The recent plunges in price of gold has certainly tested the resolve of people here I am sure. Even now there would be people wondering whether some other way of deploying their money might have given better results. I think its when you treat gold as an "investment" ie something to buy low and sell high that problems happen. In my opinion physical gold is a terrible "investment". In fact I would argue that because it is useless, gives no income, and has problems peculiar to holding it in physical form that it can't be an investment in the true sense. So why do I buy it? Why am I unconcerned about its "price"? Whether $900 or $1900 I have purchased at every level and I have never really thought about it afterwards. Like I mentioned above an investment is encapsulated by the concept of buy low and sell high. My purchase of PM has never been with this in mind. It is true that I would not sell if the price was way lower than what I entered for if I didn't have to, or was forced to. The way I buy pm is that I think of it like a petrol purchase or food purchase. Once I've paid for it I don't worry about what "price" I got it for. In fact I never think of selling it. I probably won't ever sell it if I didn't need to and there wasn't something better to trade it for. I'd certainly not change it back to fiat currency just because the "price" is higher. Just like I don't worry about the fuel I bought at $1.80 per L vs $1.20 at another time etc. I don't think of the higher prices I paid as a problem. That's what it was going for and I paid it and consumed it. I don't think about the money that is spent. The real key is to only ever spend on PM what you will never miss at all if it went to zero. Think of it like an insurance premium which truly vanishes as spent money once the term ends. Just imagine you'll never see the money ever again. If that bothers you then think twice about buying pms. Another aspect to gold is that it is for most buyers of bullion, bars or coins totally useless. The uselessness of gold is always pointed out by non gold people. In fact it is one of the biggest arguments against it with words like "barbarous relic", "you can't eat it" and so on being proposed as reasons to avoid gold. And it is precisely the uselessness of gold that makes it so threatening to fiat money and its pushers. Because if gold actually had a huge utility then its price might be allowed to be found by true free market principles. It is because it is totally useless that its rising price sends huge alarm bells about the state of the economy. When something totally useless begins to double and triple in price it is surely a sign that something is not right. So golds uselessness is its biggest single property making it the perfect measure or money. Golds uselessness is thereby its most useful property, since by being useless, it is useful as a measure of true values and accounting for fiat values is the one use that central banks would rather everyone forgets about. When detractors try to brush gold off as a relic they are really just hoping people would forget its utility as a measuring stick. Everyone knows it is useless just sitting around otherwise.
Massive energy release from gold nuclei "When the gold nuclei, traveling at 99.999% of the speed of light, smashed together, the plasma that resulted was so energetic that a tiny cube of it with sides measuring about a quarter of the width of a human hair would contain enough energy to power the entire United States for a year." I've often wondered if gold will be used as an energy source after reading this article....
Interesting idea's that I agree with. Looking to the future with technology evolving there is a very good chance that new uses for Gold will be discovered other than a measuring stick to fiat and limited industrial use. I would guess this could easily be in the next 10 - 100 years or so. We are living in great times for Gold right now but the future of Gold is so exciting it is hard to imagine imo.
It's interesting that you say it has limited industrial uses. A fair bet would be due to its cost that alternatives are sought before it is considered for use. Aerospace is probably one large growth area as it becomes more obtainable.
For sure, but only a pure gold pyramid will open the worm hole back to klanog 9 where ice cream is 2nd to none :lol:
I've enjoyed reading some of these comments and I don't know personally any forum members so perhaps this whole thread was intended as a joke. In the event that it wasn't, intelligencer, "useless" is a very subjective term. Gold may not have as many industrial uses as silver, but its use as an (almost indispensable) asset today is inarguable, wouldn't you agree?
Realistically there's always going to be a non zero floor to how low it can go. That would be round about the production cost in the natural scheme of things. Buys that you can make at those levels are basically a gift.
