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Compared to the amount of value it represents, gold is not heavy. On a dollar-to-weight basis, it is as heavy as carrying money in $20 and $50 bills (US bills

Compared to the amount of value it represents, gold is not heavy. On a dollar-to-weight basis, it is as heavy as carrying money in $20 and $50 bills (US bills weigh a gram each, and gold is worth roughly $35 dollars a gram). For comparison, the lightest form of fungible contemporary currency is the 500 Euro bill, worth 743.6 US dollars per gram. Diamonds are lighter, but they are not fungible. There used to be US bills of higher denominations, but they are no longer worth anything. I might be forgetting about paper stock certificates, but...they are not always anonymous or easily come by.

jeromec 17y ago
That's still heavier than cash when you look at the purpose of owning physical gold - as a store of value. People usually want to store increments of 10K, 50K or more, and that gets heavy/bulky enough even as paper 100s - so with your gold calculation we'd multiply that by three. Bank transfers or checks are far easier to handle. For everyday trade or barter it's not so much the weight of the metal as the drag on trading - using scales, checking for shaving or lead etc. What I meant was that gold has no valuable purpose, aside from some jewelry application, so people primarily use it as a store of value, and as that it's not the best, whether you're a wealthy individual, bank or country.