Gold is valuable by itself and there is only 80-90k tons of it ever (plus some amount in the oceans). Gold would be used everywhere in the electronics in pure form if it was priced and widespread as copper or iron.
Not really true, the only reason it is not used much more widely in electronic components, despite being superior to copper, is the high price it has, because of its function as value storage.
golds inherent value is worth like 10 percent of the value people put in it for speculation purposes. If gold was only used for electronics it’d be worth a lot less. in fact, there are things far rarer than gold and actually used more but worth a lot less.
37% of all gold minded each year is used in electronics despite it’s current price. Which means if gold stopped being used as a currency or jewelry it’s value would crash in the short term, but still remain high long term.
In a very real way it’s inherently worth more than copper or steel. Though that only makes it valuable as a hedge not an investment.
That's not true at all. Aside from it's use in jewelry, gold is used in electronics and industrial chemistry. It actually has industrial uses, thus there is a certain floor on it's value.
Computer electronics have more gold per ton than a gold mine, because of golds physical conducting properties.
So gold is needed to make efficient computers, which can again be used to produce real value in terms of production. I think that is fair to call that intristic value.
It is one of the very few metals that do not oxide in normal conditions, this makes :
Any metal very good electrical contact: just putting a single layer of gold over any metal will make the metal a fantastic electrical contact without the oxide layer that any metal will develop over time. This application alone is of great use in anything that plugs, just look around and you see gold in any electronic device.
You can make the best quality IR reflectors with it.
You can cover plastic with a very small layer of it and make mylar that in used in everything from refrigerators to accident blankets.
Gold (and platinum)is one of the the most used metals in any electronic, chemistry, biochemistry or physics laboratory as not being dissolved or attacked from most chemicals makes the extremely useful.
It is also great value because:
It is very dense.
It could be divided ad infinitum without (oxidation)damages.
It is easy to know it is gold and not something different.
It is beautiful.
It is very rare and appreciated, because of its aesthetic and its industrial properties.
Which makes it one of the best material for exchanging goods possible. It is also the preferred way to store wealth around the world when US of America does not threat with its weapons(guess what are China, Rusia, Iran or Brasil using to exchange goods between them as they have a military army on their on).
Gold reserves has been the first thing the US has sto... errr has taken from Ukraine in order to "protect" it. Let me tell you when the gold is coming back:never.
I think you might have it the wrong way around. Gold is valuable despite being used in electronics.
Unlike most other metals, gold is suitable as a currency partly because it doesn't get 'used up' in industrial processes in any significant way (where it is used its malleability ensures only tiny amounts are necessary - one gram of gold is enough for a square metre of gold leaf). Similarly, its use as jewellery is not so much to create beautiful objects, but as small portable stores of wealth[1] - in the world's biggest gold jewellery market (India) the price of jewellery is pretty much the same as the price of the raw materials (i.e. gold).
[1] Funny story. I once had a colleague who married an Indian woman in India. He came back to work wearing a lot of gold jewellery (watch, bracelets, rings, necklace or two, etc). Even he thought it was ridiculous, but he felt obliged to wear it. I had to explain to him that he wasn't given all of it with the expectation that he'd actually wear it - it was basically his wife's family's way of giving them money.
Gold is also one of the more conductive metals - that's another use that would provide a floor to its value. If the the momentum from using it as a store of value ever slowed and the price dropped, there would be a myriad of uses for it in electronics and medicine.
Gold does have real world applications, you can build stuff with it, but yes, if only using in electronics the price would crash. Real estate, depending one the type can generate money by being utilized, it doesn't need to be traded as such.
Since gold is a decent conductor, it has use in a variety of industrial applications such as for connectors, switch and relay contacts, soldered joints, connecting wires, and connection strips; so you can find it in a lot of electronics and computers.
It's also used in certain medical treatments involving radiation, and in glass to make certain windows more energy efficient.
Gold has real intrinsic value.
I do not agree with the article, but it's an interesting point of discussion given the times.
The device you're using to read this comment couldn't function without gold. It's an incredibly useful element. Investment and speculation might have inflated the value of gold, but industrial demand sets a price floor.
There is very little use for gold in electronics. In jewellry, yes. But that's only because people in developing world see their jewellry as a form of savings. Those are the same contries where the people don't buy jewellry lower than 18k.
Nobody in North America or Europe knows how to get the fair value of gold in the crappy 14k necklaces.
USD is useful because it is a meaning unit of exchange.
Gold does have value: as an industrial commodity for coating electrical contacts and for IC wire bonding, among other uses. Its elemental characteristics are unique. This value is probably much lower than its present market value though.
reply