Saw this video about gold, it’s chemical structure and malleability. I still don’t understand why gold is worth anything at all……
In: 236
cause it’s shiny rare (status symbol?) and pretty so humans like it
It’s rare, shiny (we like shiny things let’s be honest) and doesn’t lose mass through oxidation like iron or copper.
Gold is **massively** useful in electronics – if you want a reliable connector the pins are going to be gold plated.
It’s also great to stop other contacts from corroding, and at conducting heat (I’ve seen gold-plated aluminium heat sinks in high end stuff).
ENIG (Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold as /u/naaarff points out) is a very common finish on circuit boards.
Gold fulfills many properties of money such as durability, scarcity, portability etc and humans need a way to orgabise economic activity.
Gold also has a large stock to flow ratio because gold is very difficult to destroy and difficult to mine the existing stock is far greater than the incoming flow
Not only is it a shiny and rare, easily malleable metal, it’s also chemically inert, meaning it generally doesn’t react or reacts very sluggishly to other chemicals. It doesn’t react to air or water, so it is rust-proof.
Gold is **massively** useful in electronics – if you want a reliable connector the pins are going to be gold plated.
It’s also great to stop other contacts from corroding, and at conducting heat (I’ve seen gold-plated aluminium heat sinks in high end stuff).
ENIG (Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold as /u/naaarff points out) is a very common finish on circuit boards.
Gold fulfills many properties of money such as durability, scarcity, portability etc and humans need a way to orgabise economic activity.
Gold also has a large stock to flow ratio because gold is very difficult to destroy and difficult to mine the existing stock is far greater than the incoming flow
Not only is it a shiny and rare, easily malleable metal, it’s also chemically inert, meaning it generally doesn’t react or reacts very sluggishly to other chemicals. It doesn’t react to air or water, so it is rust-proof.
As gold has frequently been “artificially” used to legally constrain currencies, and has been used on the world stage to do so as recently as 1971, there is lingering speculative pressure that gold will be once again politically valuable.
By politically I mean given a sort of “intrinsic” demand created by the policy of taxation of a currency backed by gold. All currencies base case level of value comes from their demand which is rooted in taxation.
The question though, is why gold and not some other random element? That’s where everyone else’s answers come in. It was rare enough but common enough, really aesthetic, easy to work with, etc.
As gold has frequently been “artificially” used to legally constrain currencies, and has been used on the world stage to do so as recently as 1971, there is lingering speculative pressure that gold will be once again politically valuable.
By politically I mean given a sort of “intrinsic” demand created by the policy of taxation of a currency backed by gold. All currencies base case level of value comes from their demand which is rooted in taxation.
The question though, is why gold and not some other random element? That’s where everyone else’s answers come in. It was rare enough but common enough, really aesthetic, easy to work with, etc.
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