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Gold is desirable because all of the other elements are worse at being currency: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gol

Gold is desirable because all of the other elements are worse at being currency: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemis... ---------------------------- So we're down from 118 elements to 30, and we've come up with a list of three key requirements: - Not a gas. - Doesn't corrode or burst into flames - Doesn't kill you. Now Sanat adds a new requirement: You want the thing you pick to be rare. This lets him cross off a lot of the boxes near the top of the table, because the elements clustered there tend to be more abundant. At the same time, you don't want to pick an element that's too rare. So osmium — which apparently comes to earth via meteorites — gets the axe. That leaves us with just five elements: rhodium, palladium, silver, platinum and gold. And all of them, as it happens, are considered precious metals. ----------------------------

acveilleux 12y ago
Gold has an additional bonus in being very resistant to oxidation or, well, pretty much anything it can be expected to encounter. A not insignificant property I would think. It's interesting to note that before modern manufacturing processes, Aluminum was also a very valuable metal. It had all sorts of desirable properties and manufacturing costs were so high that it was effectively rare. Cheap hydroelectricity and process scaling have taken care of that however.
ctdonath 12y ago
One other bonus: gold is mined, AFAIK, at a rate roughly comparable to the increase/production of value of everything else in society. Money is used to represent units of value in society, and inflation helps when the increase in the money supply matches economic growth. The increase in gold seems about on par with world economic growth, as noted in the aphorism that an ounce of gold can always buy a good suit or a good handgun.
unfamiliar 12y ago
> So we're down from 118 elements to 30 Without stating why it needs to be an element in the first place. Why not any compound?
- praptak 12y ago
  Compound is at danger if a very effective manufacturing process appears. So it's better if there is a rare element in the compound. So it looks like the rare element is there to stay.

acveilleux 12y ago

Gold has an additional bonus in being very resistant to oxidation or, well, pretty much anything it can be expected to encounter. A not insignificant property I would think. It's interesting to note that before modern manufacturing processes, Aluminum was also a very valuable metal. It had all sorts of desirable properties and manufacturing costs were so high that it was effectively rare. Cheap hydroelectricity and process scaling have taken care of that however.

ctdonath 12y ago

One other bonus: gold is mined, AFAIK, at a rate roughly comparable to the increase/production of value of everything else in society. Money is used to represent units of value in society, and inflation helps when the increase in the money supply matches economic growth. The increase in gold seems about on par with world economic growth, as noted in the aphorism that an ounce of gold can always buy a good suit or a good handgun.

unfamiliar 12y ago

> So we're down from 118 elements to 30 Without stating why it needs to be an element in the first place. Why not any compound?

praptak 12y ago
Compound is at danger if a very effective manufacturing process appears. So it's better if there is a rare element in the compound. So it looks like the rare element is there to stay.