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If gold is so meaningless, why is it continually being purchased by central banks? Maybe you need to share your economic wisdom with China (buying several hund

• Mikeb85 10y ago
  They also buy other currencies (both have foreign reserves in the hundreds of billions), commodities (gold, oil, silver, aluminum), stocks and bonds, etc... Gold's value is as a commodity, and a historic store of value, much like other commodities (businesses and governments also hoard oil to ride out price and fluctuations). But it's not about to replace fiat any time soon (or ever again really). Edit - I should add, at various times throughout history, grain, livestock and spices were all used as currency. Gold's special place comes from the fact it was one of the very first metals to be worked (~7000 years ago), it's easy to work, it doesn't tarnish, and of course it's shiny (so it was widely used as jewellery). It's durability and perceived value allowed it to be traded in a way that you can't trade goats or barley. But at the same time, there's nothing particularly special about it, it's always traded much the same as other durable commodities, that fact is just hidden sometimes by the fact that for a period of history, everything was compared to gold, instead of another unit.