Gold's industrial uses are irrelevant and play little part in its value. Its fundamental value comes from its physical properties which make it uniquely suitable for use as money. Gold is wealth and has been for 5000 years. Its intrinsic value is whatever price you need to cover the world's wealth.
Gold is different from Bitcoin because it has fundamental value. Bitcoin only has speculative value but like all speculative bubbles it will eventually pop.
Like I said, its intrinsic value comes from its unique physical properties. Gold and nothing else (except maybe silver) has all the necessary properties of a theoretically "perfect" money.
Here are some off the top of my head:
It's rare but not too rare. There's enough for the whole world but mining it is difficult so supply increases slowly along with economic growth.
It's easy to work with and smelt into units.
It's fungible (units are interchangeable, unlike diamonds for example).
It's a store of value. You can keep it in salt water for a thousand years and nothing will happen to it. We're still finding gold from Roman and ancient Egyptian times. This is where other currencies fail.
It's easy to recognize and verify but hard to fake.
Granted, directly using gold coins as money in the modern economy would be impractical but for a currency to last, it has to be backed by gold. Even a gold-backed cryptocurrency could work.
All fiat currencies fail within about 50 years because the government can't help itself and always starts stealing people's purchasing power through inflation. The US dollar went off the gold standard in 1971 and here we are printing it to oblivion.
Gold's industrial uses are irrelevant and play little part in its value. Its fundamental value comes from its physical properties which make it uniquely suitable for use as money. Gold is wealth and has been for 5000 years. Its intrinsic value is whatever price you need to cover the world's wealth.
Gold is different from Bitcoin because it has fundamental value. Bitcoin only has speculative value but like all speculative bubbles it will eventually pop.
Like I said, its intrinsic value comes from its unique physical properties. Gold and nothing else (except maybe silver) has all the necessary properties of a theoretically "perfect" money.
Here are some off the top of my head:
Granted, directly using gold coins as money in the modern economy would be impractical but for a currency to last, it has to be backed by gold. Even a gold-backed cryptocurrency could work.
All fiat currencies fail within about 50 years because the government can't help itself and always starts stealing people's purchasing power through inflation. The US dollar went off the gold standard in 1971 and here we are printing it to oblivion.