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Comment by prottog | Hacker News Reader

The bid/ask spread is too wide on precious metals to be useful as a transactional currency. I guess in a true societal collapse-type emergency maybe it'll be useful, but at that point canned food, guns, and ammo might be more valuable.

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Right, I think it's helpful to define the most probable types of emergencies where having a non-electronic form of payment is useful. In the US that's likely some sort of natural disaster (hurricane, snow storm, blackout or brownout during the summer). Going to your local grocer and using cash won't raise any eyebrows where I'm not sure how likely anyone is to accept gold or silver in one of those situations.

There are various rules of thumb in the prepper communities but it's something like:

* 2 weeks supply of food, water, heat, and cash * 2 months supply of similar but in longer-term forms (often precious metals go here; ones that are "well known" are the best, like junk silver)

Beyond that it's up to personal discretion and location, but the two week rule is a good one, in my opinion. 90% of "hiccups" are done in two weeks.

If you are at the level of using precious metals as currency, you are going to need to be part of a powerful tribe that will watch your back so that your precious metals will not get stolen. And I doubt many, if any, “preppers” have that crucial aspect covered.

Not to mention that the mere rumor that you have any is going to put a target on your head.

If I'm in a scenario where the economy has collapsed to the point that trade is happening through barter, I feel like liquor, arms, and ammunition are better value stores than precious metals. They'd be an appreciating asset, because a societal collapse would probably disrupt manufacturing and distribution supply chains, and they're directly useful rather than requiring someone figure they'll be able to exchange them with someone else later, but also shelf stable enough that a buyer could trust they could pass them off later, allowing them to operate as an adequate substitution for currency.

Venezuela is one example before societal collapse where gold has been useful as a currency.

Venezuela has pretty well collapsed.

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