Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

You'd do better to spend a minute Googling before saying something so definitive. The use of gold for jewelry and industrial applications outweighs the investment use of it:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274684/global-demand-for...

Gold has been valued from time immemorial for its unique aesthetic and practical properties entirely aside from its value as a currency.

That's clearly distinct from, say, paper dollars, which indeed have value only because we agree that they do (and because they're backed by the robust efforts of a government, of course).

View on HN

You are looking at the wrong metric, it seems like they count only transactions, not holdings. Only Fort Knox holds over 4000 of metric tons of gold.

Sorry, I'm not following. The thing that makes a store of value useful is stable demand. This metric demonstrates stable demand. Holdings are irrelevant.

As an example of the difference, look at oil or bananas. Demand for those is significant, but because storage is inconvenient, holdings are low compared with total commodity flow.

You said that jewelry and industrial use outweighs investment use, but gold reserves (investment) far outstrip yearly transaction amount, that is the difference with other commodities, where it is rare to have more than a year supply. It is a feature of gold and that is why people call it a "store of value".

Transactions are necessary but insufficient for something to become a store of value. For example, steel is sold in great amount, but it is not a store of value.

I think you've reversed cause and effect here. Gold reserves prove that people use it as a store of value, but they're not a necessary condition for something being a store of value.

For example, let's suppose that I made a deal with Porche to buy the first car off their assembly line each year. I take it and store it away as an investment. Is there an existing reserve of 2018 Porches? No, I have the first one. Does anybody else do this? Doesn't matter. It's still a good store of value as long as people keep wanting 2018 Porches.

People could use steel as a store of value; it's just an inconvenient commodity to deal with because the value per gram is so low. You need to store a lot of it. But rarer metals will do fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com