Loading ...Or aluminium, beans, OJ futures etc. as they are constantly being used, the supply and demand is based upon consumption. Nobody stores high volumes of these things because they either deteriorate or the prices can drop – you might hang on to copper a few months, or years even, but it takes up a lot of space and eventually it’ll peak and fall.
Gold and silver are both consumed, gold only in small quantities, and we know that we’re holding them because they have been the go-to for financial soundness for five millenia or so. Which means that for them to continue to rise there must be continued increase in interest of their monetary characteristics.
There are about six billion ounces of gold above ground in the form of bullion, coins and jewellery. That’s less than one ounce per person worldwide. Even if you took America by itself that’s only 18 ounces per person. Silver is worse, only about 4 billion ounces or 12 ounces per American. Therefore I can’t see either of them ever becoming a unit of currency again, there just isn’t enough for America let alone the ROW. Value gold at $20,000 per ounce, each gram is $654, a loaf of bread is 0.00025 oz; one thousandth of a quarter of an ounce. Give silver a 100:1 ratio even, and a loaf is 0.025, one tenth of a quarter of an ounce. A silver nickel contained double that, so every American could have 480 nickels and 18 eagles if the USA gets all the gold and silver and converts it to coinage.
Obviously that’s not going to happen. The plan must be to back a paper or digital currency by gold to give the impression of stability. So the price stops moving when the US, or China, set the price. M3 is about 21tn, so with 8144 tons of gold reserves in the US, 261,000,000 ounces or $81,500 per ounce. Who knows? But I think that if there is a plan to back currency by gold and/or silver, it’s got a way to run yet.