"few if any gold investors have expectations of profits" Talk to any gold investors and they will tell you the opposite: they generally expect to at least beat

"few if any gold investors have expectations of profits" Talk to any gold investors and they will tell you the opposite: they generally expect to at least beat inflation, ie. making profits in real (not nominal) dollars. "by consumers like jewelers and industry" Purchasers and manufacturers of gold jewelry buy or build with this material primarily because it's valuable, not because of its physical properties. If they cared about physical properties above value, they would use many of the other metals that have similar or better properties at a better price. That leaves industrial use of gold, which accounts for only 10% of global gold production. It could therefore be argued, from this blog post perspective, that 90% of gold is part of the "Ponzi scheme", or that 90% of gold's value relies on a "Ponzi scheme" completely disconnected from gold's industrial use.