One interesting thing I learned about gold listening to a interview of a guy who started a sunken treasure hunting venture was that gold does not deteriorate in salt water. Not sure why I didn't recognize that before but in some ways the lack of chemical reaction helps gold retain its state when its stored under the mattress of the Earth.

Gold's physical properties make it very useful from industrial perspective while still maintaining an ease and stability in transport that not many, if any, other element has.

oklaunion said:

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I've got this unfleshed out theory that humanity will trend towards Global guilds with specialized knowledges and tokens signifying different levels of skilks/knowledge/credibility/creditability. Probably from the nonsensical short stories I've consumed over the years.

Sounds like a diploma to me.

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reads like Star Trek uniforms colors in combination with rank symbols

tysker said:

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One interesting thing I learned about gold listening to a interview of a guy who started a sunken treasure hunting venture was that gold does not deteriorate in salt water. Not sure why I didn't recognize that before but in some ways the lack of chemical reaction helps gold retain its state when its stored under the mattress of the Earth.

Gold's physical properties make it very useful from industrial perspective while still maintaining an ease and stability in transport that not many, if any, other element has.

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And you can hide it in mercury.

carl spacklers hat said:

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Coming back around to this one because I think it's an interesting conversation to have.

Couple of items that I think impact the discussion. First, what is the definition of apocalypse in this scenario? For some, taking away their x-box is apocalyptic. For this discussion, what are you defining as the apocalypse? I think that has some impact on the debate.

Second, and this is probably assumed in the original post and by everyone who's commented since but trying to predict human behavior is pretty freaking tough. If society/civilization has burned to the ground and humans are picking up from a point of almost zero infrastructure, no civil society, no communication, etc., then trying to predict what would serve as money is a fools errand. In that scenario, the means of exchange are going to be extremely rudimentary and more likely be a strict barter system. This will persist until some structure returns, at which point a serious contemplation of money can occur.

So, in worst case scenarios, gold will have no value as a form of money, but it is arguable that nothing else will, either. We will live in a world of barter until a point in time when structure, stability and society begin to return.

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I think there's two or three scenarios people seem to simp that gold would be a preferred method of exchange:
Power goes out (why, how long?)
Govt collapses (why, how long?)
Meteor/Yellowstone eruption

In none of these specific scenarios can I reason out that gold would provide the value that gold hoarders claim humans HAVE ALWAYS valued the shiny meme metal.

Agreed its a fools errand and that skills and barterable goods/services is the real value in nearly any scenario I've played out in my head.

Agreed that unless the scenario plays out that after apocalypse there's still significant infrastructure and communication and organization of resources across time/space [which took humanity tens of thousands of years to attain civilization capable of valuing gold outside of shiny soft metal] that gold is a relatively useless material despite its indestructible nature.

Well this is an interesting development in this discussion.


https://news.sky.com/story/zimbabwe-launches-gold-coins-as-legal-tender-to-tackle-hyperinflation-12658984

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Zimbabwe launches gold coins as legal tender to tackle hyperinflation

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At the time of the launch on Monday, the cost of a Mosi-oa-Tunya coin was US$1,824 (1,514).

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RockOn said:

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Well this is an interesting development in this discussion.


https://news.sky.com/story/zimbabwe-launches-gold-coins-as-legal-tender-to-tackle-hyperinflation-12658984

Quote:

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Zimbabwe launches gold coins as legal tender to tackle hyperinflation

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At the time of the launch on Monday, the cost of a Mosi-oa-Tunya coin was US$1,824 (1,514).

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Quote:

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The gold coins - called Mosi-oa-Tunya - will have "liquid asset status", meaning they can be converted to cash, traded locally and internationally, and used for transactions, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said.

People can only trade the coins for cash after holding them for at least 180 days.

Zimbabwean economist Prosper Chitambara said: "The government is trying to moderate the very high demand for the US dollar because this high demand is not being matched by supply."

According to the International Monetary Fund, inflation in Zimbabwe reached 837% (year on year) in July 2020 and, although tighter fiscal policy helped reduce it to 60.7% by the end of last year, it remains in the high double-digits.

This wipes away the value of people's savings - many people saw their savings wiped out by the 5 billion per cent inflation seen in 2008, according to the IMF.

This insecurity affects trust in the local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar - many retailers don't accept it and many Zimbabweans prefer to use US dollars for savings or daily transactions.

Mr Chitambara said: "For Zimbabwe we are in chronic hyperinflation so the expectation is that there will be a huge uptake of these gold coins."

The coins, which have a purity of 22 carats, will be priced based on the international market rate for an ounce of gold, plus 5% to cover production and distribution.

But that price could put them out of reach for many people in a country so poor that a third of the population is at risk of food insecurity.

At the time of the launch on Monday, the cost of a Mosi-oa-Tunya coin was US$1,824 (1,514).

"For the common man, there is not really much to benefit directly from this, especially if you don't have any excess cash," said Mr Chitambara.

"Many people have no money for bread, let alone for savings.

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My point seems to be referenced in bold

Sounds like a poor man's Gold Standard.

Or a country with extremely poor management of money trying anything and everything to grasp stability in their own manufactured currency instead of USD/phone minutes/btc.

Here's the btc counter on forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinrivers/2022/07/27/bitcoin-could-solve-zimbabwes-hyperinflation-problem--instead-the-country-is-telling-impoverished-citizens-to-just-buy-gold/?sh=7775a2c566d2

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(Snip)
There's a lot to unpack there, so let's start with a quick refresher on Zimbabwe's currency adventures:

The Zimbabwean dollar was introduced in 1980 and has always been a poor store of value. It succumbed to hyperinflation in the first decade of this century, when incompetent and corrupt officials printed successively larger banknotes in a futile effort to keep the currency alive.

At the height of the crisis, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was pumping Z$100,000,000,000,000 notes into the economy. Those notes were originally worth about US$33 on the black market, but before long they didn't even cover the cost of a bus fare in capital city Harare. (Ironically, they now fetch US$200 apiece on eBay as collectibles).

The nominal values of the notes would have been even sillier were it not for four 're-denominations' of the currency a process whereby the central bank recalls circulating notes and replaces them with new ones bearing significantly fewer zeroes.

By 2009, no businesses would accept the Zimbabwean dollar, so the government stopped the money printers and allowed foreign currencies like the US dollar and the South African rand to enter circulation. This unlocked a period of relative albeit fragile economic stability, and the Zimbabwean dollar was formally demonetized in 2015.

To absolutely noone's delight, it then made a comeback in 2019 under the grandiose sounding name of the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Dollar. Three years on, this reincarnation has lost more than 99% of its value against the US dollar and Zimbabwe is once again battling triple-digit annual inflation.


Against this pitiful backdrop, it's not so ridiculous for the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to promote an alternative monetary unit that can act as a store of value.

Gold arguably fits the bill, owing to its fixed supply and universal appeal in global financial markets. It's certainly a better store of value than the US dollar, which has depreciated by 9% over the past year.

What doesn't make sense, though, is why Mangudya thinks that extremely high-value, non-divisible coins can somehow be used as money in an economy where the average citizen earns US$230 a month. Any credible attempt to monetize gold in this way would, surely, have involved distributing the metal's smallest practical denomination: one-gram bars, worth about US$55 each. And, even then, their usefulness in day-to-day economic activity would have been highly restrictive.

The reality is that Zimbabwean officials have no illusions about Mosi-oa-Tunya coins improving their country's situation. Only 2,000 units are being produced and almost no Zimbabweans will ever see one let alone have the means to own one.

What will be achieved is an unusually high markup of 16% for the coin's producers. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is pricing them at a 5% premium over the daily spot price for one troy ounce of pure gold, resulting in a launch price of $1,824. Yet because they're only 22 karat unlike most modern bullion coins they only actually contain 0.9167 ounces of gold, giving an underlying value of $1,574.

Zimbabwe's supposed monetary plan, in other words, is flogging over-priced gold to gullible investors.

For anyone who's had the misfortune of dealing with parastatals in the country as I have this is as predictable as it is depressing. Zimbabwe ranked 157th out of 180 countries in the 2021 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Graft is endemic at every level of the public sector.

Mangudya's claim that the Zimbabwean dollar is weak because citizens are flocking to the US dollar and that this could be reversed if they held gold instead is patently ridiculous. The Zimbabwean dollar is weak because it's a fiat currency that can only hold its value if the people using it trust the issuer (the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) to manage the currency responsibly.

Unless they've been in a coma for the past two decades, no right-thinking Zimbabwean would be capable of holding their central bank in such high regard.

Let's put money-making schemes to one side, then, and consider what Zimbabwe's government can do if it genuinely wants to stabilize its beleaguered currency.

How to claw back credibility

The first option is to embark on a long, painful journey of democratic accountability and economic reform. This means not just holding fair elections and choosing noble leaders, but sweeping aside the legions of dishonest public officials who are motivated above all else by greed. It goes far beyond the scope of this article and my expertise to suggest quite how this can be achieved. Suffice to say, it's a gargantuan task in societies where corruption has been fully normalized as part of public life.

The second, more pragmatic option is to remove the need for citizens to trust the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe by allowing them to verify its claims and conduct. That means using independent, third-party auditors to quantify reserves and scrutinize operating practices.

If Zimbabwe wants people to believe that its local currency has a stable supply, then an outside body should monitor and disclose all print-runs of new notes.

The same applies if it wants people to believe that the currency is adequately backed by sovereign wealth: an outside body should quantify and disclose the hard assets gold, silver, diamonds, US dollars and other foreign currencies being held in the vaults of the central bank.

All this can be achieved, of course, without mentioning the word "bitcoin". But if Zimbabweans are serious about holding their government to account, there's no more powerful tool at their disposal. The bitcoin monetary network uses blockchain technology (a military-grade form of encryption) to ensure that changes can never be made to transaction histories. Its ledger is distributed around the world and continually verified by thousands of independent parties, guaranteeing total transparency and decentralization of data.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe will tell you that bitcoin is a volatile, speculative asset that's a poor store of value. The first part is true: prices fluctuate wildly in the short-term (as is the case, to a lesser degree, for gold: it fell from $1,921 an ounce in 2011 to $1,046 in 2015). The second part, though, is not: when taking a long-term perspective, bitcoin has only ever appreciated in value.

That's because bitcoin, like gold, has the magic combination of a fixed supply and strong global demand.

If the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe were to convert a percentage of its assets into bitcoin, anyone on the planet would be able to verify its balance in real time at the click of a button. The value of those holdings would then grow over time, at least when measured against inflationary fiat currencies.

Returning to Mangudya's madcap scheme, bitcoin again offers the sensible path forwards. Instead of asking citizens to purchase goods with lumps of gold that can't be divided, he could promote payments with digital currencies not just bitcoin, but also US dollar stablecoins which are divisible to a fraction of penny. They're also much easier to carry around, particularly in mobile-friendly Harare.

Last year, El Salvador became the first country in the world to embrace bitcoin as a reserve currency and a means of payment. The Central African Republic followed suit this year.

Time will tell if they're remembered as technological pioneers or economic maniacs.

Either way, compared with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's latest move, bitcoin adoption is a shining beacon of maturity, democracy and progressiveness. The sooner Zimbabweans realize that, the better.

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I was 10 years younger when a member of our bitcoin meetup passed around a 100Trillion Zimbabwe note... oy vey.

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Either way, compared with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's latest move, bitcoin adoption is a shining beacon of maturity, democracy and progressiveness. The sooner Zimbabweans realize that, the better.

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its going to be hard to transition when most of the country has neither a smart phone nor a reliable internet connection. https://www.connectingafrica.com/author.asp?section_id=761&doc_id=767479

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Econet Wireless says that smartphone penetration in Zimbabwe is still at a low 52%, compared to about 90% for South Africa and 80% for Kenya, and the lack of smartphones in the market "remains a limitation for the adoption of digital services" in the southern African nation.

This according to the Harare-headquartered company's 2020 annual report.
"Zimbabwe's internet penetration rate remains low as approximately 22% of the devices on our network trying to access data services are 'feature' phones with low data handling capacity," said board chairman James Myers in the report.

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They need some infrastructure upgrades, but who is going to pay for it when the 'average citizen earns US$230 a month?"

Quote:

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The Zimbabwean dollar is weak because it's a fiat currency that can only hold its value if the people using it trust the issuer (the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) to manage the currency responsibly.

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This should be blasted everywhere when the topic is fiat currencies.

BTW, I have one of those same Zimbabwean notes. Friend of mine gave it to me a number of years ago.

To quote trump, "Chynuh"

Probably.

Adverse Event said:

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I've realized what bugs the hell out of me on gold/PM's

How is the general consensus that "Gold is valuable in a disconnected society, because always" different than "brawndo, it's what plants crave" from idiocracy?

Talk to me like an idiot (not hard, i am) or as if I just landed on planet earth after an apocalyptic event.
How is everyone trading a relatively common soft shiny metal?
How did anyone create a trading ratio of eggs to gold?
If gold is valuable, how do you protect your wealth from seizure from the hordes of warlords and brigands that have none?

I'd imagine you'd keep your wealth extremely under the radar unless you're planning to run a large commonwealth, otherwise the folk that do seize power will seize yours. As it has been throughout history one of the most powerful reasons for bloodletting a neighbor.

At this point the only value I lend to it outside of jewelry and the production of electronics is the memetic nature of "oooo shiny metal looks like the sun."

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Ask Butch's dad and his cell mate, Chris Walken.

As others have said, it serves as some insurance against economic calamity, but it won't be much good in a true SHTF scenario. The only reason it has been useful over the centuries is that people on the run, or trading between groups can carry it very easily whether fleeing invaders or walking trade routes. That's also the biggest liability, anybody stronger than you can take it away. Unless you learned your lesson from Butch's dad...