Saw this video about gold, it’s chemical structure and malleability. I still don’t understand why gold is worth anything at all……
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A lot of things have been used as “money” through human history. And, through trial and error of human experience, we can identify a few traits that make something practically useful as “money”:
1) It takes work to get it. People aren’t going to be conjuring it out of thin air. Gold takes work to get out of the ground, to refine, shape, etc.
2) Hard to fake, or at least, fakes can be identified. Weight, density, hardness, and electrical conductivity of gold can all be tested to make sure that a piece of it is of the quality claimed by the bearer.
3) Durable over time. Given the choice between storing bread for a long time and storing gold for a long time, you probably shouldn’t store more bread than you can use or sell.
4) Portable, translates well for sale wherever you want to use it. Wherever you go in the world, gold is gold.
Gold meets these criteria quite well.
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