I'll be the first to admit that it's a contrived model because 95% of people would perish quickly if we lost all energy and food supply chain. But if anyone sur

I'll be the first to admit that it's a contrived model because 95% of people would perish quickly if we lost all energy and food supply chain. But if anyone survives, soon after hoarding the immediate needs (air, water, food, security, shelter) will eventually convert to specialized jobs, which is when bartering is less useful than a standardized currency. But the idea that gold doesn't have some sort of special status is strange to me. People don't talk about doorknobs or topaz when they diversify from financial products (stocks, bonds, cash, etc). Cryptocurrency fails to be useful if there is no reliable electrical grid or network. Gold has for long recent history (until about WW1) backed almost all currencies, so it has significant precedence. And jewelry is useless to me, but most people carry some form of jewelry and some cultures even store lots of gold in jewelry in case they need to run/escape. It's not useless to have a store of value shaped to fit your body.