What exactly is the intrinsic value of gold...

Rarity, scarcity, You can actually hold it.
The thing with gold is; it's not on every corner of the street, used in every kind of infrastructure.

it isnt, its just based on delusion like any other scarce resource, including bitcoin. its real usage would put it mostly around the price of silver if everyone wasnt conditioned into thinking its inherently valuable.

it dosent rust

...

Human society is a dynamic information system with emergent organisation - money is essentially a concept substrate for information. The material of that substrate is important. If you throw enough time and societal complexity at any point on the globe in any time in history for any civilisation capable of building a 2 story building they've all ended up using gold and silver. Why? If you actually go through the periodic table it makes perfect sense why they were the only candidates (copper included).

Fiat paper systems have existed and alternative substrates however they never last too long as civilisations because of the potential to abuse the money supply. It's why the US is slowly turning into shit before your very eyes. Will crypto replace gold? I think it'll be a fucking improvement over paper and centralised ledgers.

However at the base of it, if you just want money in it's pure, physical, indestructable form: Nothing on this planet at least can fuck with gold. The only reason you question it's value is because it's the purest point - the base of the inverted money pyramid where you can actually see the nature of the philosophical question: What is the value of money?

Is this the final redpill on gold or just Veeky Forums's psycho babble?

It's not that good for electronics, only for contact plating because it doesn't corrode. For conduction and such copper or silver are superior.

But you need tiny amounts of it for plating, so it's not really a big deal.

it's pretty obvious
but it has been considered valuable for pretty much all of history so why would it suddenly stop

DATA IS MONEY

EVERYTHING ELSE IS 1990

-user 2018

>If you actually go through the periodic table it makes perfect sense why they were the only candidates (copper included).
Elaborate please.

...

like it or not, but that's where we might be heading.
well, until the next big solar flare, that is. then it's time to grab all the rocks and stabby things again and live in cavemen times.
>mfw when we might actually see times where the grug meme becomes reality

>DYUUUUHHH CAN SOMEONE PLZ SPOONFEED ME HIGHSCHOOL CHEMISTRY

Gold is a bubble

this fucking guy lol

I read the same thing on some occult-fag FB-group that I lurk on sometimes. Apparently the aliens needed it for their spaceballs technology, so they came down as gods, and those humans that were able to hand over a lot of gold were rewarded with high power-levels and possibly master-race alien race-mixing.

I think this is more plausible though

It's pretty easy, these are the sort of social rules which have evolved as use cases:

1. Can't be a gas.
2. Can't corrode in the air.
3. Can't burst into flames in the air.
4. Can't kill you.
5. Has to be rare.

That leaves you with: Rhodium, Palladium, Silver, Platinum and Gold. Rhodium and Palladium weren't discovered until the 1800s. Platinum's a fucker to fashion into anything because it melts at 3000 degrees so couldn't coin it.

Which left gold and silver. Which is why in the etymology of most languages it exists in some form for cash (usually silver actually).

1. Pound Sterling - (1lb .925 alloy Sterling Silver - Sterling from the "Starling" a small silver coin minted to pay off vikings).

2. L'Argent (French word for money. Also the French word for Silver.)

3. Geld (German word for money. Also the German word for Gold).

4. Plata (Spanish slang for cash. Also the Spanish word for Silver).

5. Dinero (Spanish word for money. Based on the standard issue silver roman coin the Denarius).

6. Dinar (Currency unit in seven Islamic and two Orthodox Christian countries - similar to Spanish based on the Roman on the standard issue silver roman coin the Denarius.)

7. 银行 (Yinhang) (Chinese for Bank but also Silver Broker - 银 (Yin) meaning Silver).

8. $ - (Symbol for the United States dollar, S - Silver, dollar denoting a unit exchange for 371.25 grains (troy) fine silver).

I'm sure there are other examples however basically materials science, sociology and the inherited history of not just your language and culture but those of civilized societies all across the planet have all recognised Silver and Gold as money. Gold as the currency of Kings. Silver as the currency of Gentlemen. Copper or barter for peasants. Debt for slaves. You just happen to be living in one of the many brief aberrations from this patterns in history - however it is a unique moment in history and I have no doubt cryptocurrencies and blockchain will be hugely important.

intersting post, thanks

why it was originally chosen as a currency is mostly here remember a youtube video that went through all the reasons but I can't find it again at the moment

why it still has value is more complicated.
a part of it is that the world wasn't fully off the gold standard until the 70s, less than 50 years ago. and as far as I know the world economy doesn't have a back up plan if people lose trust in the USD for whatever reason. so gold is kind of a hedge against the US economy and in times of turmoil. but that's a pretty big 'if' with the price of gold failing to rise in the past decade despite the exponential growth of everything else.

I see no reason why precious metals and crypto cannot co-exist. Gold and silver are not fungible (with each other), yet they coexisted.

> rewarded with high power-levels and possibly master-race alien race-mixing
jews supply gold to aliens to get technology and leverage over humans (pic related its a documentary about it)

>>However at the base of it, if you just want money in it's pure, physical, indestructable form: Nothing on this planet at least can fuck with gold.

That is correct and asteroid mining is my only concern over hoarding gold.

>Baghdad batteries don't exist

I like crypto, I support it for political reasons even though I know it's a tool which can / could be used for tremendous evil as well as tremendous good - on balance I hope good as all information-liberating and decentralising innovations tend to lead to the better and more equitable re-distribution of power and prevention of parasitism and abuse (speculative manias aside - speaking purely long term). However if you're someone like me who ultimately wants safe, storeable, indestructable money, it's very atavistic and fun cashing out / taking profit in silver and gold. I won't say how much gold and silver I have however it's far more than a burglar or even several could successfully carry.

If you live in a jurisdiction where the tax status of gold and silver is favourable I highly recommend getting a safe and having a silver stack - it's had precious few cheaper points in history at the moment. Having a silver stack is fun, makes saving feel fun. Can't be hacked or rendered inaccessible by mistyping something or an exchange collapsing or an exit scam.

And in a global financial system which is a titanic, inverted house of cards of leveraged on debt, leveraged on debt, leveraged on debt - creaking in the wind? Supported by nothing other than poorly concealed geopolitical proxy conflicts over the denomination of the flow of humanity's use natural resources? In a time where it would appear the uni-polar pre-eminance of the United States is coming into question?

Precious metals are the total antithesis of debt and counterparty risk which is why they go up in times of crisis. Cryptos are good too - I've made a lot of money from cryptos, but why not diversify some of it into safe assets instead of something so volatile? It's your decision me evangelising about it on Veeky Forums does nothing to its price. However I think there's a reason China and Russia are hoarding so much of it.

youtube.com/watch?v=oGo96xzNSEs

Cryptos / PMs? Have both...

its human nature

man i loved travolta in battlefield earth he was awesome

he was amazing. the sad thing is i think he was totally serious about the whole thing, and that movie became a laughing stock. definitely worth watching sometime high as fuck

Its very rare, as well as beautiful and heavy that make it look and feel like wealth. It is also an asset in its own right and not someone elses liability

do you just get a bunch of silver ingots or coins? whats the best cheapest way to get into silver hoarding?

>rare but not too rare
>durability
>fungibility
>prettiness
>industrial usefulness

It is historically chosen
You pay your army with gold, receive taxes in gold, send captives to gold mines, soldiers are happy to go pillage faraway cities, cos they can plunder gold, return and trade it for land.
See? Gold solves so many national problems

its tradition

Not quite so.
There were also silver, brass, iron currencies. Cowry was also a currency.

Gold was mostly thesaurised when monetary systems were invented.
Also, iou used to be extremely popular in ancient world.

Gold only became popular, when ppl started buying mercenaries from faraway countries and trading long-distance.
That is when the society required a solution for trustless and universal currency.

I don't live in the United States and to my enormous being-pissed-off I can't get silver without VAT added to it. Cheapest way I can get it is from Germany where the VAT on silver coins is 5% instead of the 20% on silver here. Fortunately (pic related) Fiji mints these beautiful fuckers which as a result of a snafu are legally termed as "Fiji Coin Bars" so I can still get 500g to 5kg bars of silver for 5% up until whatever trade arrangements are agreed post-Brexit.

If you live in the United States I think you're in a tremendously favourable situation and you can purchase cheaper with a much cooler selection of stuff. (I'm not shilling this is just free advertisement for them because I'm kind of jealous it's not an option for me). If I were in the US I'd use Apmex. Like a lot of bullion dealers (some I know here too) they accept payment in BTC at least because hey - we're all cut from the same cloth if we hate fiat.

apmex.com/faq/bitcoin

Upper limit is $250k.

They've got a fucking awesome suite of stuff - even antique / ancient silver and gold coins. I think you can even buy fucking pirate coins (pieces of eight, doubloons, kek). I buy 1kg bars for silver mostly however I have some 5kg and 20 500g of the silver fiji ones. However coins can be useful if they're minted as technically legal tender in your country? So I don't know what the status is of silver eagles however I know in some cases CGT is not applied for silver legal tender. So it depends on the cheapness of bulk vs tax status plus sometimes dealers offer higher rates on coins than just spot. Numismatics are also their own world.

However what's cool about whatever the jurisdiction or mint of coins - if you think about it whether it's British, South African, American, Chinese, Canadian or Australian... on some level no matter what the jurisdiction it's still money regardless of the unit - silver is money wherever...

I started stacking in weight first...!

Thanks guv'nor, Apmex looks good.

>Fiat paper systems have existed and alternative substrates however they never last too long as civilisations because of the potential to abuse the money supply.
money supplies were a mess all the time when precious metals were the currency of choice, either by accident or intentionally. there's were whole centuries where the prevalent economic policy was just to hoard as much gold and silver as possible, regardless of the consequences.

>Precious metals are the total antithesis of debt
money by definition is debt. it's a symbol you exchange for goods/services that shows you are owed something else in return.

you are gonna be long dead before that happens.