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Comment by aspyct | Hacker News Reader

I struggle to find the value in keeping gold.

You can't eat it.

You can't use it as a tool.

You can't even buy groceries with it (well at least today. Point is: it's not a liquidity).

But yes, maybe you'll be able to make a profit in the future, by selling it to people who can't eat it or use it as a tool either. Or I guess trade it to save your life in a hypothetical future scenario.

It's just a weird way of keeping value. Wouldn't you rather buy a piece of land? At least you can pitch your tent or grow potatoes there.

Am I missing something?

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Holding Gold is kinda just like holding a foreign, well accepted, currency. As many unofficially countries use dollars because they are more stable than their own currency.

You can buy and sell gold anytime at the bank (at least here in central Europe) just like any other currency.

So if you don't trust your own currency it kinda seems like a logical next step. Should the dollar crash it's likely gold won't crash at the same rate, at least not for long.

What's the spread in a local bank for different transactions sizes (100g, 1kg, etc..)?

Its value has gone up in most currencies in most time frames. People don't buy gold to buy groceries, to eat it, or to use it as a tool. They buy it so that 20 or 30 years later it has roughly kept its value, i.e. it has performed much better than holding currency.

Buying land requires maintenance, and probably comes with some ongoing tax implications.

Also 'anyone' knows which land you own, nobody knows how much gold you hide in your closet.

Durable, portable, no counterparty risk.

Not printable at will, fungible.

Could you not say the same thing about cash? The one difference here is it a defacto nation-agnostic currently that can (because we decided to) be easily traded nearly anywhere in the world. One advantage of it is the relatively fixed supply. It's still all made up but at least you can touch it and carry it with you. Land is great, but you can't take it with you.

> Could you not say the same thing about cash?

Cash is how taxes, payments for state services, public workers salaries, and public investments are specified. If the goal of cash is to serve as money then those all on themselves already set very concrete measures of value.

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