The problem with solid gold being a currency is even the smallest amount of gold that could be carried in small enough amounts to be used as currency would be a coin. A solid gold coin is roughly $2.5K.
You could break it up but you still have $625 pieces.
If we ever need to use gold to trade for food, you are looking at some expensive eggs.
I didn’t mean I would keep gold at home, but as someone fundamentally opposed to stock market investment, I would like to have a way to at least protect my savings from devaluation by inflation…
Just did the math - for all mined gold in the world (~200 thousand tons) at 9 billion people, that would give us 22.4 grams of gold as currency / personal property to spend at any given time, if no one on the world had any “savings”.
Considering that a 100 K EUR would already buy ~1.37 kg of gold, that’s a bit of a mismatch…
True story… when my kid got married and bought a house 5 years ago, I gifted them an ounce of gold. $1,800 then. $2,470.32.
So +$670.32! Yay!
But over 5 years? :(
$134.064 / year.
Erm - 6.5% interest rate is a decent inflation compensation. If there wasn’t a risk even with gold, I’d use gold as my “secure savings” account.
Random opinion: Ive never liked gold personally.
The problem with solid gold being a currency is even the smallest amount of gold that could be carried in small enough amounts to be used as currency would be a coin. A solid gold coin is roughly $2.5K.
You could break it up but you still have $625 pieces.
If we ever need to use gold to trade for food, you are looking at some expensive eggs.
I didn’t mean I would keep gold at home, but as someone fundamentally opposed to stock market investment, I would like to have a way to at least protect my savings from devaluation by inflation…
Oh, 100%. Gold is perfect for people that wish to avoid the stock markets. I even have a few coins myself.
I just find it ironic that if we ever needed to use our gold as a curreny, we would be fucked.
Just did the math - for all mined gold in the world (~200 thousand tons) at 9 billion people, that would give us 22.4 grams of gold as currency / personal property to spend at any given time, if no one on the world had any “savings”. Considering that a 100 K EUR would already buy ~1.37 kg of gold, that’s a bit of a mismatch…
This seems like a good post for a math sub for sure.