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Yeah, a big thing that makes gold messy is that you can have massive supply shocks. Asteroid mining in the next few centuries are likely to make that worse. Go
by anonporridge 5y ago
Yeah, a big thing that makes gold messy is that you can have massive supply shocks. Asteroid mining in the next few centuries are likely to make that worse.
Gold being poorly divisible also makes it very impractical for day to day coinage of a growing population. Eventually, the coins start getting so tiny as to be impossible to work with. I believe that's a big reason why we started using silver and copper for smaller denominations at some point.
- colechristensen 5y agoI would bet the asteroid mining supply shock is going to happen this century, I would not be surprised if it happened before 2040.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoIt doesn't even have to be asteroid mining. Simply more investment in digging out reserves in countries that have gold to be mine could create imbalances. Those reserves could be in countries that we are in conflict with (e.g. Russia, perhaps China), creating issues in power dynamics (do we want to give Putin and Xi a seat at the table in dictating US monetary policy?). Well, going on the gold standard would also make Australia much more important, so it isn't all that bad.