages...
I've read elsewhere that one of gold's biggest virtues as a store of value on planet earth is that it isn't so rare as to be useless, but it's rare enough that it functions as currency or high value storage. A goldilocks material for the purpose of wealth transfer and storage.
It is also relatively easy to work, since ancient times. Iridium is the rarest metal, so rare and hard to work that it is not practical.
Yes! Exactly - there are plenty of other rare metals but many of them are really hard to work with. Iridium, Rhodium and Platinum are plenty rare but mankind has lacked the technology to do anything with them for most of history
It's also chemically inert and very dense, so a coin/ingot that weights a certain amount is smaller and can be stored for long periods of time. It's so dense that it's pretty much forgery-proof, as any material you use in the forgery is either more expensive or less dense.
Gold has 0 FCF, 0 earnings, 0 dividends. The whole thesis is someone pays more later. At least equities have fundamentals to anchor the price to.
Paper/plastic currency (cash) has 0 FCF, 0 earnings, 0 dividends. The whole thesis is you trade it at a deprecated rate later.
You can trade gold and cash with people a lot more easily than an equity in your brokerage account.
Yeah man you missed the point. Gold is not good as an investment vehicle.
As a daily currency, it also has sharp downsides, but at least it’s not all bad.
I think the point is that when it comes to investment vehicles, gold generally beats cash. Oh and that means that in the last 20 years or so (ie. including the period where it didn't appreciate much), physical gold beats a balance in bank accounts.
Inflation means "interest" on gold, measured in reliable currencies like USD or EUR, is at least 4%. Far more than you will get from any bank.
Of course this goes for anything, so you might want to select something with less regulation attached to it. On the other hand, gold is really dense and "liquid" (easy to sell), which are great advantages to have for a store of wealth. And then there's the recent history of gold prices (which is due to the third world attempting to use anything but dollars but not succeeding at it, but one assumes it will end)
But yes, gold makes less than you'll probably get on the S&P500.
No the thesis of cash is that it's a legally enforced means to extinguish debts within a certain legal jurisdiction.
A court cannot generally find that I must furnish someone with some weight of gold for example but they can find a monetary value in sovereign currency which I must supply.
The thesis for gold is that it holds its value in times of war when companies and governments fall apart.
The thesis of cash is that governments and their influencers can turn some knobs and decrease its value and enrich themselves simultaneously by creating more of it. A lot of it as debt for the normals.
"You can trade gold ... easily"
Only for very large amounts of money. It can't easily be subdivided. Oh and this is illegal in most countries.
But yeah, what people forget is that gold is incredibly dense. Nearly double lead's density. This means 1kg of gold is about the size of a nokia 3360, and worth close to 150,000$. A very large amount of gold doesn't take up much volume at all.
... which also means that people "stealing gold" like in the bond movies is totally unrealistic. If you loaded a pallet of gold bars (12.5 kg a piece, 200 gold bars, about 2.5 tons, 375 million USD) into a standard van, that van would probably just break down. And carrying 10 gold bars, 20 million USD in a backpack? Not happening.
(which frankly Trump is abusing because of course the density of gold means that any facility storing gold, including Fort Knox, is going to "look empty")
You don’t get any of the FCF or earnings for owning equity, if a stock doesn’t pay dividends it’s the same thesis that someone will pay more for it later
Or they will pay dividends later.
You have a point. And yet, today, you can buy even more bread and clothes and materials with an ounce of gold than you could 2000 years ago. Meanwhile, what happened to all of the businesses and currencies over the last few millennia? Where will the FCF of any random company be in 50 years? Will gold still be valuable then?
The staying power of gold is a value in itself.
When equities are priced in gold, they peaked in 1999, and have broadly been downhill since then. For reference, see the price of SPY/XAUUSD.
That's ok - given central banks' continued love of gold, I have no qualms of there being a buyer in my lifetime and probably my kids'
“Mr Bond, all my life I have been in love. I have been in love with gold. I love its colour, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I love the texture of gold, that soft sliminess that I have learnt to gauge so accurately by touch that I can estimate the fineness of a bar to within one carat. And I love the warm tang it exudes when I melt it down into a true golden syrup. But, above all, Mr Bond, I love the power that gold alone gives to its owner — the magic of controlling energy, exacting labour, fulfilling one’s every wish and whim and, when need be, purchasing bodies, minds, even souls. Yes, Mr Bond, I have worked all my life for gold and, in return, gold has worked for me and for those enterprises that I have espoused. I ask you,’ Goldfinger gazed earnestly at Bond, ‘is there any other substance on earth that so rewards its owner?’”
I have mentioned this in the past, we are on an "energy" standard as opposed to a "gold" standard and to me, in reality, we have been since the industrial revolution. Just Gold and Currency is a means for people to access energy.
Until recently it was an "Oil Standard". But now we are in transition from Oil to Renewals. I think that transition is causing some if not most of the political issues we are having now.
With renewals, the source is always available and everyone just needs to purchase the means of accessing it once. With Oil, you need to constantly "pay" someone to get that energy, so many people/companies know their gravy train is ending and they are doing all the can to keep us using fossil fuels.
Also there is an on-going struggle on who produces the items needed to access sun and wind power. Right now China is easily winning that struggle.
Why is everything "wild" and "cooked" and "dead" these days? It seems that every title or text I see has those words. I guess it's the Claudeification of everything.
It's just Gen-Z speak, nothing to do with Claude (other than being a vessel for said speak)
I’m gen-x and used wild in of my my HN comments and it seemed to trigger some responders. I was using as a synonym for unexpected. Next time maybe a I’ll use whacky instead.
I like wild, it’s a fun word. No need to change if you don’t want to just on account of some grouches here!
we GenX-ers will be placated by any mention of Oscar the Grouch.
I'm gen-x too (56) and remember wild used heavily in the mid to late 80s. Wild to hear it used so liberally once again!
Name one thing in the universe which is better than gold? Tip: You can't.
Iron. For the purpose of building bridges.
Diamonds? You can use them in a drill bit.
Oxygen
Nothing is better than gold. A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Therefore a ham sandwich is better than gold.
Uranium? Tricky to fuel a nuclear reactor with gold.
Hydrocarbons? Everything from making life to providing energy.
Silicon? Making silicon chips.
Oxygen? I like breathing.
You’re lost in the desert, with no food or water but only a lump of gold. Everything is fine because nothing in the universe is better than gold.
The movie “The treasure of the Sierra Madras” does a good job of putting gold in it’s place.
How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!
-- Proverbs 16:16
The fear of GOD is pure, abiding forever; the judgments of GOD are true, righteous altogether, more desirable than gold, than much fine gold; sweeter than honey, than drippings of the comb.
-- Psalms 19
Per gram you can sell printer ink for more.
Better than gold in what aspect? Good luck trying to move to a different country and bringing all your gold with you without filling out a hell of a lot of forms and risking confidcation for "money laundering". Bitcoin doesn't have this problem
The supply of gold is always inflating. One day we will have asteroid mining of gold and it will be inflated even more. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem.
Nobody will accept your gold for a cup of coffee in day to day life, but restraints and coffee shops will increasingly take your bitcoin over lightning.
Is this an ad for shady "buy gold" investment scams?