Gold is for all effects and purposes the oldest currency around, mainly because it has been exactly that for millenia and still today, has very little industrial use and instead is mainly used for safekeep of value and decorative purposes (such as jewelery).
Comparied to common currencies of the present age (called fiat currencies because they’re issued by states and their value is not inherent to the currency - i.e. not based on the value of the material of the cash - but rather it’s backed by trust on the issuing government) gold and its value is not under control of any one government hence doesn’t really suffer much from the policies in any one country and has a natural inflation rate of around 2% due to mining (i.e. the amount of mined gold increases by around 2% of the total per year).
So when trust in governments and the economies they manage falls, gold is a natural safe haven asset just like the currency of a different country would be, only gold’s safe haven properties also work when the mistrust is more generalized globally (multiple governments or of governments whose policies have a significant global impact) whilst that doesn’t apply for other fiat currencies. A simple example: if you move from the dollar to the euro and the dollar crashes, the euro will also be somewhat impacted by the consequence of that crash whilst gold would not and if, worse, the societal and political problems causing said crash of the dollar were alse present in the eurozone (which they are, by the way, just less so) there might also be an euro crash for similar reasons and gold would still remain unnafected*
(* actually that’s not quite so because as seen during the 2008 Crash there are price pressures on gold due to on one side people more desperatelly trying to move into it to save their wealth from the crash hence pushing prices up and on the other hand people selling gold to pay for financial commitments they have that cannot be served by other assets that have crashed in value - for example somebody who has stocks and gold and has to pay a loan, during a crash/depression might have to pull money out of gold to pay the loan because the value of the stocks has crashed).
On the other hand, the value of all the gold ever mined in the world is “only” around $28 trillion whilst the US debt alone is $38 trillion, so there’s not enough gold for even just holders of US treasuries to take refuge in it, at least not at the current gold price.
Then again, the more people who take refuse in gold, the more its price goes up - a mere year ago the value of all the gold ever mined in the World would only be around $17.5 trillion - which adds further to the expectation that a dollar crash would push gold prices up massivelly, in multiple currencies rather than just dollars.
You seem like you know more than me on the subject, but I think I’ve a few things to point out about your argument (correct me if I’m wrong).
Governments have, in the past, bolstered their gold reserves and then “declared” a new (higher) price for all gold within their borders. This might not seem so significant, but the US did it like so:
1933: The U.S. government made private ownership of most gold illegal
1934: After collecting gold from citizens at the old price, the government raised the official price of gold by ~69%
The value of the US dollar took a nose dive. The $35/oz peg held until 1971, when Nixon ended gold convertibility entirely. Queue the recession of the 1970s, the US dollar lose even more of its value while gold continued to rise in value (comparatively). By January 1980, gold hit about $850 per ounce at its peak. All this shows is that gold is constantly being manipulated for its market value, by state actors. None of this volatility is inherent to the value of gold in its own right, not due to mining issues or anything of the sort.
Secondly, trust in government is a misleading way to describe why fiat currency works — is it not? Fiat currency has value because the state imposes obligations (especially taxes) that are only payable in that currency, and then manages its issuance through spending, taxation, and debt instruments. Taxation alone is enough to produce nonzero value in fiat currency. This demonstrates that trust is secondary to obligation.
If you need $1000 from the government as a contractor, the Fed does something like this:
Credits a Bank’s reserve account by $1,000
Marks Treasury’s account down by $1,000
Key point: The Fed is the issuer of reserves. It cannot “run out” of them. If Treasury’s account balance is low, the Fed still clears the payment. Treasury balance management is a legal constraint, not an operational one. In my example, the private sector’s net financial assets increased by $1,000 while the public sector’s debt increased by $1,000.
Later, that $1,000 of public sector debt is paired with treasury securities (e.g., bonds). We sell those little securities with the promise of interest paid (via taxation), which creates the bond market and the national debt. This further demonstrates, the mechanisms here are long chains of obligations depending on other obligations, which creates the value of the fiat currency. Trust is only what allows people to willfully partake in the economy, as is the case for any other life experience. You drink water because you trust it will make you less thirsty, but you would not say trust is the reason that you drink water.
Gold is for all effects and purposes the oldest currency around, mainly because it has been exactly that for millenia and still today, has very little industrial use and instead is mainly used for safekeep of value and decorative purposes (such as jewelery).
Comparied to common currencies of the present age (called fiat currencies because they’re issued by states and their value is not inherent to the currency - i.e. not based on the value of the material of the cash - but rather it’s backed by trust on the issuing government) gold and its value is not under control of any one government hence doesn’t really suffer much from the policies in any one country and has a natural inflation rate of around 2% due to mining (i.e. the amount of mined gold increases by around 2% of the total per year).
So when trust in governments and the economies they manage falls, gold is a natural safe haven asset just like the currency of a different country would be, only gold’s safe haven properties also work when the mistrust is more generalized globally (multiple governments or of governments whose policies have a significant global impact) whilst that doesn’t apply for other fiat currencies. A simple example: if you move from the dollar to the euro and the dollar crashes, the euro will also be somewhat impacted by the consequence of that crash whilst gold would not and if, worse, the societal and political problems causing said crash of the dollar were alse present in the eurozone (which they are, by the way, just less so) there might also be an euro crash for similar reasons and gold would still remain unnafected*
(* actually that’s not quite so because as seen during the 2008 Crash there are price pressures on gold due to on one side people more desperatelly trying to move into it to save their wealth from the crash hence pushing prices up and on the other hand people selling gold to pay for financial commitments they have that cannot be served by other assets that have crashed in value - for example somebody who has stocks and gold and has to pay a loan, during a crash/depression might have to pull money out of gold to pay the loan because the value of the stocks has crashed).
On the other hand, the value of all the gold ever mined in the world is “only” around $28 trillion whilst the US debt alone is $38 trillion, so there’s not enough gold for even just holders of US treasuries to take refuge in it, at least not at the current gold price.
Then again, the more people who take refuse in gold, the more its price goes up - a mere year ago the value of all the gold ever mined in the World would only be around $17.5 trillion - which adds further to the expectation that a dollar crash would push gold prices up massivelly, in multiple currencies rather than just dollars.
You seem like you know more than me on the subject, but I think I’ve a few things to point out about your argument (correct me if I’m wrong).
Governments have, in the past, bolstered their gold reserves and then “declared” a new (higher) price for all gold within their borders. This might not seem so significant, but the US did it like so:
The value of the US dollar took a nose dive. The $35/oz peg held until 1971, when Nixon ended gold convertibility entirely. Queue the recession of the 1970s, the US dollar lose even more of its value while gold continued to rise in value (comparatively). By January 1980, gold hit about $850 per ounce at its peak. All this shows is that gold is constantly being manipulated for its market value, by state actors. None of this volatility is inherent to the value of gold in its own right, not due to mining issues or anything of the sort.
Secondly, trust in government is a misleading way to describe why fiat currency works — is it not? Fiat currency has value because the state imposes obligations (especially taxes) that are only payable in that currency, and then manages its issuance through spending, taxation, and debt instruments. Taxation alone is enough to produce nonzero value in fiat currency. This demonstrates that trust is secondary to obligation.
If you need $1000 from the government as a contractor, the Fed does something like this:
Key point: The Fed is the issuer of reserves. It cannot “run out” of them. If Treasury’s account balance is low, the Fed still clears the payment. Treasury balance management is a legal constraint, not an operational one. In my example, the private sector’s net financial assets increased by $1,000 while the public sector’s debt increased by $1,000.
Later, that $1,000 of public sector debt is paired with treasury securities (e.g., bonds). We sell those little securities with the promise of interest paid (via taxation), which creates the bond market and the national debt. This further demonstrates, the mechanisms here are long chains of obligations depending on other obligations, which creates the value of the fiat currency. Trust is only what allows people to willfully partake in the economy, as is the case for any other life experience. You drink water because you trust it will make you less thirsty, but you would not say trust is the reason that you drink water.