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In your view, are gold and other precious metals commodities or money? If your answer is commodities, why not money?
by krapht 11y ago
In your view, are gold and other precious metals commodities or money? If your answer is commodities, why not money?
- nickff 11y agoThe most popular definition of "money" that I have seen is 'a medium of exchange'. I think that gold has been used as a money in the past, as have a number of other precious metals. The question you are asking is a good one, because it asks whether the use as a medium of exchange must be its primary use, and how popular it must be to be considered a money. It seems gold is an edge case, which could (currently) reasonably be judged to be either one.
- danharaj 11y agoI disagree. You can't use gold nuggets to pay for your groceries. As a medium of exchange it is sorely lacking. Gold has been mostly a commodity for a very long time. Its main purpose with respect to money nowadays is that it is a store of value useful to backers of currency.
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoI'd say both and mostly used as an asset class, just like bitcoin, both money and an asset class and mostly used as the latter today. Why must they be mutually exclusive? It's no different from the dollar which is both money and traded as an asset class everyday.